Getting Evolutionists to admit what would be evidence of design is about as hard as it is to get my fellow IDists to separate issues of cosmic design from biological design. So you can bet your genes that when I read this post titled: Luskin on gene duplication, I was pleasently surprised.
Copying a pre-existing gene does create new information … but it's just a small
amount. Luskin can't be serious in considering this a weakness: evolutionary
biology would predict only small changes at any one time. If a process produced
a massive increase in the information content of the genome in a biologically
functional way (that is, not just the production of random noise), then we'd
have to say that you've found evidence for Intelligent Design. A succession of
small genetic changes is what we expect from evolution and genetics, and that's
what we see.
One of the things that we would also expect to see from evolution, is a huge diversity of outcomes - and especially - perfection in the resultant phenotypes. This is not what we see in all cases. Life is rife with imperfections and low amounts of genetic diversity (when it comes to certain sequences), which could be hallmarks of design. I know, IDists usually portray the design as perfect, but as I will demonstrate in future posts, the assumption of perfection is not only based on certain philosophical predispositions, but it also contrasts starkly with the available evidence.
Also, on Uncommon Descent, DaveScot also seems to agree with me on this - that "perfect" design, or in the context of the discussion that the following comment is in, the lack of genetic "junk" in the genomes of organisms does not follow necessarily from the design premise. Here's the quote:
I still fail to see how ID predicts no junk DNA. Random mutation definitely
happens and if it’s good at *anything* it’s good at producing unorganized,
non-functional crappola. It can produce crap out of nothing and it’s even better
at making crap out of stuff that wasn’t crap to begin with. (source)
I think we ought to invite DaveScot over to this blog - not only is he an Agnostic, which fits under the theme of this blog, but we might benefit from his perspective on this and other design issues as well. What do you think, William?
Anyway, the quote from PZ Myers is pure gold. Let's spread it around so there can be no doubt that he said it!
If a process produced a massive increase in the information content of the
genome in a biologically functional way (that is, not just the production of
random noise), then we'd have to say that you've found evidence for
Intelligent Design. -- PZ Myers
Now all we need to do is find evidence of a massive amount of information increase in a genome. No, not the usual "we don't know where all this information came from so it must be design" argument. I mean, evidence of the insertion of that information, specifically what information was inserted, and exactly how to detect it. That's what Intelligent Design can be all about! Anything else is a waste of time.
9 comments:
Hi Dave,
Welcome to the blog.
Coincidentally I have just been writing up a blurb on positive evidence for ID..
"..Evidence for ID stems from the observation of functionally specific patterns/structures or "specified complexity" in nature. We maintain that these particular patterns have no legitimate causal antecedent in the material world (random mutation and natural selection or any material variant). We consider these complex and highly specific patterns/structures to be evidence, for a "pattern producing agent" capable of producing them.
Moreover, at this time we have evidence for the existence of only one type of agent capable of producing structures at this level of specificity -- intelligent agents. "Intelligent design" is therefore an inference to the best available scientific (causally adequate) explanation.
In contrast to blind stochastic processes such as RM&NS, intelligence/consciousness has the ability to visualize the structure-to-be and subsequently circumvent the "combinatorial explosion" ( http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/Combin_explo.html ) that plagues all blind, trial-and-error methods of construction. Intelligence -- with its natural ability to focus on form and outcome -- is seen as the best candidate for producing such functionally specified (focused) forms.
As I see it, the strength/amplitude of evidence for ID can be given by the specificity sum of the object minus the residual background stochastic specificity. Evidence for ID is thus directly proportional to the "transcendent specificity" of any given object wherein "transcendent specificity” refers to the specificity remaining after the background stochastic specificity has been factored out.
Behe EOE evidence for ID is that the pattern of evolution is failing to accord with the Darwinian model but does indeed accord with the TRIZ model (of intelligent evolution/the theory of inventive problem solving). In the TRIZ model large gaps between major innovations are to be expected.
Whoops, sorry Dave. I accidentally erased your post.. Good thing I had a back up..
"DaveScot has left a new comment on your post "PZ Myers defines evidence of design":
My personal feeling is that we're never going to observe any significant complexity evolving de novo. Behe's latest, Edge of Evolution, examines p.falciparum randomly mutating for billions of trillions of generations and finds exactly what ID predicts (if we presume that the intelligent designer responsible for the design of life is no longer doing any designing) - no significant new complexity emerged even in orders of magnitude more opportunities than all the mammals that ever lived.
