Typical ID response to rebuttals?

Hi RAZD,Has this article been discussed here before? I read over the webpage at the link, as well as the 2 pages of the book... I think it would be worthwhile to discuss. Do you know if it's been done?If not, I'm not sure this thread is the most appropriate place, what do you think?Thanks.
Ben

I have really big doubts about the following things: But first, I have to get some things clarified, which I couldn't understand from the links you wrote: One of the most troubling quotes was How can we say this is "natural selection" in any way, shape or form? Seems to me artificially allowing mutants to survive.Let's start there. As I learn more about the tests, I can really drill down specific complaints. For the moment, I have to fill in the gaps of knowledge.

"IC" isn't saying that the system couldn't be built through a bunch of mutations. It's saying the system couldn't be built through a bunch of mutations while being functional. Why is the "functional" part important? Because the organism needs the functionality to naturally surivive in a competetive environment. In other words, it's implicit within "IC" that the organism needs to survive on it's own functionality. "Built through a bunch of mutations" only is really meaningless.In this experiment, there seems to be artificial support for keeping the the organism alive. It directly undercuts the IC premise that if the organism didn't have a fully functioning system, it would die. It looks like they're artificially keeping an organism alive while they "piece together" (through mutation) a system underneath it. What good is that?AbE: The "irreducibly complex" title doesn't have to apply "in general"--it just has to apply in the EVOLUTION SCENARIO. That means "irreducibly complex" in the situation of random mutation and natural selection. If your artificial selection is too invasive and is not generalizable in any way to natural selection, then it's too artificial. Period.This message has been edited by Ben, Sunday, 2005/09/25 12:28 PM

I'm pretty sure this is wrong, because the article says so explicitly:

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All that Hall did was to use that inducer to set up growth conditions that would ensure that the mutants, if they appeared, could survive to be recovered and analyzed. In short, he screened for mutants, he didn't produce them as Behe implies. (emphasis in original)

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The next quote seems to me to indicate the role of the IPTG was to promote survival of baceria which normally would not survive on their own:

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All that Hall had done was to set up conditions where the bacteria would survive (although just barely), and would prosper only if they evolved a system to replace the one he had deleted.

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This makes me question your comment that Can you find any information from the articles from which your understanding derived? I didn't see any when I read through both. I saw no specification at all either way, which is troubling me. Given what was said above, I don't see any death at all. I see all organisms being kept alive, but only barely. However, only adaptive organisms are able to proliferate. So, I really disagree with your characterization. Can you point out to me if I'm just misinterpreting the paper? That's true. But that definitely puts limitations on this experimental finding which don't seem to be stated by the book author or you in your original post. If the only evolutionary situation possible for this "IC" system to evolve is when there's no competition between situations, then that's a really important restriction to state. Hey man I'm doing my best

Mark, It matters. The system evolved in a situation where:- the nutrient was not in limited supply
- the organism had another means for maintaining it's own food supply
- genes were available such that the decrease in fitness in the loss of one gene was offset by the increase in fitness of the new gene created by mutationIn my mind, these are important limitations. If any of these were not true, the system would not have evolved in this experiment. Thus, this experiment shows that such a system can evolve... under these circumstances. It leaves open the question of whether or not an IC system can evolve in other circumstances. As RAZD pointed out, I was under the impression that competition didn't include just peers, but also "squatters"--in this example, organisms that were ALREADY using lactose to survive. But thinking more, it seems that evolution must be working on where organisms are venturing into places where food supply is available, not where it's completely consumed. This includes venturing into "niches" where there are no organisms using the "food supply and "niches" where existing organisms are not using all of the "food" supply.

