Biological Evidence Against Intelligent Design

Apparently, one of us has no idea what you said in Message 202, and I think it's you. Here's what you said: Aren't you arguing for HGT as a superior explanation for the bacterial flagellum, as opposed to "scientific explanations that sometimes have hidden problems that their proponents or participants on the evcforum do not wish to see."And so I asked you rhetorically why in the world you think science wouldn't consider HGT an acceptable explanation (as long as it was accompanied by evidence, of course), and then I showed you that science is already considering HGT as a possible explanation, and I provided a link to a single paper as an example."Where am I wrong?" you ask. Your example of something science was refusing to consider was actually something that science is already considering. And for you the realities of life include things you can't see or hear or anything else. If you want to run your life that way that's your business, but you might stop and think a minute about how well this approach is serving you. You can't go more than a paragraph or two without another howler of an error. When it comes to figuring out what's what you can't beat facts. Give fact gathering a try sometime, you might find it works pretty well. And so your preferred approach is to paint pictures of a reality you can't see?Science does not paint a "picture of the reality they wish to see." Consensus across many individuals across many cultures, countries and religions removes any possibility of a single driving viewpoint, but that's exactly the case with Christian evangelicalism, the primary province of ID. You mean in a certain way that doesn't correspond to the reality we can see and hear and touch?When reality touches your senses it is telling you important information. It is only when we began giving priority to the information from reality rather than from our own imaginings that scientific progress began in earnest. I have no problem with ID as a possibility. The problem I have is when people like you argue that ID, which has no evidence, should be taken as seriously as evolution, which has mountains of evidence. Except for the spelling, I think you've finally got something right.--Percy

Where is this support? All you have talked about is evolution. You have not shown any positive evidence that points to ID.What you have done is produce a false dichotomy. Your argument is "Not evolution, therefore ID". The first problem is that you have yet to show that the flagellum or other structures could not evolve. All you have done is point to the fact that no one has discovered a step by step evolutionary pathway that lead to the flagellum. However, not knowing the exact pathway does not mean that the pathway did not exist. The second problem is that it is entirely possible that a natural mechanism other than evolution produced the flagellum.Let's turn this around. Since you can not describe a step by step process by which the flagellum was designed then we must conclude that it evolved. I don't have to offer a single bit of evidence for this evolutionary pathway. All I need to do is point tothe complete lack of an ID pathway. Bingo, evolution proven. Everyone can go home and all research can stop. We have the answer. Does this sound like solid reasoning to you?Even more, do you really think this is how scientists actually operate? I have attended a few scientific conferences in my time. In every single one of those presentations I never saw one that exclusively tore down another theory in order to support their own. Not once. Not once did I sit through a presentation that pointed to the lack of an ID explanation for a structure and then conclude that it had to evolve. And yet, this is exactly what ID "scientists" do. They offer exactly zero positive evidence for their own theory and subistute this lack of evidence with an attempt to destroy competing theories. This is not science, or anything resembling it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdwTwNPyR9wThere is your model of an intelligent designer creating a bacterial flagellum. Just imagine a creative force is behind the step by step process.Yes, the video was created to refute Creationists. Don't bother attempting to debate it with me because you will lose.I have now considered the video as an ID hypothesis of a supernatural creator creating a complex biological machine through a natural process. Enjoy!

Yes, I am arguing for this because a step by step neo-Darwinian model doesn't cut it. "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."- Charles Darwin "The Origin of Species" I cannot determine what scientists as a whole are thinking at this time. I can judge what I see from Darwinists on this forum and a couple of other places where I have been. You might stop and think for a minute how your approach would have served you 200 years ago. You wouldn't have known anything about radio waves or quantum physics. Would you have honestly believed these things would have not existed? Who is to say that science has discovered everything you should know about especially since it automatically disqualifies any inference to the supernatural?

Last I checked horizontal genetic transfer is a modification of the genome. Can you please explain how the "approach" would have prevented the discovery of radio waves and quantum mechanics?

This falsifies ID according to your criteria:"To falsify intelligent design, you have to find an unambiguous example of natural causes that would show how life or the flagellum was generated."--traderdrew, message 205

Surely you're not saying that you can't type "horizontal gene transfer bacterial flagellum" into Google, which is all I did. The paper I linked to is the first hit right at the top of the page. Real rocket science. You asked where you were wrong, I told you. Your reply, in essence, is, "I can't be bothered getting things right."The irony is so thick you could cut it with a knife. You're arguing that we should be paying greater attention to things outside of reality (whatever the heck that is) while getting everything wrong because you're not paying attention to the things inside reality. The very approach you're advocating is failing you WHILE YOU'RE ADVOCATING FOR IT!--Percy

Didn't you read the post I made to Percy today?http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1147112v1 While these experimental studies examined transfer solely into E. coli, a computational analysis of gene transfer rates across available bacterial and archaeal genomes supports that the barriers observed in our study are general across the tree of life.If modification was the only thing that was necessary, not creating new monsters (the flagellum, the archaeal flagellum, the TTSS) then, what did the precursors look like and why did they not reject a host of different genes across the board? Tell me what half or 2/3rds of a flagellum looks like and how it evolved. I don't think you understood my comment. They didn't know about them back in those days. If they just assumed the universe was what their five senses told them then, they never would have found these things.

