I once asked professor Hacking if he had ever written a piece on religion (he is a self described atheist). He said “only one”. Here it is in all it’s glory. When I asked him why he wasn’t more prolific in this area, he said something to the effect “there is nothing interesting to discuss, if there is anything to discuss at all”.

A few days ago (see Behe’s “objectionable” interview) I complained about the “interview” with Michael behe on Boggingheads.tv. About how pathetic the interviewer John McWhorter was. The interview was pulled, with an apology by McWorter:

“John McWhorter feels, with regret, that this interview represents neither himself, Professor Behe, nor Bloggingheads usefully, takes full responsibility for same, and has asked that it be taken down from the site. He apologizes to all who found its airing objectionable.”

As I said then:

“And now that the mistake of scheduling such a silly programme had occurred – why compound it by deletion? That just encourages the paranoia of the “expelled” brigade. And it removes the evidence for how these people will do anything to scam respectable intellectual fora.”

Fortunately, Bloggingheads.tv has now put the interview back up. With the following comment from Robert Wright, Editor-in-chief of bloggingheads.tv:

“This diavlog has now been re-posted. The decision to remove it from the site was made by BhTV staff while I was away and unavailable for consultation. (Yes, even in a wired world it’s possible to take yourself off the grid. Here’s how I did it.) It’s impossible to say for sure whether, in the heat of the moment, I would have made a decision different from the staff’s decision. But on reflection I’ve decided that removing this particular diavlog from the site is hard to justify by any general principle that should govern our future conduct. In other words, it’s not a precedent I’d want to live with. At the same time, I can imagine circumstances under which a diavlog would warrant removal from the site. So this episode has usefully spurred me and the BhTV staff to try to articulate some rules of the road for this sort of thing. Within a week, the results will be posted, along with some related thoughts on the whole idea behind Bloggingheads.tv, here.”

See also:
Behe’s Department Position on Evolution and “Intelligent Design”
Bye to Bloggingheads
Bloggingheads and the Old Challenges of New Tools

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• Behe’s “objectionable” interview (openparachute.wordpress.com)

No tenia intención de poner nada nuevo hasta finales de semana, cuando empezase ya oficialmente este blog. Pero hace un par de días me encontré con esta maravilla. Estoy acostumbrado, porque lo he vivido, pero nunca deja de sorprenderte. No he leído el articulo, pero tan solo con ver la foto que ilustra el articulo, encontrar el nombre de un tal Michael Behe (Darwin’s Black Box). Conservapedia

Nos dejan con alguna joya como estas:

If the evolutionary position was valid, then there should be “transitional forms” in the fossil record reflecting the intermediate life forms. Another term for these “transitional forms” is “missing links”.

…supporters of ‘jerky’ evolution saltationism and its relative, puncutated equilibria) point out that the fossil record does not show gradualism, and that the hypothetical transitional forms would be disadvantageous. But supporters of gradual evolution point out that large, information-increasing changes are so improbable that one would need to invoke a secular miracle. Creationists agree with both: punctuational evolution can’t happen, and gradual evolution can’t happen—in fact, particles-to-people evolution can’t happen at all!

Resulta ahora que ambas son excluyentes. Lo único bueno que tiene es la gran cantidad de quotes que tiene, ya podría aprende la wikipedia Española.

What’s going on with bloggingheads.tv? I usually enjoy the programmes, regularly download the Science Saturday audios and keep an eye on the rest.

Yesterday I downloaded the discussion between Michael Behe and John McWhorter.  Listened to it on my daily walk. I don’t know what observers thought because I must have been swearing and muttering to myself. It was the sort of intelligent design (ID) promotion you get from the Discovery Institute. If you have ever listened to the ID the Future podcasts you will know what I mean. Case Luskin’s breathless exclamations as they misrepresent science and those evil Dariwnists.

I had thought that McWhorter may have challenged Behe – but he raved like one of those evangelists. And like an evangelist promoting and profiting from sales of Behe’s books. He participated in the same breathless and cowardly misrepresentation of science we have come to expect from the more extreme spokespeople like Luskin. And this was McWhorter! Behe seemed to sit back and let him do all the work.

When I got home I went back to Bloggingheads.tv to check out why the interview had been scheduled. Or some sort of explanation for what I considered a disgusting scam. What did I find – the video and audio had been removed!

McWhorter himself apologised in the following manner:

“John McWhorter feels, with regret, that this interview represents neither himself, Professor Behe, nor Bloggingheads usefully, takes full responsibility for same, and has asked that it be taken down from the site. He apologizes to all who found its airing objectionable.”