RAZD,Mark addressed the point in his post that the system in the Hall paper is in fact not IC. He simply explained why that is: This is exactly how I was thinking (no, really!). In that case, I don't think the article you're quoting, and the conclusions you're making in post 7 are right.Ben

Mark,OK, this is why it was taking me time to post; after reading Behe's "definition" of IC, I couldn't figure out if ALL sequences of removal had to lead to a nonfunctional organism, or if simply one sequence of removal had to lead to a nonfunctional organism. Irreducible complexity - WikipediaIt's all about how you read "any". Does "any" mean "any one at all" or does "any" mean "any single one". Any Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.comI don't know; I haven't read any Behe. But it seems it to me it has to be "any" meaning "any one at all." That means, it's irreducibly complex ONLY if, for all "parts", you remove it and the system fails.Otherwise, it's just too freaking easy to falsify.Oh, plus I just ripped this to wikipedia (I'm really loathe to go more in depth into Behe's papers / books than a wikipedia entry!), and it says: I think this goes with how I've been conceptualizing IC. I also think that Hill's experiment does NOT fit this. There are SOME components of the system that CAN operate WITHOUT all other components being present.Please enlighten me if I'm not getting this right. Thanks for your responses thusfar!!Ben

mark,I'm not saying that these things "disqualify" it as an example evolution. What I'm saying is that "evolution" is a broad word covering many many scenarios. Evolution of this system (I'm avoiding calling it IC given the other subthread we're discussing here) has been shown to develop in ONE of those scenarios under the "evolution" umbrella; that doesn't mean we've shown it do develop in ALL scenarios under the "evolution" umbrella. There has to be justification to jump from this specific scenario to ALL scenarios, and that justification simply hasn't been given. Generalization from one to many is not the DEFAULT reasoning. The default reasoning is that what you see is what you got. It is the job of the author of the paper that RAZD gave to argue that this specific case can be argued to envelop ALL cases of what we call "evolution." If the nutrient was in short supply, the organism may not ever have time to evolve an IC system. It may be "possible" logically, but improbable. The possibility of extinction was eliminated in this scenario. If that's the only "realistic" case without such an abundant supply of nutrient, then "evolving IC" here was artificial, it didn't happen under natural selection. I don't know why my point isn't getting across. It doesn't DISQUALIFY it, but it has to be QUALIFIED. If there is no other food supply, the damn organism would die before it ever evolved this "IC" system. It would starve. Dead. Is there a reason to think the organism could evolve the ability to metabolize lactose while having no food to eat? No argument was made, and it's not obvious. Without argument, it needs to be qualified. And it's not.So "IC" metabolic system has been shown to evolve in the case where there's a secondary metabolic system in place. Or, more generally, "IC" was able to evolve in the case where the organism did NOT initially depend on the system to survive. That seems like an important, and valid, qualification to me. IF at ANY time in the history of the world, an organism had DNA, and all DNA was coding, and some of the DNA was mutated, then some function is lost. This experiment didn't CARE whether any other functionality was lost; there was no threat to the bacteria's life. This experiment FAILED to see whether "IC" would develop in the case where loss of function of a mutated gene occurred.That seems like an important qualification to me. Basically "IC" has been shown to evolve in the case where the organism LOSES NO FUNCTIONALITY from the development of the "IC" system. It has NOT been shown to occur when the organism loses functionality due to genetic mutations necessary to create the IC system.Again, I'm not saying it invalidates things, but it definitely qualifies the findings. "IC" has NOT been shown for ALL evolutionary scenarios. So simply making statments, unqualified, that "IC" can evolve (which suggests no restriction in the scenarios that it can evolve in) is at the very least, very misleading.And if there are qualifications, then it IS still possible that there are existing "IC" that came to be in situations that we have NOT shown "IC" systems can evolve in, and for those system the question would therefore still be wide open. That's just not how it works. There has to be explicit argumentatation about WHY you can generalize from a specific case to a broader range of cases. It isn't a "default" that you can just hang your hat on. And I haven't seen the articles in the website that RAZD quoted, or from RAZD either. So, speaking scientifically, I think it's WRONG to make the generalization. If the arguments are presented, then I can actually read them and evaluate them, and see if that's an agreeable point.Just seemed like a very careless point in the original website, and that made me very uncomfortable with the general statements being made.Ben

PaulK,I completely agree that "part" is silly. Here, it seems we're defining "part" as a gene. (my emphasis)So there is ONE way to remove a "part" and the system still functions. Contrast that with a statement about IC in Wikipedia: (again, my emphasis)Irreducible complexity - WikipediaIn Hall's experiment, there exists a component of the system that functions without all components of the system being present. That goes directly against the view of IC that is on wikipedia, for better or for worse. And that's been my impression of what IC is.Is that clear? I hope so...Ben

mark,Fair enough. Thanks for your replies.Ben