At 02:06 PM 09/09/2000, you wrote:
>Chris
> >This last is true. Natural selection works on variations.
> >If the variations don't occur, selection won't help.
> >But, *are* the variations planned? If
> >so, why are there so many that don't make it?
>
>Hi Chris,
>I must say you seem to have suddenly turned as tame as a pussy cat, and it is
>a pleasure to talk to you. It is my belief that most variations which "don't
>make it" are ones which fail to follow the design and don't allow the
>organism to function.
Chris
When I point out to you that this is circular argumentation, I hope you
will be able to see that it is. You are now starting *from* the premise of
design to argue that the unfit variations are the ones that don't fit the
design. But, then, you cannot rationally use the fact that some variations
are beneficial as evidence of *design*. Using design to evaluate the
evidence is backward. You should (epistemologically speaking) be using the
evidence to evaluate the *design* theory, not using the design theory to
judge what is and what is not evidence. Empirically observable reality
comes first. If *it* provides evidence of design, so be it. Design theory
does *not* come first, so you can't use it to dismiss evidence against it,
as you do above.
>Natural selection had nothing to do with it. I do
>agree natural selection works on minor variations which do not add complexity
>and thus ensures stasis. Perhaps you consider any variation an increase in
>complexity. Am I allowed to disagree on this?
>
>Chris:
> >Why do they have a random distribution?
>
>Bertvan:
>Since those mutations which everyone could agree involved increase in
>complexity are rare,
Chris
I don't think they are. Those that increase functionality may be rare,
though I've just read that it has been shown that most are essentially
neutral in terms of benefit to the organism. I think this may depend on
whether we are talking about organisms that reproduce by DNA recombination
from two (or more) parents. Either way, variations and outright mutations
often increase complexity. Complexity is not measured by orderliness nor by
functionality. It is measured by the number of parts, how they interrelate,
the number of relevant different aspects of the parts, and so on. More
formally, it is measured by the minimum number of bits that would be
required to specify the system involved in a suitable "language." Thus, a
string of a million copies of the letter A is less complex than a string of
a million letters from the Encyclopedia Britannica, because there is no
way, short of a bizarrely arbitrary *method* of specification, to specify
exactly what is in each string in detail (i.e., *not* by saying, "the first
million letters from the Encyclopedia Britannica," etc.).
I think even you would agree with this point.
There are two aspects to the complexity of biological organisms. One is the
complexity of the DNA, and the other is the complexity of the resulting
organism. Increasing complexity in DNA can actually *decrease* complexity
in the organism (by turning off a set of genes, for example). And an
increase in the complexity of an organism might be achieved by a *decrease*
in the DNA complexity (by allowing an unused set of genes to be turned on,
for a trivial example).
The point is that, while it is true that there is *some* correlation
between DNA complexity and organism complexity, this is by no means a rigid
rule of genetics.
But, by *whatever* method you claim that a genetic variation that is
favorable might be said to increase complexity of the organism *or* of the
DNA, we can also easily find variations that increase complexity that are
*not* favorable to the organism.
Why? Because the DNA does not know where the organism *is*. It has no
mystical knowledge of the organism's environment or requirements for
survival. In fact, different environments can make a "favorable" variation
suddenly unfavorable, and an unfavorable one can be made suddenly
favorable. The DNA doesn't know what's going on outside the organism.
And yet, you are claiming, by implication, that, without reference to the
organism's *needs*, you can tell which variations would be favorable by
which ones increase complexity?
What about cases where what is needed is *simplicity*? This sometimes
happens. Parasites often become simpler the longer they are parasites,
because complexities that they once needed for dealing with a more varied
environment are removed now that they are living in a less varied
environment. Such complexities become a hindrance rather than a help.
You seem, in short, to be thinking in Platonic terms, as if there was some
rigidly fixed specification of what is beneficial for each organism, and
thus that there is a fixed set of variations that are favorable to that
organism, and that there is some weird, never-observed *genetic* difference
between favorable and unfavorable genetic variations.
>I doubt our measurements are accurate enough to say with
>certainty they have a random distribution.
Chris
Perhaps so. In that case, we can't say that they *aren't* random, can we?
And, therefore, we cannot use their supposed non-randomness as evidence of
design. If we don't know that the distribution of variations is or is not
random, then how can you claim that they are not? Are you proposing this as
a test of ID? I've proposed such measurements, about three times, in
different forms, on this list, and have been scoffed at or ignored by the
hard-core ID-ers each time, because they don't *want* a form of ID theory
that *actually* could be tested. They *want* their ID theory to be
untestable (even Behe, when supposedly testing ID, is really testing a
(very stupid) version of *evolution* theory (one that no one in his right
mind would hold anyway)). They want a designer who manipulates things in
such a way that we cannot detect his activities except (they claim) by the
"final" results (the living organisms).