Strange all around. I wonder what hands are being slapped on bloggingheads.tv. And now that the mistake of scheduling such a silly programme had occurred – why compound it by deletion? That just encourages the paranoia of the “expelled” brigade. And it removes the evidence for how these poeple will do anything to scam respectable intellectual fora.

Fortunately the video had been downloaded and can be accessed at, or downloaded from, ExposureRoom.com – John McWhorter vs Michael Behe (bloggingheads.tv)

I think it is a great example of uncritical interviewing, promotion of ID (by the interviewer) and shameless scamming of a respectable outlet.

Have a look or listen and tell us what you think.

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Nie jestem w stanie określić, która z teorii wyjaśniających pochodzenie życia na ziemi jest bliższa prawdy. Nie potrafię też opowiedzieć się po stroniej którejkolwiek z nich z żarliwością wyznawcy. Są dwa powody takiego zawieszenia rozstrzygającego sądu:

1. Obydwie teorie są równie prawdopodobne i w żaden sposób w swej istocie jedna nie wyklucza drugiej. Są spojrzeniem na tem sam przedmiot z różnych perspektyw.
2. Obydwie propozycje posługują się w dużej mierze tym samym materiałem badawczym jednakże udzielane przez nie odpowiedzi znacznie wykraczają poza to, co jest intersubiektywnie komunikowalne i sprawdzalne. Udzielane odpowiedzi mają duży ciężar gatunkowym o charakterze filozoficznym i światopoglądowym.

Swego czasu sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) badając naturę światła doszedł do przekonania, że jego natura to poruszające się w przestrzeni drobinki (łac. corpusculum). W tym samym czasie Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) badając światło doszedł do wniosku, że ma ono naturę falową i że rozchodzi się, jak fale w ciałach sprężystych.

Propozycja Newtona była paradygmatem w nauce do początku XIX wieku. Później dotychczasowy model okazał się niewystarczający. Wreszcie w 1905 roku Einstein pogodził obydwie koncepcje ogłaszając teorię kwantową. Tyle w formie najbardziej uproszczonej.

Przyznam, że obecny spór pomiędzy wyznawcami teorii ewolucji a propagatorami inteligentnego projektu przypomina ten dotyczący korpuskularnej i falowej natury światła. Rzecz jasna skala sporu, zaangażowania liczby naukowców i natężenie medialne jest nieporównywalnie większe, gdyż dotyka światopoglądu. Obydwie wyjaśniają rzeczywistość związaną w powstaniem życia. Odwołują się do wyników badań, odkryć i często wychodzą poza to, co jest do udowodnienia: tworzą wizje, których spora część jest przypuszczeniem, wnioskiem wysnutym w oparciu o posiadane dane.   A że nie jest to jak 2 plus 2 stąd wnioski są tak różne. Rodzą się kolejne pytania na zasadzie im dalej w las tym więcej drzew. Głośne i modne nazwiska pojawiające się po stronie obydwu – konkurujących o rząd dusz – teorii nie sprawią, że coś stanie się prawdziwe dla wszystkich w sposób nie budzący wątpliwości. Radykalne wypowiedzi stronników jedynie podgrzewają spór.

Swego czasu wydawało się, że propozycja Theillarda de Chardin (1881-1955) zmierza w tym oczekiwanym kierunku, ale w jego próbie pogodzenia ewolucjonizmu z kreacjonizmem było zbyt wiele elementów teologicznych. Kościół oficjalny odrzucił jego propozycje a nauka poszła w innym kierunku. i Teoria ewolucji stała się obowiązującym i wyznawanym paradygmatem o daleko idących konsekwencjach światopoglądowych.

Od jakiegoś czasu próbę przełamania tego paradygmatu podejmują zwolennicy tzw. inteligentnego projektu (kiedyś określani kreacjonistami). Próbują dowieść, że życie w obecnej postaci nie mogło wyewoluować samo z siebie tylko przy pomocy inteligentnego projektanta… zegarmistrza.

Nauka jest in statu viae. Czekam na Einsteina ewolucji i kreacjonizmu, który unieważni dotychczasowe spory.

Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas – postępując w latach coraz lepiej rozumiem tę starożytną maksymę.