I believe the best explanation of the evidence is that all the complexity in life today has been in it since the first life appeared on earth and phylogeny has just been an unfolding, or expression, of that complexity from potential to instantiation. Phylogeny mirrors ontongeny except for the timescale.
If this is true then we might expect to find, and indeed have recently found, genomic information in organisms where that information has never been expressed. Things like genes for eyes and limbs in organisms whose ancestors never had eyes or limbs. We should also find a mechanism for preserving unexpressed genomic information over geologic spans of time. Natural selection is the only mechanism known capable of preserving genomic information for hundreds of millions of years but it can only act to preserve expressed information and does so by killing (or otherwise punishing) the unfortunate owner of critical information that has been flawed by random mutation.
We still haven't found the mechanism but we have found genomic information with no discernable survival value that has been preserved for over a hundred million years by *some* mechanism. I blogged about that finding here.
The evidence rolling in faster and faster from comparative genomics and related research is pounding nails in the neo-Darwinian coffin at a breathless rate while at the same time confirming the idea that life has been complex since it first appeared on the earth and evolved by expression of pre-existing information, just like chicken egg has all the information to become an adult chicken with nothing left to chance and the environment serving only to provide triggers for when to proceed to the next pre-programmed stage in the unfolding.
Posted by DaveScot to ICON-RIDS -- weblog at 10/03/2007 09:46:00 AM
Hi Dave, welcome to the blog.
If you'll kindly re-comment with the link to the blog post you made, then I can read it. (link doesn't look like it was preserved after the accidental deletion)
Comparative Genomics leads to several interesting things. For one thing, it allows us to discover functions of genes across different taxa, but at the same time it also makes it difficult to pin down whether the genes compared between organisms is the result of common descent with modification, common design, or some combination of the two.
I find your prescribed evolutionary hypothesis interesting - does it posit that genomic complexity would decrease over time? If so, that sounds like a prediction that could be used to differentiate between blind evo and prescribed evo.
One of the things I am most interested in is putting together a list of the characteristics of different models of evolution and design, and how we can tell the difference between them. I have noticed that you have been particularly open to ways to determine what kinds of design are going on, including what assumptions are being made about the designer in the process.
Unofrtunately, it seems that many people who support ID say that the identity, motives, and modus operandi of the designer(s) are outside the bounds of scientific inquiry, yet, they carry their own assumptions into the discussion as a given.
Hope to see you around here more often.
Yes, here is the missing link...
DaveScot
"I blogged about that finding here"
-- PZ Myers
"If a process produced a massive increase in the information content of the genome in a biologically functional way (that is, not just the production of random noise), then we'd have to say that you've found evidence for Intelligent Design."
The Cambrian explosion?..Makes sense to me.
EJ "I think we ought to invite DaveScot over to this blog - not only is he an Agnostic, which fits under the theme of this blog, but we might benefit from his perspective on this and other design issues as well. What do you think, William?"
Sounds good to me. Sorry that I destroyed his first post. I was attemping to delete my own comment to replace it with an edited version and accidentally hit the wrong "garbage can."
William, would you be willing to participate in a podcast about challenges to the dominant theory of thermondynamics?
You can read all about our project and get my contact email address from this page:
http://emergingmindscience.co.uk/about
THANKS
Anonymous said.. Would you be willing to participate in a podcast about challenges to the dominant theory of thermodynamics?
Yes. Thanks for the invitation. You should be forewarned however that I am a "Free Energy" skeptic (at this time) and your site seems to be quite devoted to free energy stuff. Without a theoretical framework for the understanding of a "free energy" device there is no way that a scientist would be able to fix or maintain such a thing. -- Without a good explanation as to why such a thing would work, such devices are not good investments IMO.
Reading Myers qualification for detecting design, it appears he phrased it in such a manner that we would have to observe a current example of evolution. As in, he wants to catch the designer in the act.
Otherwise, why can't we simply point to any example existing now that does not break down into an indirect stepwise pathway? No, no...he would say that even though they currently have not worked out the pathway they will in the future.
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