Re: macroevolution or macromutations? (was ID) 1/2

From: Stephen E. Jones (sejones@iinet.net.au)
Date: Sun Jul 02 2000 - 09:39:15 EDT

  • Next message: Stephen E. Jones: "Re: macroevolution or macromutations? (was ID) 1/2"

    Reflectorites

    On Thu, 29 Jun 2000 00:06:08 -0700, Cliff Lundberg wrote:

    >SJ>It is interesting how Cliff slides away from answering the question:
    >>"if design was real, how would Cliff ever know it?"

    CL>The designer would have to reveal herself and explain her nature,
    >her methods, and her objectives.

    This sounds like Cliff requires the Designer to make an appointment with
    Cliff, and after He has satisfied Cliff with a full explanation of who He is,
    what He did, how He did it, and why he did it, then Cliff might condescend
    to believe in Him!

    What Cliff is really doing (whether he realises it or not, is setting the bar so
    high, that he will never have to face up to the evidence, even if it is true.

    >SJ>The fact is that I, and some other IDers (like Mike B. Gene), are as
    >>much interested in working out the "puzzle" as Cliff is. In fact,
    >>Cliff is a rarity among evolutionists on this List. Most of them
    >>are not interested in puzzling out the details, because they have
    >>"one big all-inclusive answer", namely "evolution"!

    CL>How about puzzling out the design process?

    That is *exactly* what I am doing. Why does Cliff think that at age 53 I
    have enrolled in a Bachelor of Science course in Biology, that I will be
    lucky to finish before I am 60?

    CL>How would that differ
    >from evolutionary biology? Would anything that was difficult for
    >evolutionary biology be declared an intervention?

    The main difference between ID and "evolutionary biology" is that the
    former accept intelligent cause as well as unintelligent cause, where the
    latter only accepts unintelligent cause.

    Therefore, if the evidence pointed to intelligent cause, the IDer could
    accept it where the evolutionary biologist couldn't.

    >SJ>No. "symbiosis theory" also needs "the `blind watchmaker' to build complex
    >>designs". All that "symbiosis theory" does is merge already produced
    >>designs together.

    CL>That is doing a lot; that is an evolutionary mechanism that can generate
    >new morphological complexity instantly, a mechanisms not envisioned by
    >Darwin.

    Which "mechanism" is that exactly: 1) endosymbiosis; 2) parabiosis; 3)
    macromutation; or 4) natural selection out of an "astronomical" number
    of mutations?

    >SJ>Cliff can verbally espouse a `symbiosis all the way
    >>down' but it is just `hand-waving' unless Cliff explains *in detail* how
    >>symbiosis could build complex designs in the first place.

    CL>There's no observing these processes; they don't seem to be operative
    >now among the present highly evolved fauna. So we have to theorize,
    >based upon some general notions. The possibility of organisms joining
    >is such a general idea. The origin of the primitive fauna that began the
    >process is pretty obscure, but the general idea is that complexity was
    >built up through cells mutating to form aggregations and specializations.

    How could this ever be falsified? That is, if it was wrong, how would Cliff
    ever know it?

    [...]

    >SJ>So "could" the `blind watchmaker' "work at every level". So could ID or
    >>creation for that matter. If Cliff is espousing a fully naturalistic theory
    >>which is superior to the fully naturalistic theory (i.e. Neo-Darwinism)
    >>taught in all the textbooks, then he needs to show it is better than it.

    CL>I don't see how you can subscribe to irreducible-complexity arguments
    >against gradualism while maintaining that a theory that goes beyond
    >gradualism with new explanations for the evolution of complexity is inferior
    >to existing theory.

    The reason is that Cliff has not shown that his symbiosis theory *is* an
    "explanation".

    Cliff needs to show how his phenotypic explanations work at: 1. the
    individual genetic level (i.e. how it could be: a. built into an organisms'
    genome, and then b. into its sex cells); and 2) the population genetic level
    (i.e. how it would become fixed and dominant in a population.

    [...]

    >>CL>I don't see how genomic integration could be gradual. It wouldn't
    >>>work if the genetic material were divided.

    >SJ>Well, the fact is that even now in eukaryotes, "the genetic material" *is*
    >>"divided". Mitochondria have their own DNA (i.e. mtDNA) and as well
    >>the cells nuclear DNA controls the mitochondria.