]]> http://oldearth.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/%c2%bfleen-los-creacionistas-los-libros-de-michael-behe/ Mon, 01 Jun 2009 10:37:19 +0000 Manuel http://oldearth.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/%c2%bfleen-los-creacionistas-los-libros-de-michael-behe/ http://conversationswithatheists.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/old-earth-vs-young-earth-vs-barbara-stanwyck/ Thu, 21 May 2009 19:49:11 +0000 jakeybk http://conversationswithatheists.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/old-earth-vs-young-earth-vs-barbara-stanwyck/

I’d like to start with this clip from Hardball with Chris Matthews. Now, I don’t love Chris, and I don’t actually love the way this “debate went down. I wish there had been someone with a little more specific knowledge on either side. But I do think it’s worthwhile, because (perhaps) it exposes what the common thread of opinion is…

The auspices of the “debate” is how to reconcile religion with science as it pertains to the future. Regardless of where we came from, what you believe about the world has an impact on where you think we’re going…

I’d like to focus on the Science vs. Religion, Faith vs. Evidence dichotomy that Chris sets up. Tom Tancredo says of Intelligent Design (and I’m not saying he’s an expert, I’m just quoting him because I thought what he said was interesting, and perhaps it’s an opinion shared by many): “In Intelligent Design, there is no argument about whether the world was made 8 thousand years ago or 8 million… you don’t even have to call it ‘god’… you just have to say that there was something there that designed all of this.”

If you believe in Intelligent Design—or to phrase it another way, if the Intelligent Design theory is the most convincing to you—the key aspect to your position is that something or someone designed/created the universe, and subsequently the world and humans. And from there, the specifics start to vary quite exponentially.

I’d like to ask the believers: what is your theory, and how do you feel about people who believe in Intelligent Design/Creationism, but in a different variation? How do you make distinctions?

• Old-Earth vs. Young-Earth is one distinction. How do you interpret the Bible? Literally/metaphorically? If you’re an Old-Earther, what do you say to the Young-Earthians? Besides the obvious one, what’s the difference in your theories? What causes this? Evidence? What distinction are you making exactly and how do you arrive there?
• Creationism vs. Intelligent design… would be whether or not you are a deist or a theist? Whether or not you called it God or just a “higher power”..?

I have no intention of trapping you or catching you on a semantic faux pas. I’d really like to know, to understand, how you think about the world on a daily basis. On a casual level.

Going through some of notes (scraps of paper all over the place) I came across these jottings:

“To believe in something because it’s true does not come naturally to people.”

and

“Subordination of belief to what is true is not natural to people.”

Perhaps you recognise this problem?

I think I noted them down while reading Dan Agin’s book: Junk Science recently.  It’s a great book (although I think he is a bit hard on evolutionary psychology). I certainly ended up feeling very angry with the huge negative influence anti-science groups and beliefs have on humanity.

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The newly formed Penn State “Science and the Bible Club” (lulz) brought in ID heavy hitter Michael Behe to talk to a standing-room-only 101 Thomas.  The first part of his talk was about the 5 points that make up his argument for design, and the second part was responses to his critics.  Except that he apparently took too long on the first part and only went over 2 of the 5 or 6 responses he had in his slides.  This is all presumably the same standard stuff he presents whenever he talks and I won’t really go into detail.

It then went on to Q&A, wherein the sciencey community of Penn State did an excellent job throwing out questions at Behe.  No really heavy “oh damn!” moments, but a few of the commenters did deliver moderate smackdowns.  I’m not going to go into detail here either, partially because my memory is lousy, but partially because I can’t repeat all of it.  The problem, I realized as I left, is that Behe is really the ideal guy to bring to a college campus.  Here’s why:

Guys like Casey Luskin and Michael Egnor are easier to hit back at, they make arguments more geared at uneducated lay people, which means that they can also be exposed as being wrong in terms understandable to more educated lay people.  Behe’s argument is basically a god of the gaps, but he uses a fair amount of biology and biochemistry to support it, and in a way that’s still fairly understandable to the lay person.

But when you argue back against him, you have to involve more complicated science, and as a biochemist, he can respond in kind with complicated science.  For example, he referenced Lenski’s experiments many times, but with the assertion that Lenski’s E.coli did not evolve any complex systems (a point which a later questioner asserted would be counter to the evolutionary hypothesis) and only discarded unused systems.  Even most educated people probably don’t know about Lenski, and then it’s just two guys arguing a about something that’s too confusing and complex to understand.  At that point, then, I would assume it’s easier to fall back to believing Behe’s simple hypothesis, since they have no way to understand who’s winning the argument.

Or something.

The wonderful thing about Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), whatever you make of the theory advanced within it, is the way it’s written. For anyone who wants to make a scientific argument, Darwin is the exemplar. Be cautious, never dogmatic. Infer, never assert. Base your reasoning on hard evidence, never the word of other authors. I can’t help but think that, when held up next to Darwin’s classic, Steve Fuller’s silly and shallow defence of Intelligent Design, Dissent over Descent (2008), reveals the intellectual gulf between the two rival theories.

