[asa] Jerry Coyne Science and Religion

http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda/index.cfm?page_id=7&bpn=379035&ts=2007-07-03%2020:00:16.0

Two interviews: First withJerry Coyne then with Coyne, Nelson,
Lamoureux and James Robert Brown

Some random 'quotes', not all verbatim

Nelson "Doolittle has stated that there is no universal tree of life"

Denis Lamoureux " Evolution is a fact fact fact"

Coyne "As usual advocates of Id don't lay out any scientific facts for
themselves, but they take quotes out of context"

Nelson still talking about his thesis (10 years ago) can be heard
quote mining Doolittle about some technical aspects of the tree of
life research. I find Nelson's portrayal of the science involved
highly "confused", which may help understand why, despite being
announced almost 10 years ago, his book on this topic has still not
been published.

Coyne excellently explains the vacuity of Intelligent Design. Funny
how Nelson insists that the evidence points to ID, even though ID is
purely based on ignorance. What is this 'evidence' of ID if ID is not
in the business of dealing with evidence, other than that which we do
not understand?

In a future posting I will address Ford Doolittle's comments in
"Pattern pluralism and the Tree of Life hypothesis", the abstract of
which reads:

<quote>Darwin claimed that a unique inclusively hierarchical pattern
of relationships between all organisms based on their similarities and
differences [the Tree of Life (TOL)] was a fact of nature, for which
evolution, and in particular a branching process of descent with
modification, was the explanation. However, there is no independent
evidence that the natural order is an inclusive hierarchy, and
incorporation of prokaryotes into the TOL is especially problematic.
The only data sets from which we might construct a universal hierarchy
including prokaryotes, the sequences of genes, often disagree and can
seldom be proven to agree. Hierarchical structure can always be
imposed on or extracted from such data sets by algorithms designed to
do so, but at its base the universal TOL rests on an unproven
assumption about pattern that, given what we know about process, is
unlikely to be broadly true. This is not to say that similarities and
differences between organisms are not to be accounted for by
evolutionary mechanisms, but descent with modification is only one of
these mechanisms, and a single tree-like pattern is not the necessary
(or expected) result of their collective operation. Pattern pluralism
(the recognition that different evolutionary models and
representations of relationships will be appropriate, and true, for
different taxa or at different scales or for different purposes) is an
attractive alternative to the quixotic pursuit of a single true
TOL.</quote>

Remember that even Darwin was on the books as mentioning one or more
common ancestors. While Doolittle raises a scientific interesting
issue, Nelson seems to be cheapening the argument from science to
'philosophy'.

For a scientific perspective
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/03/web-of-life.html, Moran expresses
my own opinions quite accurately.

<quote>Doolittle maintains that lateral gene transfer (LGT) is so
common that it's impossible to construct a reliable bifurcating tree
to represent the actual history of life. In other words, a Tree of
Life is not only technically difficult but impossible in theory as
well. This problem extends to all branches of the prokaryotic tree
including the major divisions. Even the existence of two prokaryotic
domains is questionable. Rooting the tree of life is out of the
question.

I'm a big fan of Ford Doolittle—after all, he's an honorary Canadian!
I certainly agree with him about the demise of the Three Domain
Hypothesis. (Most people seem to have missed the death announcement.)
I also agree with him that early evolution is more like a web of life
than a tree of life. Nevertheless, I think he goes too far. Lateral
gene transfer is an important, and common, phenomenon but I don't
think it's quite as prevalent as he makes out. I still think that a
bifurcating tree can be used to represent most species evolution after
about 2.5 billion years ago.

    Doolittle, W.F. and Bapteste, E. (2007) Pattern pluralism and the
Tree of Life hypothesis. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (USA) 104:2043-2049.
[PubMed]
</quote>

Indeed, what Doolittle seems to be arguing is that the early life
involved so much lateral gene transfer that reconstructing a single
universal tree will be problematic. However there are hundreds of
millions if not billions of years of evolution which may not be
subject to such problems. Of course, if you are a young earth
creationist like Nelson then there may not be enough time.

Remind me again, how does ID explain the 'tree of life' ?
Is 'independent creation in the last 6-10k years an explanation'? Is
such an explanation scientifically supportable?
Lamoureux does not seem to think so. An evangelical evolutionist who
sees much wrong in Intelligent Design.

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Received on Wed Jul 4 17:42:54 2007