    CL>It doesn't matter where the DNA is kept, it's all part of the genome of
    >the organism. The point is that the DNA of a symbiont joins the genome
    >suddenly, not gradually.

    Well then what did Cliff mean by "It wouldn't work if the genetic material
    were divided"?

    >SJ>And, apart from making Darwinism a mere bystander to this, arguably the
    >>greatest `evolutionary' change in the history of life, SET does not explain
    >>other major structures of the cell, such as the "nucleolus, the Golgi
    >>apparatus, or the microtubules":

    CL>Why should all these things have to be explained at once?

    Unless Cliff's theory can explain them *all* it is not a general theory. If
    Cliff wants his theory to be accepted in place of the reigning Neo-
    Darwinian and/or endosymbiotic theory, he needs to show his theory can
    do a *better* job of explaining the evidence than they can.

    >SJ>If the former, why does Cliff need his pan-symbiosis theory?
    >>Macromutations (especially an "astronomical number" of them) could do it
    >>all. If the latter, why does Cliff need his pan-symbiosis theory? An
    >>"astronomical number of' *micro*-"mutations" coupled with Margulis'
    >>SET theory, is what even Dawkins believes:

    CL>The joining of symbionts *is* a macromutation.

    Disagree. A "macromutation" is literally a large-scale genetic change. the
    term has been associated with Goldschmidt's chromosomal rearrangements
    and Gould's regulatory genes small changes producing large phenotypic
    effects:

    "Since Goldschmidt was not convinced of the relevance of minute variation
    to the origin of species, he was forced to seek a different kind of genetic
    revolution as the source of evolutionarily significant morphological novelty.
    He thought he had found his answer at the level of the chromosome.
    Although chromosomes had been accepted as conforming to a general
    picture of Mendelian inheritance, the profound reorganization-the large
    mutations, or macromutations-that Goldschmidt postulated for the origin
    of species seemed uninheritable. Gradualism appeared to make sense
    because the underlying notion of small genetic changes could be
    accommodated by Mendelian genetics. Macromutations, especially of the
    sort Goldschmidt proposed, did not... During the seven years that followed
    the initial publication of their theory, regulatory and structural genes had
    been discovered. Correctly, Gould and Eldredge saw in these different
    classes of genes the potential for understanding evolution. For example,
    even though great similarity between humans and chimpanzees in the
    proteins that are coded by structural genes had been demonstrated, which,
    in turn, implied that the structural genes were essentially identical, Gould
    and Eldredge were not convinced that this was the proper genetic level at
    which one should seek answers to questions of evolutionary change. ... In
    this regard, Gould and Eldredge argued, one should scrutinize the
    regulatory genes, which are responsible for orchestrating the expression of
    and the interactions between the structural genes themselves. Even a small
    difference in only one regulatory gene could make a huge difference in
    terms of whether an organism developed into a chimpanzee or a
    human."(Schwartz J.H., "Sudden Origins", 1999, pp.354-355).

    The term "macromutation" has never, AFAIK ever been associated with
    symbiosis theory. I have Margulis' book "Microcosmos" where she sets out
    her endosymbiotic theory and "macromutation" is not even in the index.

    Moreover, Margulis says that these symbiotic mergers took "hundreds of
    millions of years" to complete:

    "With the keen perception of hindsight, eukaryotic cells now look like
    mergers of diverse organisms. Living corporations, some of the mergers
    began as hostile take-overs of one organism by another. But over hundreds
    of millions of years they became so coordinated, so interwoven that it took
    the electron microscope and the intricate techniques of biochemical analysis
    to penetrate the illusion that because the harmony of cell parts seemed
    perfect, it had always been so." (Margulis L. & Sagan D., "Microcosmos",
    1986, p.127)

    So unless Cliff can show from the scientific literature that the term
    "macromutation" includes symbiosis, this will be just his own private
    definition of the term.

    >>CL>Again, the point is that here is a mechanism, a wrinkle not envisioned
    >>>by Darwin, one which could function at various levels.

    >SJ>Cliff hasn't shown that it *is* "a mechanism". To everyone else
    >>on this List except Cliff, it looks just like `hand-waving'.