The strange thing about Fuller’s book is that I doubt it’s the kind of defence a typical Intelligent Design advocate (say, Michael Behe or William Dembski) would actually want to hear. Fuller stood up for Creationism at the Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District (2005) court case, but he’s actually a sociologist — not a biologist, and not a Christian fundamentalist either. He’s on the frontline in the “science wars” — he’s the sort of postmodernist academic Alan Sokal parodied in his famous hoax.

So what does Fuller believe? He sets out his credo in the introduction:

While I cannot honestly say that I believe in a divine personal creator, no plausible alternative has yet been offered to justify the pursuit of science as a search for the ultimate systematic understanding of reality.

It’s not that Fuller prefers Bible stories to scientific stories. He thinks neither gives us an understanding of reality. Fuller’s cynicism about Darwin’s theory appears to be motivated by an all-pervading scepticism about the ability of science to tell us anything about reality at all. Evidence of this scepticism — this fundamental doctrine that science is not to be trusted, that its claims are “unjustified” — can be found all the way through.

Fuller’s stance here rests implicitly on the philosopher David Hume’s (1711-1776) brand of scepticism about the unity (or uniformity) of nature. We don’t know, says Hume, that nature is lawful and predictable. We don’t know that the future will be like the past, or that unobserved instances of a given phenomenon will be like the observed instances. So we don’t know that the sun will rise tomorrow, or that the vacuum in my lab is like outer space, or that the bacteria in my Petri dish are like bacteria in the soil. And we don’t know (pace Darwin and Charles Lyell) that the world we live in was formed by natural processes acting constantly and regularly for millions of years. Hume’s challenge to commonsense reasoning is the problem of induction, and to justify scientific claims about the world like Darwin’s, we need a response to Hume.

About 50 pages in, I suddenly realized that Fuller, whether he realizes it or not, is in the grip of Humean scepticism:

STS researchers do not question the actual results of scientific inquiry, only the larger significance ascribed to them: what licenses extrapolations from the lab or the field to the world at large?

He assumes that, since there is no obvious answer, scientists actually “make the world conform to the lab or field”.  He tells us that “incentives and conduits are introduced to ensure that the world behaves in accordance with the findings”.  He reveals that “calling something ’scientific’ is to sign a blank cheque to construct the world in the image and likeness of our theories”. Finally, he delivers his grand verdict, in italics:

Scientists can only make sense of a world they could have created.

The success of modern science, then, “certainly vindicates the idea that nature has been designed with sufficient intelligence to be susceptible to purposeful human modification.”

I suppose what Fuller is proposing here is a kind of “God Solution” to the problem of induction. To have knowledge of the world, we must believe the world to have been intelligently designed. Reject this and, according to Fuller, inquiry into nature will seem futile.

This is bizarre. Fuller’s stance is apparently that the world has to have been intelligently designed for us to have scientific knowledge of it. I don’t think any rigorous argument can be made in defence of this, and Fuller certainly doesn’t have one. The upshot of Hume’s sceptical argument is, arguably, that we just have to presuppose that nature is lawful and predictable. We have to presuppose that we can infer from our data to the facts about the world. But we don’t also have to presuppose that the world was intelligently designed.

So Darwin, examining his Galapagos specimens, had to presuppose the uniformity of nature in order to consider them representative of living beings from the Galapagos. And he had to presuppose the uniformity of nature to maintain that life on the Galapagos was formed by the same processes as life everywhere else. But what Darwin discovered, given these simple presuppositions, was that this could all have come about without an intelligent designer. Presuppose only the existence of regular, mechanical laws of nature, and suddenly you can explain the origin of species.

Dissent over Descent is a mess. Arrogant, rambling and unpersuasive, it’s provocative for the sake of being provocative, full of odd sociology jargon and sweeping generalizations. But I’m glad I read it — because it reveals how thin some of the arguments against the theory of evolution really are. Read this, read the Origin, and decide for yourself. I gave Fuller a hearing, and there was nothing to hear.

Scientists have been pushing this one for about a century now. While Evolution is at points nearly too ridiculous to merit comment, I’ll humor you. And I really do mean humor. For this post I’ve decided to write on the lighter side, although at the core the idea is serious.

The entire foundation for evolution, according to Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins and Stephen Gould, is that creatures mutate into more and more advanced creatures, then get married and have new more advanced babies, with thumbs and wings and so on. Fair enough. But wait a minute, isn’t there something a little bit fishy about this?

