The Truth About Evolution and Religion

Just to clarify what Dr. A is saying, you say ... but the quote you provided from Miller says ... So since Miller questions Behe's ability to know where to place the line how can you claim that they agree on the location?TTFN,WK

Nothing in the passages you quoted supports this, and a lot of things Miller has said clearly contradict it.TTFN,WK

It does, it makes the assumption that only 1 unique 1000bp sequence is a suitable target for natural selection.Of course a rudimentary knowledge of molecular biology shows how flawed this approach is since even simply taking the degenerate nature of the genetic code into account you already reduce the uniqueness by a 3rd. Allowing also that several amino acids can be functionally identical we have to further doubt the likelihood of the 1000bp unique sequence as a reasonable target for these sort of calculations.Even the more permissive version of his calculation is based on allowing variation at only 166 nucleotides when we know that the degenerate nature of the genetic code will allow us to vary at least 333 nucleotides without changing the amino acid sequence at all.Salisbury himself acknowledges at least some of these factors and realises that the 'specificity' of the gene is the most vulnerable aspect of his argument.TTFN,WK

Along with mutation and a few other mechanisms, yes. Not so much refuted as superseded. When that paper was published there was virtually nothing known about genetic sequences, reliable sequencing techniques only started appearing in the 70's. That said the degenerate nature of the genetic code was already well known, so Salisbury's failing to take that into account is somewhat baffling to me.Currently we know an awful lot about genetic sequences and one of the main things we know is that their function is by no means reliant on unique nucleotide sequences. The same functional modules are reused again and again in different genes. There is clear evidence of widespread duplication at both the individual gene and the whole genome level.As it stands the only thing you could do with Salisbury's argument is make a weak case against a theory of abiogenesis that no-one now subscribes to. I would agree but I would suggest that this greater understanding has shown us that the complexity is not the 'irreducible complexity' that ID proponents suggest but rather the product of a long history of random genetic change and changing environmental pressures which have constrained and favoured certain arrangements over others.One thing developmental biology clearly shows is that nature is a great fan of recycling. There are a few conserved developmental signaling pathways which have roles in the development of eyes, limbs, nerves, muscle and practically everything else. And when we look from the development of a fly to that of a human we see the same factors at play but ramified by gene duplications so where Drosophila have ~7 Wnt genes Humans have around 19.TTFN,WK

How complex? There are a huge number of low complexity highly repetitive proteins in the genome. I think that perhaps rather than 'known' what you meant was specified, in other words the amino acids have to be in one specific exact sequence in order to perform their biological function. The problem with this argument is that it is patently not true in many cases.This is the same mistake Salisbury made in claiming that genes needed to have unique sequences. He had the excuse of commenting before many basic principles of molecular genetics were firmly established, you have no such excuse.TTFN,WK

As I said, Salisbury's position was the result of understandable ignorance since he was writing before the advent of sequencing. Unless Nature manages to get time-traveling reviewers from the future then the reviewers would have been in the same position of ignorance. At the time he was writing it wasn't known how unique functional gene sequences were, now we have a much better idea and the answer is a lot less unique than Salisbury's argument assumes.There is a reason why 40 year old articles do not offer the best critiques of the current status of modern scientific theories. An awful lot of molecular genetics has only been discovered in that intervening time. It is the same reason why no-one goes to Darwin's writings for an explanation of modern genetics, Darwin simply didn't know any modern genetics.TTFN,WK

As numerous people have endlessly repeated, no one has claimed 'Darwinism' totally explains the complexity of life, other factors come into play. There certainly isn't anything in the complexity of life that seems unamenable to explanation by natural explanations, with Darwinian evolution being one of the principle ones.TTFN,WK

That is the same comparison you made further up thread here, and as then I am struck by how singularly your quotes fail to show Miller agreeing with Behe in the slightest. The main body of the quote is him describing what Behe says, and he then goes on to question how Behe knows where to draw such a line. Absolutely nowhere does Miller say he accepts Behe's argument or suggest that he agrees that such a line exists, except perhaps in terms of the nature of the soul.TTFN,WK

