Many ID advocates scoff scornfully at the evidence of
animal breeding, mathematics, information theory,
empirical genetics, and rigorously designed computer
evolution of information strings of various sorts, that all
demonstrate (beyond even a remotely sane objection to
anyone who actually knows anything about how these
things work and their results) that information *can* (and
indeed *does*) sometimes increase (by *any* measure of
information) via random variations in an existing string
of information.
The criticism that I've seen most often is that the
experimenter/animal breeder/computer programmer/etc.
is playing the role of the designer in these cases.
But, is this true (and, if it is in some cases, does it
*need* to be true for the same type of results to occur?)?
As usual, the short answer is No.
A longer answer is First, ID theory typically claims that
*their* designer is either creating new species (or new
"forms" of life -- as if a new species was not a new form)
-- or manipulating the *variations* in an otherwise
self-running process. We have yet to see any new forms
spring from nothing, so this whole line of argument is
obviously without evidentiary basis (with one caveat that
I may deal with later).
The other line, that the designer manipulates variations to
insert otherwise-impossible information into the DNA,
combined with their claims that selection is unimportant
(which, in a sense it is) is, however *not* compatible
with their critique of the evidence mentioned above,
because the flaws in *those*
(if any) are in the *selection* mechanism, which they
also claim *cannot* put information into the DNA.
So, then, if people breed animals entirely by selection
(which, until modern knowledge of DNA, they *did*), it
is obvious from their one premises that this method does
*not* constitute *design* in their sense.
Further, since they are *right* in claiming that selection,
as such, does not insert information into DNA, we have
the question of where the new "genetic" information *does*
come from in animal breeding.
Obviously, until very recently, *no* animal breeder knew
enough about DNA to manipulate it and to *direct* variations
to suit his purposes. So, what's a poor animal breeder to do?
Simple: He *waits*. He waits until the information he's
looking for appears *spontaneously*, and then *selects*
for it. He does not create the information, he does *not*
manipulate the DNA.
Therefore, by the premises of this kind of ID theory, he is
*not* a designer.
Further, it is easy to show that given enough generations
and *no selection at all*, the *same* kinds of variations
will occur (because selection does not effect the variation
process, and it doesn't effect it because it occurs *after*
the variations).
That is, if *all* variations are saved and enabled to
reproduce, *some* of them will match selective criteria
even if there *is* no selection, and it doesn't much matter
what the criteria are, as long as they are not so severe
that, *if* they were applied, they would eliminate too
many variations. Indeed, if *all* variations are saved and
enabled to reproduce (*regardless* of natural viability,
etc.), the result will *typically* be that given complex
results will be achieved *sooner* than if there were no
limitations imposed by selection.
To see how this works, consider the following string of
letters a Suppose we replicate this many times, with, each
time, a small probability that one of its "replications" will
either not include the "a" at all, or will include one other
letter as well. Now, given a large enough number of
generations, *all* of the combinations of two letters
beginning or ending with "a" will be produced, including
zillions of copies of the letter "a" by itself. If we sort
and eliminate duplicates, we'll have,
a, aa, ab, ac, ad, ae, af, . . . . ba, ca, da, ea,
. . . za.
Note, please, that all of these (including "aa" and
*except* "a") represent an *increase* in information content.
Given enough generations and a truly random
introduction of one-letter variations, *all* possible
two-letter combinations will be produced. Enough
further generations will produce all *three-letter*
combinations as well, including, by pure chance, all
three-letter words in the English language (or in any
other language). And, note again that all of these
combinations will be increases of information over that of
the initial letter "a". Note also that, by any measure one
chooses, *most* of these strings will be more *complex*
than the string containing only the letter "a" by itself.
But, will they be *orderly*? Yes, *some* of them will be
orderly, by *any* principle of order for three letters.
At this stage, none of the strings will be particularly
complex. But, suppose we have disk space to store
billions of generations of strings of letters, even very
long ones. The result will be that some of the strings of
letters will be as complex and/or as orderly as anyone
might wish.
The key here is the rate of variation and the "alphabet"
from which the variations come, and the sizes of allowed
variations.
But, isn't this just a variation on the "six monkeys" idea?
No, because the number of "monkeys" increases along
with the population of strings, and the frequency of
changes (per string) increases with length (and stays
constant per letter). This would only be matched by the
monkeys if they could exponentially increase their typing
speed, so that, at some point, they were turning out a
book once every millionth of a second.
Further, *all* but the first string are based on existing strings, so the
"monkeys" are, in effect, given "books" already written, and all they do is
use a machine to mindlessly *copy* each book and possibly make a few
changes. Since none of the later strings is typed from scratch, if it
already has "meaningful" (to us) information in it, there is a high
probability that most of that "meaning" will remain, and a reasonable
probability that at least a *few* of the changed copies will contain even
*more* meaningful information. Thus, if most of "Moby Dick" is already
present, among the zillions of copies will be some that contain more of the
original book, and some that contain other meaningful additions.
Now, remember, this is all without *any* selection at all.