Think back to middle school. None of the mutants could get girlfriends. If mutants cannot get girlfriends, then how can you expect them to get married? And if they can’t get married, then how can you expect them to ever have kids? Moreover, the mutants would never survive as the fittest in the first place, because all of the normal children, who are bullies, would beat them up. And in distant evolutionary times they would kill them, because as recently excavated cave paintings show us a la carte Marc Hauser, the more historic you get, the more barbaric you are. So just imagine what they did to mutants back then! So if you’re dead and you can’t get girlfriends, there is no way you’re going to pass on your mutant genes – even if they are selfish genes. And all this is a matter of a few years – nothing compared to geological time!

Sure, Middle School is not the Stone Age. But so what? The basic principles of life apply to all times and places.

Qued Errata Demonstrum!

Scientific research is a very creative and personally satisfying process. However, researchers often find that the inevitable specialisation and concentration on limited aspects of reality can lead to a lack of understanding and appreciation of discoveries in other fields.

Since retirement I’ve appreciated the opportunity to read more widely. I find myself returning to subjects I haven’t considered for decades, or have neglected. I’m learning about the amazing discoveries humanity has made (behind my back) in the meantime.

I was encouraged to check out, and summarise, what I have been reading by the reading lists blogged by Damian and others. The number of books I have got through (in four years) shocked me – perhaps I’m a bit obsessive, or maybe its just the freedom retirement has given me.

I can recommend most books on the list – but definitely not every one (guess which).

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Infidel
Peter Atkins: Galileo’s Finger
Michael J. Behe: Darwin’s Black Box
Sharon Begley: Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain
Sandra Blakeslee, Matthew Blakeslee: The Body Has a Mind of Its Own
Pascal Boyer: Religion Explained
John Brockman (Ed): What Is Your Dangerous Idea?
Christopher Brookmyre: Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks
Hamish Campbell, Gerald Hutching: In Search of Ancient New Zealand
Sean B. Carroll: Endless Forms Most Beautiful
Austin Dacey: The Secular Conscience
Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin: The Descent of Man
Paul Davies: The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World
Richard Dawkins: A Devil’s Chaplain
Richard Dawkins: Unweaving the Rainbow
Richard Dawkins: The Ancestor’s Tale
Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition
Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion
Daniel C. Dennett: Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
Daniel C. Dennett: Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs, and Steel
Jared Diamond: Collapse
Norman Doidge: The Brain That Changes Itself
Helen Ellerbe: The Dark Side of Christian History
Barbara Forrest, Paul R. Gross: Creationism’s Trojan Horse
Steve Fuller: Kuhn Vs.Popper
Daniel Goleman: Destructive Emotions
Ursula Goodenough: The Sacred Depths of Nature
Malcolm Gladwell: Blink
Stephen Jay Gould: Rocks of Ages
Alan Grafen, Mark Ridley: Richard Dawkins
Brian Greene: The Fabric of the Cosmos
Nancy Thorndike Greenspan: The End of the Certain World
John Gribbin: The Fellowship
Nicky Hager: The Hollow Men
Sam Harris: Letter to a Christian Nation
Sam Harris: The End of Faith
Christopher Hitchens: God Is Not Great
Robert Henson: The Rough Guide to Climate Change
Edward Humes: Monkey Girl
Max Jammer: Einstein and Religion
Eric R. Kandel: In Search of Memory
David J. Linden: The Accidental Mind
Irshad Manji: The Trouble with Islam Today
Ernst Mayr: What Evolution Is
Kenneth R. Miller: Only a Theory
Andrew Newberg, Mark Robert Waldman: Born to Believe
Christop Norris: Quantum Theory and the Flight From Realism
Michel Onfray: Atheist Manifesto
Andrew J. Petto, Laurie R. Godfrey: Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism
Steven Pinker: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Sheldon Rampton, John Stauber: Weapons of Mass Deception
Martin Rees: Before The Beginning
Matt Ridley: Nature Via Nurture
Matt Ridley: Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code
Matt Ridley: Genome
Oliver Sacks: Uncle Tungsten
Carl Sagan: The Varieties of Scientific Experience
Sahotra Sarkar: Doubting Darwin
Michael Shermer: The Science of Good and Evil
Michael Shermer: How We Believe
Michael Shermer: Why People Believe Weird Things
Lee Smolin: The Trouble With Physics
Dava Sobel: Longitude
Victor J. Stenger: God: The Failed Hypothesis
Kim Sterelny: Dawkins vs Gould: Survival of the Fittest
Ian Tattersall: The Fossil Trail
Chris Turney: Bones, Rocks and Stars: The Science of When Things Happened
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution
Max Wallace:The Purple Economy
Peter Ward, Donald Brownlee: The Life and Death of Planet Earth
Peter Ward: Life as We Do Not Know It
James D. Watson: DNA: The Secret of Life
Spencer Wells: Deep Ancestry: Inside The Genographic Project
David Sloan Wilson: Darwin’s Cathedral
Edward O. Wilson: The Creation
Edward O. Wilson: Consilience
Peter Woit: Not Even Wrong
Lewis Wolpert: Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Lawrence Wright: The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
Phillip Zimbardo: The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil
Carl Zimmer: At the Water’s Edge
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I recently wrote about how the endosymbiotically-derived apicoplast in P. falciparum fits very well with evolution, and is nonsensical as “design”.  What I did not realize when I was writing that post, even though I had read the News and Views version in Nature when the research results were published (it was not very important to me at the time), was that a related organism has recently been found which still uses for photosynthesis a chloroplast which descended from the ancestral chloroplast from which P. falciparum’s apicoplast had also been derived.  This is even further evidence which is explained by, and predicted in aspects via, evolution–and never once has such an intricate and step-wise production of a nested hierarchy of “machines” been seen as a design strategy in actions effected by any observable designer.