Of course you don't see the problems with the model. Your paradigm prevents you from seeing it. Just like you don't see the problem with your analogy of a lens with the photo receptors in the back. You can point a camera lens into the sun for all of the time you wish but it will never damage the lens.

I didn't see anything about the paper that showed me how the flagellum evolved from particular precursors. All I saw was some exploration of possibilities under HGT. It doesn't convince me. If I should be so overwhelmed by the evidence then, why don't you cut and paste specific sections out of the link?I told you I am willing to go half way but you insist that this is irony.

You tell me. It is IDists who claim that the flagellum could not have evolved through successive steps. So please show us the bacterial generation just prior to and just after the appearance of the flagellum and demonstrate that the change from one generation to the next was not due to evolution. So how did they discover these things? They used their five senses to discover these things, did they not? How else does one observe the results of the double slit experiment if not with their eyes? How else does one observe the paths of sub-atomic particles through a cloud chamber if not with their eyes? You can even use your ears to listen to the cosmic microwave background on a radio.

It appears that you can't see it either. If you did see it you would explain it.

Here is a list of problems and/or questions for you Taq.Parts of random filaments are very likely to aggregate into clumps before they are transported through any sort of porus channel to the outer surface of the cell.Tell me why they would stick to the right places outside of the cell? Why would the parts of the flagellum be transported through the TTSS in the first place? What would prevent them from sticking to the inside of the pilus or the TTSS?The TTSS has 10 protein parts. What are the chances of the 32 other proteins being secreted in the correct order and having the correct binding sites?What part of natural selection would preserve the step by step process in any given environment?What are the odds that a gene able to code for such specialized proteins will just happen to come along to be secreted in a specific way by an existing TTSS?Now tell me what use the TTSS would have if bacteria didn't have a flagellum to begin with? Without a flagellum then, how would a bacteria deliver poisonous proteins into its host?I would also wonder why the TTSS is only found in specific gram-negative bacteria and the bacterial flagellum is found in mesophilic, thermophilic, gram-positive, gram-negative, and spirochete bacteria while TTSS systems are restricted to a few gram-negative bacteria. Not only are TTSS systems restricted to gram-negative bacteria, but also to pathogenic gram-negative bacteria that specifically attack animals and plants.

Your excerpt from the paper's abstract is not saying that HGT isn't possible. It's only talking about the type of "barriers observed in our study." Obviously HGT is possible, there's abundant evidence for it. Here's a link to the full paper: But I provided that link only for completeness because the specifics of the paper aren't anywhere near as germane as addressing your misconceptions, but I will tell you that the paper says they examined 246,045 genes and found 642 different genes that they considered untransferable to E. coli. See how wrong the conclusion you drew from the abstract was? We can only figure out what precursors looked like to the extent we have evidence.And the precursors probably did reject many different genes. As the paper's abstract says (the part you didn't bother quoting), gene dosage and expression levels have a significant impact on transfer failure rates. This is probably your most significant misconception. The discoveries of radio and quantum mechanics were not made because people dreamed up concepts for which they had no evidence. The evidence came first.Evidence is the first step of the scientific method. You observe (gain evidence of) a natural phenomenon, and the next step is hypothesizing explanations for the phenomenon that you then investigate through experimentation and/or more detailed observations.For example, some of the earliest evidence for electromagnetic waves came from Michael Faraday's observations of iron filings responding to a magnet, and he hypothesized about the nature of the causative force. Maxwell later greatly extended his work.Someone of an unscientific mind who did not possess Faraday's discipline might have hypothesized angels or the unseen hand of an intelligence, pretty much the same thing ID does.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Traderdrew, what are you, the Forrest Gump of EvC? I told you that science agrees with you, that HGT probably *did* play a role in the evolutionary history of the bacterial flagellum. About that, you're right!Where you went wrong was in using HGT as an example of something science wouldn't consider in the case of the bacterial flagellum. About that, you're wrong! Dead wrong. WRONG WRONG WRONG! That's why I linked you to a scientific paper researching HGT's role in the flagellum's evolutionary history. I knew that was a mistake, because now you're getting yourself all confused because you're trying to read the paper and apparently can't make heads or tails of it. Forget reading the paper. The details of the paper are irrelevant. What's relevant is that scientists are already researching the very possibility you accused them of not considering. And they're considering it because there's evidence for HGT in all genomes everywhere. Why the heck would they fail to consider something that is ubiquitous? Okay, Forrest.--Percy