>Chris:
> >Why do they occur regardless of whether they are beneficial
> >to the organism? Why is there no obvious skewing in the direction of
> >favorable variations?
>
>Bertvan:
>Does it have to be obvious? Couldn't it be subtle?
Chris
Yes. In which case there is no evidence of design, is there? Make up your
mind. If the evidence is too subtle for us to detect, then it's too subtle
for you to use as a basis for claiming design. The same considerations
apply to overt morphological variations as well. If there is no detected
skewing, then we can't use skewing as evidence of design.
> >Chris:
> >If variations are planned, why isn't evolution
> >proceeding at thousands or millions of times its known rates?
>
>Bertvan:
>Whatever the cause of the variations, the changes were apparently so fast
>that we have difficulty even imagining all the "missing links", much less
>finding them in the fossil record. I don't know why you think it should be
>even faster. Maybe being fast isn't part of the plan.
Chris
Here we go again. You assert design, allegedly on the basis of empirically
observable facts. This means you have some idea of what the design, the
plan *is*. Then someone points out facts that make design questionable, and
you then decide that maybe the designers have a plan that is so subtle that
we can't see it. Make up your mind. *if* there is evidence of design, and
you can see it, you can't then rationally backpedal every time someone
points out that the *facts*, the physical *facts*, do not fit any concept
of design we know of. If they don't fit any concept of design we have
*any* rational reason for thinking designers might have, then on what
possible basis can you claim that there *is* design?
As to being fast, you're right. But that, of course, is the perfect
cop-out. It just means that there is one less possible basis upon which one
could possibly claim that there *is* a plan. If *everything* can be excused
on the basis of some incredibly convoluted hidden plan, then the claim that
there *is* a plan is meaningless. If evolution goes fast, you claim it's
planned that way. If it goes slowly, you claim it's planned that way.
If ID theory supporters refuse to specify empirically testable aspects of
the alleged plan, then they are simply being dishonest in claiming that
there *is* any evidence of a plan at all. Why? Because evidence for a plan
is evidence for at least one category of plans and *against* another
category of plans. If I see someone washing his car, it's evidence that he
*plans* to have a clean car (or is at least hoping to), or that he *plans*
to fool people into thinking that he wants a clean car, or that he is doing
it as a form of exercise, or that he just plain likes washing his car, etc.
It is evidence *against* the idea that he *plans* to have a dirty car as a
*direct* result of the process of washing it, etc. It is evidence *against*
all plans that involve not washing the car.
If the alleged designers of life have a plan at all, then the nature of the
life that exists must either be evidence of what that plan is or the whole
notion goes to hell. If it is not evidence of what the plan is, then it is
not evidence that there *is* a plan.
The only way ID theory is going to come out of its current role as
laughing-stock is if it actually proposes plans that the designers might
have, and that they be plans that can be empirically tested. For an
example, some ID-supporter might claim that the designer's plan is to
produce a large population of two-trunked elephants by the year 2001 in
some wild part of Africa. I don't know on what basis someone might claim
that the designers have this in mind, but the point is that it would be
something we *could* test. I can't imagine that this approach would work,
because there simply *is* no evidence of a plan, so I'm betting that no
matter *what* ID theorists propose as testable plans of the designers,
naturalistic evolutionists will still be able to beat them out in the
prediction and explanation functions. What ID theory *really* needs is to
predict, on the basis of the theory, some empirical fact that is *contrary*
to current fully-developed naturalistic evolutionary theory, and then show
that that fact is empirically verifiable.
I don't think many, even among the ID theory crowd, will be holding their
breaths while waiting, because ID theory still lacks an explanatory
*principle* (what would amount to the designers' basic plan idea). No, this
cannot be excused on the grounds that "modern" ID theory is just getting
started. Darwin's theory had this from the beginning. That's what *made* it
a theory rather than just the observation that life changes over time.
Besides, modern ID, under different terminology, has been around since at
least Paley's day, some three hundred years ago (around 1700, I think), and
it *still* has no explanatory *principle*, no causal mechanism, no means
whatever of predicting facts that we would not otherwise expect to be the
case, but which, when sought out, *do* turn out to be the case. If ID could
claim that we should find some particular new organism under the sea bed in
certain parts of the ocean, and if it was clear that this organism was not
also predictable on the basis of naturalistic evolutionary theory, and if
it was indeed found that this organism existed, they'd have something.
But *nothing* of this sort seems forthcoming because there is *nothing*
specified as an empirically testable plan or principle of design.
The current approach will not work because it consists of merely
"intuiting" design from obvious anthropomorphizing what's in Nature.
Besides being epistemologically invalid, this method does not work.
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