One of the predictions of evolution is that in nearly all adaptive radiations there will be a variety of adaptations of an organ, organelle, or system which is undergoing selective pressure.  Of course there is no guarantee that any of the variations will survive or fossilize, nor that if one variant survives or fossilizes, another variant will.  However, not infrequently are variations of a particular evolving system or entity found, thereby confirming the pattern expected of non-teleological evolution.  The discovery of the the photosynthetic Chromera velia apparently is one such find which is so closely related to the apicomplexans (and shares a red-alga-derived photosynthetic plastid with some of the more distantly related Dinoflagellates), such as P. falciparum, that it seems unlikely that their respective plastids would not have a common origin.

Indeed, how would anyone even think through the shared plastid features of C. velia and P. falciparum except via evolutionary theory?  Why would P. falciparum even have a plastid derived from a cyanobacterium, when the two only share a relatively few pathways at present?  Would not a real designer just transfer the design of the pathways (or come up with a new pathway expressly designed for P. falciparum, if the designer is God), either with or without a single or double membrane (it appears P. falciparum has three membranes in its plastid, apparently down from four after its secondary symbiotic origin (double membrane from the cyanobacterium plus a double membrane from the red alga))?

Anyway, those are issues to think about when reading the following excerpts of the article:

[Abstract]  Many parasitic Apicomplexa, such as Plasmodium falciparum, contain an unpigmented chloroplast remnant termed the apicoplast, which is a target for malaria treatment.  However, no close relative of apicomplexans with  with a functional photosynthetic plastid has yet been described.  Here we describe a newly cultured organism that has ultrastructural features typical for alveolates, is phylogenetically related to apicomplexans, and contains a photosynthetic plastid.  The plastid is surrounded by four membranes, is pigmented by chlorophyll α, and uses the codon UGA to encode tryptophan in the psbA gene.  this genetic feature has been found only in coccidian apicoplasts and various mitochondria.  The UGA-Trp codon and phylogenies of plastid and nuclear RNA genes indicate that the organism is the closest known photosynthetic relative to apicomplexan parasites and that its plastid shares an origins with the apicoplasts.  The discovery of this organism provides a powerful model with which to study the evolution of parasitism in Apicomplexa.  p. 959 Moore, et al.  “A photosynthetic alveolate closely related to apicomplexan parasites”  Nature 21 Feb. 2008 451:959-963

And here is the concluding paragraph:

Phylogenetic analyses support the description of Chromera velia as an alveolate, possessing a photosynthetic plastid that lies in the same secondary endosymbiotic lineage as apicoplasts.  The ultrastructure and photosynthetic pigment profile of C. velia are consistent with a chromalveolate-affiliated ancestry.  Figure 3 presents a model of the evolutionary history of C. velia, apicomplexans and dinoflagellates based on the phylogeny of the nuclear and plastid lineages and the retention or loss of plastid characteristics.  Chromera velia represents the closest known photosynthetic relative of apicomplexan parasites.  Ibid. p. 962

Well, there it is, more evidence that a series of historical accidents lie behind the “irreducibly complex” phenomena of malaria pathogens, along with adaptation of these hereditary and event-produced accidents.  Perhaps Behe would be a whole lot more convincing with respect to his design claims if he could elucidate some features of any organism which differed substantially from accident and adaptation, rather than trying to claim, based on nothing but ignorance, that what appears to be the result of accident plus selection must be ruled by some super-intelligent being, but without rationally intelligent responses to needs ever having been made.

This is part of a series of posts that I am combining into one long post, which may be found at The Edge of Evolution

 This post is a kind of follow-up to this post.