Each "book" is simply a copy of a previous "book" but
possibly with some one-letter changes scattered here and
there. In sufficient time, this process will, if we can store
the results, give us copies of every *possible* book of
the length of "Moby Dick" (allowing or missing
punctuation and spaces and such, which I left out to
make the description simpler). Since all *possible*
books of that length have been generated at this point,
*one* of them *has* to be "Moby Dick" (along with
astronomical numbers of books that differ from "Moby
Dick" by small amounts, and even many more that differ
by progressively larger differences.
Also, since *every* book of this length (or shorter, let's
say) is produced, then a great many other known books
will also be included.
Does this mean that there is some mysterious "design" at
work? No, it's just that *all* possible strings of that length
are produced, and since all known books of that length are
also strings of that length, they must be included *somewhere*
in the great morass of gobbledy-gook.
Can we improve things by selection?
No, except in that *then* we can get by with much less
disk space, because we only allow strings to continue to
exist and produce variations if they contain at least some
visible part of a known book. Thus, while *all* the other
variations are "out there" (logically, "virtually"), we only
need to produce ones that seem to be headed toward
producing something we recognize. For example, we
might, after a few generations, throw out all the strings
that do not start with the letter "C" (as in "Call me
Ishmael."). Eventually, a string with "a" as the second
letter will appear, and we then keep *that." And so on.
Now, at this point, we are clearly introducing
intelligence, but not design, and *especially* not design
in the ID sense of gene-manipulation. Further, the degree
of intelligence is *incredibly* low. The intelligence needs
only to recognize the letter "C," the letter "a" and so on,
blindly and stupidly *selecting* strings that match "Moby
Dick." But, this is okay, because these ID theorists claim
that *selection* is ineffective in producing new results, so
we can do it all we want without affecting the demonstrative
value of the results.
And they are right, because it is the variation process that
gives selection the raw variations to select.
However, the result could easily be "Moby Dick." But,
isn't this cheating, matching strings against an
*already-existing* string ("Moby Dick" as a string of
letters)? No, because this same process will work to
produce *any* string and, more importantly, any *kind*
of string. Why? Because, again, *all* possibilities will
eventually be generated, and the standard of selection
only determines which ones "survive" for the next
generation.
Thus, *if* animal breeding is the same as being a
*designer* in the ID sense, then I'd have to say that the
designer is pretty pathetic, because his role can so easily
be performed by humans and because it is such a
mindless process. It hardly needs any intelligence in the
ID sense, because matching strings against other strings,
or even against more-sophisticated criteria, does not
require much intelligence. Children can do it.
What's really going on is this:
A new string is produced. Does this string match certain
criteria (which may be as mindless and mechanical as you
please)? If so, keep it for future generations. If not, get rid of
it. Repeat the process *many* times.
What do the "surviving" strings contain at the end of
many repetitions? They contain a specification of the
nature of the selective forces in their environment, the
same selective forces that prevented so many other
strings from surviving.
Their environment would include any phenotype (body)
they would produce if they produced one.
And, this information includes implicit information about
the laws of physics as embodied in local conditions
during the string's history.
Thus, as I've said before of genes, the strings will have
an order of their own and will generate orderly
phenotypes, if any, because such order is a survival
requirement.
Throughout the evolutionary history of all organism's, at
*every* step, *only* those changes that are sufficiently
orderly in functional terms (if only to the extent of not
being too harmful) will be the ones that remain after the
less-orderly ones are trimmed away by the consequent
failure to reproduce.
Selection is not design. It is not planning. It is not
arrangement of parts by a mind for a purpose. It is the
elimination of variations that don't sufficiently
"represent" the selective factors involved.
Random variation incrementally produces all types of
strings, a little at a time, some portion of which happen to
contain information that reflects selective factors
sufficiently well that they continue to reproduce. No
designer is necessary to produce random variations some
of which happen to be successful, because the process
will simply keep on producing variations until some are
"right" enough to reproduce.
Jones claims that the animal breeder is a designer. But
the animal breeder need be no more a designer than a
person who simply goes out and *finds* animals that suit
his purposes. The breeder, regardless of Jones' claims,
has historically not been able to manipulate DNA to
control variations. Even choosing which animals to
breed together (to mix traits, etc.) is *selection* of
variations that *already* exist, in the *hope* that the
result of breeding them together will result in a *further*
suitable variations for him to select from in the future.
And, as I said above, if *this* is what is meant by
"designer," then ID's designer is a pretty pathetic designer
indeed. Such a "designer" obviously does nothing more
than what Nature can do completely mindlessly by killing
off locally "unfit" genomes and thereby "selecting" which
organisms get to breed together to produce further
variations of those same genomes.
Designer theory of this type confuses design with
selection. But, in the attempt to claim that such selection
*is* design, ID-ers reduce their own alleged designer to
the level of the mindless failure of some genomes to
survive in an environment that is unfavorable to them.
Thus, by claiming that an animal breeder is a designer,
they effectively negate their own claim that the designer
*designs*; he merely *selects*.
Poor thing.
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