    CL>You accept the mechanism in Margulis's model, what's so bad about
    >stretching the concept's application a bit?

    First, I do not necessarily "accept the mechanism in Margulis's model.
    There is some molecular evidence that prokaryotes may have `devolved'
    from eukaryotes:

    "Summary. The currently accepted universal tree of life based on molecular
    phylogenies is Characterized by a prokaryotic root and the sisterhood of
    archaea and eukaryotes. The recent discovery that each domain (bacteria,
    archaea, and eucarya) represents a mosaic of the two others in terms of its
    gene content has suggested various alternatives in which eukaryotes were
    derived from the merging of bacteria and archaea. In all these scenarios, life
    evolved from simple prokaryotes to complex eukaryotes. We argue here
    that these models are biased by overconfidence in molecular phylogenies
    and prejudices regarding the primitive nature of prokaryotes. We propose
    instead a universal tree of life with the root in the eukaryotic branch and
    suggest that many prokaryotic features of the information processing
    mechanisms originated by simplification through gene loss and
    nonorthologous displacement...However, the current universal tree has
    been recently questioned on several grounds. With more and more
    sequences available, in particular from rapidly expanding genome projects,
    it turned out that many protein phylogenies contradict the rRNA tree and
    also each other in terms of relationships between the three domains.
    Moreover, many phylogenies became confused, i.e., the three domains
    topology were no more recovered, with archaeal and bacterial lineages
    often intermixed. For example, this turned out to be the case for three out
    of the six data sets originally used to root the universal tree (ATPases, lle-
    tRNA synthetase, and carbamoyl-phosphate synthetases). Comparative
    genomics also led to the conclusion that each domain was a mosaic of the
    two others in terms of gene contents. Surprisingly, it appeared that
    eukaryotes contained more bacterial genes than archaeal ones, and that
    archaea contained more bacterial than eukaryotic ones." (Forterre P. &
    Phillipe H., "Where is the root of the universal tree of life?," BioEssays,
    Vol. 21, No. 10, 1999, pp.871-879, p.871. Footnotes omitted.)

    Second, before Cliff starts "stretching" Margulis's model, he needs to show
    that: a) there is something wrong with Margulis's model that Cliff's theory
    repairs; and b) Cliff's own theory really is a "stretching" of Margulis's
    model, and not a completely new theory.

    >>CL>Right, how can you envision this complex arising step-by-step?

    >SJ>I don't have to "envision this complex arising step-by-step". Under
    >>my progressive creationist paradigm I could quite consistently
    >>postulate the entire cell arose de novo in one fell swoop!

    CL>What *can't* you consistently postulate under ID?

    I have stated it plenty of times. The essential feature of ID, as proposed by
    the ID movement, is there is evidence of intelligent cause in the history of
    life that is *detectable*.

    Thus an *agnostic* who believes there is detectable evidence of intelligent
    cause would be welcome within ID but a *Christian* theistic evolutionist
    who believed there has been intelligent cause but denied that it was
    empirically detectable, would not be welcome within the ID movement:

    "Where does intelligent design fit within the creation-evolution debate?
    Logically, intelligent design is compatible with everything from utterly
    discontinuous creation (e.g., God intervening at every conceivable point to
    create new species) to the most far-ranging evolution (e.g., God seamlessly
    melding all organisms together into one great tree of life). For intelligent
    design the primary question is not how organisms came to be (though, as
    we've just seen, this is a vital question for intelligent design) but whether
    organisms demonstrate clear, empirically detectable marks of being
    intelligently caused. In principle an evolutionary process can exhibit such
    "marks of intelligence" as much as any act of special creation. That said,
    intelligent design is incompatible with what typically is meant by "theistic
    evolution" (or what is also called "creative evolution," "teleological
    evolution," "evolutionary creation" or most recently "fully gifted creation").
    Theistic evolution takes the Darwinian picture of the biological world and
    baptizes it, identifying this picture with the way God created life. When
    boiled down to its scientific content, however, theistic evolution is no
    different from atheistic evolution, treating only undirected natural
    processes in the origin and development of life." (Dembski W.A.,
    "Intelligent Design", 1999, pp.109-110).