Behe seems to have learned that taking the offensive is often the best strategy (especially since he has no hope in playing by the rules of science discussion). Rather than answering our questions about what parasites were designed to do, and what purpose they serve, he uses Plasmodium falciparum, the organism which causes malaria, as his test case for what evolution can do, while he assigns everything that evolution supposedly cannot do to “design”.  In fact, he doesn’t in the slightest try to show that life is not the result of inheritance and accident, plus selection, rather he wants to claim that this is not so because life is just “too complex” to have evolved, and so, in his usual resort to false dichotomy, he resorts to “design”.

But we have no reason to follow the channel of “thought” that he attempts to impose because he lacks any kind of evidence for design.  As I have demonstrated repeatedly, life’s characteristics are often due to accident (either accident of inheritance, or of various kinds mutations, duplications, etc.), and many of the “irreducibly complex” characteristics such as the chloroplast and its integration into the cells of many eukaryotes have very clear indications of being due to accident plus a considerable amount of complex evolution–notably the evolution of transport mechanisms after engulfment by a (proto?)eukaryotic cell, with respect to the chloroplast.  As noted above, I wrote a post regarding this previously.

Remarkably, P. falciparum  contains the remains of a chloroplast, which is called an “apicoplast.”  What is currently believed to be the case is that an ancestor of the malaria parasite engulfed, not a cyanobacterium, rather a red alga which had cyanobacterium-derived chloroplasts within it.  All that remains today is the apicoplast, which has only a very small genome (32 kb), and evidently no genes for photosynthesis.    Oddly enough, relatively few of the proteins targeted to this apicoplast actually derive from the chloroplast from which it evolved.  Nature article used as a source for this paragraph (the fact that it was a red alga, not a green one as related in the link, is to be found in Moore, et al.  “A photosynthetic alveolate closely related to apicomplexan parasites”  Nature 21 Feb. 2008 451:  959-963)

The details are in sources like the on in the link just above.  What I want to mention are the many accidents involved in the origination of this “irreducibly complex” and essential organelle used by P. falciparum to parasitize humanity. 

First, rather than design providing photosynthesis to eukaryotes, a eukaryotic cell had to engulf a cyanobacterium without digesting it, in order to provide a very crude photosynthetic symbiosis.  Subsequently, transport mechanisms evolved (though Behe denies the possibility), genes were transferred to the nuclei of the algae (some of these algae evolved into plants) containing what became these chloroplasts, and regulatory functions of the chloroplasts evolved as well.  If any design or identifiable purpose can be found in any of these changes, no one has adequately shown their existence.

After all of that evolution happened, the ancestor of P. falciparum secondarily engulfed a red alga, and a symbiotic relationship evolved.  While little is actually known specifically about this evolution, no doubt P. falciparum’s ancestor had to evolve essentially the same transport, regulatory, and genetic changes that already occurred in the red alga’s ancestor.  It seems that eventually all of the red alga except for the chloroplast (and likely a number of genes from the red alga transferred to the nucleus) disappeared.  The chloroplast itself lost most of its functions, including photosynthesis, as what became a parasite quite early in evolution (early in metazoan evolution, at least) no longer needed many of those functions.

This is an extraordinarily convoluted story, one that only makes sense, as famously stated, in the light of evolution.  Can anyone actually understand this as a “design strategy”?  It most certainly is not, it is a story of accident and of adaptation of various accidents to the evolving needs of a lineage of (eventually) parasitical organisms.  And yet Behe would like to credit all of these “irreducibly complex” accidents, and complex adaptations to those accidents, to “design”.

Then again, why not do so from his amoral and nihilistic view of “design”?  Only someone grasping without cause or reason would look at the destructive relationship of P. falciparum, Anopheles mosquitoes, and humans, as having been purposely designed instead of itself being an obvious evolutionary accident.  Evolution explains such relationships, because it has no inherent moral aim or purpose (or any other kind of aim or purpose), nor any preference for host over parasite or for parasite over host.  What we see in the human-mosquito-malaria relationship is at best inexplicable in terms of design and of purpose, and at worst an indictment of the God that Behe blames for malaria.

In addition to the foregoing comments, I would like to bring up a sound principle that I mentioned while discussing DBB, here. William Paley wrote:

In this cause, therefore, we ought to rest; in this cause the common sense of mankind has, in fact, rested, because it agrees with that which in all cases is the foundation of knowledge,–the undeviating course of their experience. The reasoning is the same as that by which we conclude any ancient appearances to have been the effects of volcanoes or inundations, namely, because they resemble the effects which fire and water produce before our eyes; and because we have never known these effects to result from any other operation. William Paley Natural Theology Chap. 23

What does experience, observation, and evidence suggest about the causes of the changes that have occurred to P. falciparum, and especially with respect to its apicoplast?  What does experience and observation suggest regarding parasitical relationships?  Even Behe admits that experience and observation provide evidence that contingency and selection produce identifiable evolutionary patterns in life.  He simply wants everyone to forget that what we see in his “irreducibly complex” examples is the same sort of combination of accident, selection, and inherited contingency that we see in his examples of evolution.  But if accident can be identified in “microevolution” due to its evident contingent character, how is not applying the same standard to “macroevolution” to be justified?