And my point is that you are wrong. We may not know what every single factor is. No one is claiming that we already have a clear and detailed naturalistic explanation for the evolution of every single complex biological system in the world. But in every instance where we have studied such systems they have been amenable to explanation through such naturalistic approaches, they might involve adaptive Darwinian evolution, they may involve genetic drift, they may involve horizontal gene transfer, they may involve endosymbiosis, the point is that whatever systems we study there are always natural explanations.The idea that anyone insists that 'Darwinism' is the only mechanism contributing to life's complexity is a strawman.TTFN,WK

I really don't know what you mean by this, is it that you doubt the existence of a universal common ancestor? Do you doubt the common ancestry of humans and chimpanzees? The common ancestry of all members of the Felidae?Nothing could be less mysterious, there is a wealth of genetic information indicative of a common ancestral source for life. Its a bit sad to see Behe, who may at one time have had some grasp of what he was on about, reduced to making the sort of facile arguments that creationists wedded to a literal interpretation of the bible and an obsession with genetic degradation as a consequence of 'The Fall' favour.TTFN,WK

You won't really. While they do identify four 'turning points' each turning point has several core processes associated with it. The first turning point, around Three billion years ago, has core functional components/processes of ... ... ascribed to it.I think you are confusing the four time periods in which they propose certain conserved core component/processes arose with the four steps they outline as giving rise to viable phenotypic variation of anatomy and physiology from genetic variation.TTFN,WK

Sorry Bluejay, your quote doesn't make things any clearer. Can you tell me what the "four major core processes" are that you talked about in Message 266 and when you think each one arose? Take my previous Message 269 as a starting point, which of the seven core processes listed there do you think they consider the 'major' one for that time period?You kept on saying there were four core processes, but I can't find anything in the paper to support that. Four rough geological periods of innovation yes. Four steps from genetic variation to viable phenotypic variation of anatomy and physiology. yes. Four core processes, no, more like 30 odd.TTFN,WKEdited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

No there is no calculation like that because such calculations serve no purpose, beyond supplying creationists with big numbers. The fact that most modern proteins are over 100 amino acids doesn't mean that all functional protein sequences must be over 100 amino acids.As has been repeated ad nauseam what no one is saying is that the chances of a particular protein 100 amino acids long just spontaneously assembling which had a biological function are relevant to explaining the complexity of life, no one except you that is.What those calculations address has nothing to do with evolution except to show how evolution differs from mere random chance.I can't even tell what you think you are arguing about. Is it abiogenesis? Once any self replicating population of genetic sequences arises, lets say self catalysing RNAs for arguments sake, then all you probability objections based on spontaneous assembly by chance become totally pointless.There is certainly no point saying 'look at the timing of biological processes, they are too complex to arise by chance', because no one is suggesting that they have. Conflating evolution with pure chance is simply lazy, and I can't imagine who you think you will fool other perhaps than yourself.If you want to look at a suitable target for such calculations why not look at the self replication RNAzymes talked about upthread. Paul and Joyce (2002) describe such a system and it requires only 3 sequences of 13, 48 and 55 nucleotides respectively the 48 nucleotide sequence is a shorter form of the 55 nucleotide sequence. In detail ... These are sequences composed from 4 different bases, so what are the correct calculations here (4X10^55)X(4X10^48)X(4X10^13) which I make out to be 6.4 10^117. Even assuming that only this is the only possible self replicating system, which I doubt, it seems to be a not impossible level of improbability. It is below Dembski's Universal probability bound and certainly it is many order of magnitude below Salisbury's calculations. Statistics isn't my strong point so anyone wanting to point out an obvious error in just multiplying the probabilities together let me know.How long do you think it would take a computer to generate those sequences randomly from an alphabet of 4 letters? There is no reason to imagine this presents the minimal system for such replication but it is one we know the exact details of.TTFN,WK

I would definitely agree. I'm just using this as a hypothetical to suggest that more realistic starting assumptions show how erroneous the whole approach is as a basis to conclude anything.In fact looking back I'm not sure where my X10s came from, the numbers look more like they should be (4^55)*(4^13)*(4^48) giving a probability of 1.44890865 10^-70 which is a virtual certainty the way these probability conversations tend to run.Just to clarify, all 3 elements are required for auto catalytic replication so I think requiring all three to co-occur in a single trial is a reasonable requirement if looking for an initial self replicating sequence being produced from randomly generated sequences as a starting point for sequence evolution to kick off. It doesn't do any good if the complementary sequences are on the other side of the planet.TTFN,WK