    >SJ>Now maybe Cliff can explain how he, under his *fully naturalistic*
    >>paradigm, envisions "this complex arising" either "step-by-step" or
    >>otherwise?

    I note Cliff just ignored this!

    [...]

    >>CL>Big symbionts would be complexes built up from smaller ones.

    >SJ>It is easy to *say* this, but Cliff needs to show how

    CL>Why? It's a general concept. People have believed in Darwinian evolution
    >for a long time without showing how.

    So I take it Cliff cannot "show how" the "Big symbionts" were "built
    up from smaller ones"?

    >SJ>But before Cliff starts throwing the "personal incredulity" stone, let him
    >>consider his own glass house. Cliff's whole symbiosis alternative theory is
    >>based on the fact that Cliff personally cannot see how Darwinist
    >>gradualism could work, e.g.:

    CL>Bringing in additional mechanisms is not the same thing as invoking
    >the supernatural.

    First, Cliff does not deny that his theory is based on his own "personal
    incredulity" of him not being able to "see how Darwinist gradualism could
    work".

    Second, my "invoking the supernatural" has nothing to do with "personal
    incredulity". I don't say that I cannot personally believe naturalistic
    theories. I have consistently said that I could accept even Darwinian
    evolution if it was proven to be true. Indeed, I have this on my testimony
    web page:

    "...I accept all the verifiable scientific evidence, including the "Big Bang", a
    4.6 billion year-old Earth, and some form of descent with modification
    from common ancestors. I would have no problem even if Darwinian
    evolution was proved to be true, because the God of the Bible is fully in
    control of all events, even those that seem random to man (Prov. 16:33; 1
    Kings 22:34)." http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones/testimny.html#mycalling)

    >SJ>Indeed, the major difference between Cliff (and all other
    >>atheists/agnostics) and theists like me is in fact a *giant* "personal
    >>incredulity" issue.

    CL>I don't call myself any of those things, but it's inevitable that you
    >would lump me in there.

    So what *does* Cliff call himself? Is Cliff claiming to be some sort of
    theist?

    CL>Anyway, it seems that ID is a rival to
    >macroevolutionary theory. They are competing explanations for
    >the same thing, organic complexity that can't be explained through
    >gradualism.

    Not necessarily. What ID is "a rival" to is *any* theory which says that
    organisms exhibit no "empirically detectable marks of being intelligently
    caused".

    [...]

    Steve

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------
    "Let us notice what would be involved in the conversion of a land
    quadruped into, first a seal-like creature and then into a whale. The land
    animal would, while on land, have to cease using its hind legs for
    locomotion and to keep than permanently stretched out backwards on
    either side of the tail and to drag itself about by using its fore-legs. During
    its excursions in the water, it must have retained the hind legs in their rigid
    position and swum by moving them and the tail from side to side. As a
    result of this act of self denial we must assume that the hind legs eventually
    be came pinned to the tail by the growth of membrane. Thus the hind part
    of the body would have become likes that of a seal. Having reached this
    stage, the creature in anticipation of a time when it will give birth to its
    young under water, gradually develops apparatus by means of which the
    milk is forced into the mouth of the young one, and, meanwhile a cap has
    to be formed round the nipple into which the snout of the young one fits
    tightly, the epiglottis and laryngeal cartilage become prolonged upwards to
    form a cone-shaped tube, and the soft palate becomes prolonged
    downwards so as tightly to embrace this tube, in order that the adult will be
    able to breathe while taking water into the mouth and the young while
    taking in milk. These changes must be effected completely before the calf
    can be born under water. Be it noted that there is no stage intermediate
    between being born and suckled under water and being born and suckled in
    the air. At the same time various other anatomical changes have to take
    place, the most important of which is the complete transformation of the
    tail region. The hind part of the body must have begun to twist on the fore
    part, and this twisting must nave continued until the sideways movement of
    the tail developed into an up-and-down movement. While this twisting
    went on the hind limbs and pelvis must have diminished in size, until the
    latter ceased to exist as external limbs in all, and completely disappeared in
    most, whales." (Dewar D., "More Difficulties of the Evolution Theory: and
    a reply to "Evolution and Its Modern Critics", Thynne & Co: London,
    1938, pp.23-24)
    Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------



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