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Author Topic:   IC challenge: Evolve a bicycle into a motorcycle!
dogrelata
Member (Idle past 5340 days)
Posts: 201
From: Scotland
Joined: 08-04-2006


Message 144 of 157 (341730)
08-20-2006 11:57 AM


Re: Original post
Guys, I am currently re-reading Behe's 'Darwin's Black Box' and one of his examples stuck on my mind. In page 44 he asked whether we can evolve bicycles into motorcycles by using only random variations and natural selection. He allows for a factory and a blueprint to simulate bicycle reproduction and blueprint (which can be mutated). However, Behe said the motorcycle is an irreducibly complex system and the bicycle cannot be a functional precursor to a motorcycle.
I know it’s not considered ”good form’ around here to dig up old topics, but since this one has been revived already . I’d like to go back to the original post.
It may just be my lack of understanding, but there does appear to be a degree of inference that because A led to B, A must have ”set out on the journey’ with something approximating B in mind. This makes me a little uncomfortable.
I realise it wasn’t the purpose of the proposal to take it in this direction, but a better analogy for evolution might have been to ask, given the bicycle factory and mutating blueprint, would anything emerge that found a niche that could not directly be filled by the original bicycle?
If the answer to the above question is no, then why is it no? If the answer is no, are we to assume that there must be some process in place preventing (random?) mutations leading to different forms that may either be better fits to their environment than their predecessors, or sufficiently different to find their own niche in a different environment? That is to say, a mechanism that allows only mutations that may not lead to a better fit.
It seems to me that for someone to propose that evolution does not work, they need also to propose such a mechanism. To date I am aware of no such proposal (other than the big numbers argument that has already been covered in this topic).
One last thought. If we could rewind time by 10 million years, then restart the clock, would evolution lead us to the same diversity of life that we see today, or would the random effects of mutation and environmental change produce something different. A variation on that theme might be, how closely will the diversity of life on planet earth in 10 million years approximate what we see today? And will homo sapiens be around to observe it?

Replies to this message:
 Message 146 by Brad McFall, posted 08-20-2006 3:04 PM dogrelata has not replied
 Message 150 by RAZD, posted 08-20-2006 10:35 PM dogrelata has not replied

  
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