All that is evident in the history of life is accident and heredity being worked over by selection.  Only by ignoring every principle of design and every principle of evolution can Behe find his way to ignoring the plain evidence that life evolved without guidance, and to instead believe that somehow the highly complex relationship between cyanobacterium, red alga, two eukaryotes engulfing and symbiosing with photosynthesizers, Anopheles, and humanity, is a purposeful arrangement of parts. 

Experience and observation tell us that such a relationship is produced by identified and unguided evolutionary processes.

This is part of a series of posts that I am combining into one long post, which may be found at The Edge of Evolution>

Ireductibilitatea complexă este un termen inventat de către Michael Behe, cel mai celebru suporter al Intelligent Design-ului. Teoria e foarte simplu de înţeles: un organism este ireductibil din punct de vedere complex dacă extragându-i-se doar o mică parte din organism şi, cel mai important, ORICE parte, acesta încetează să funcţioneze.

Aceasta idee i-a venit gândindu-se la celebrele vorbe ale lui Darwin: „Dacă se poate arăta că un singur organism nu putea evolua dintr-o formă inferioară de viaţă, atunci teoria mea s-ar destrăma”. Într-adevăr, dacă Behe, care spune că a găsit câteva lucruri în biologie care sunt ireductibile, are dreptate, atunci bye-bye evoluţionism.

Cel mai celebru exemplu care se poate da este flagelul bacteriei, care ajută în locomoţia acestora. Behe spune că nu ar fi putut evolua în mod natural, dar totuşi aşa este?

Pentru ca Behe să aibă dreptate, ar însemna ca părţile din care este constituit flagelul să fie nefolositoare în sinea lor. Şi, surprize-surprize, lucrurile nu stau aşa: dacă se scot chiar şi 40 din cele 50 de părţi distincte ale flagelului, el rămâne perfect funcţionabil. Este vorba despre un sistem de la baza flagelului care are un rol secretor (sistemul TTSS prin care bacteriile injectează toxine în membrana gazdelor lor). Argumentul ID-ului nu face faţă nici propriilor pretenţii.

Un alt exemplu dat de Behe este legat de coagularea sângelui. Acesta susţine că proteinele implicate în acest proces sunt mult prea complexe pentru a fi evoluat gradat. Argumentul mai pe larg: niciuna dintre proteine nu face altceva decât să ajute la coagularea sângelui, iar în lipsa uneia din proteine sângele nu se coagulează. Testele arată încă o dată cu totul altceva. Dacă se ia o proteină (numită factorul XII), sângele nu coagulează. Nu coagulează la oameni, dar coagulează la alte animale cum ar fi balenele şi delfinii. Dar totuşi, pentru ca Behe să aibă dreptate ar trebui ca în orice organism coagularea să nu fie posibilă în lipsa factorului XII. Cum atunci, dacă sângele se coagulează doar dacă are un anumit număr de proteine, se coagulează totuşi şi fără anumite proteine? Dacă se iau 3 proteine, sângele tot se coagulează la unii peşti.

Un alt exemplu forte venit din parte ID-ului este sistemul imunitar. De când Behe l-a prezentat (acum vreo 12 ani) şi până în prezent s-au scris nu mai puţin de circa 60 de lucrări şi circa 10 cărţi care explică cum sistemul nostru imunitar a evoluat. Pus în faţa acestor dovezi în cazul Dover (unde s-a decis dacă Intelligent Design-ul să devină sau nu materie de şcoală), Behe a răspuns că tot nu sunt dovezi suficiente…

Mai mult decât atât, se pot explica uşor anumite mecanisme prin care organismele complexe pot evolua. Un model ar putea fi ceea ce se numeşte preadaptare, când o anumită trăsătură biologică îşi schimbă funcţionalitatea. Cel mai cunoscut exemplu este cel al penelor în cazul păsărilor care, iniţial au evoluat pentru a regla temperatura corpului păsărilor, iar mai târziu au fost adaptate pentru zbor.

O altă metodă prin care ar fi putut evolua unele organisme complexe este următorul: se dezvoltă anumite părţi cu anumite funcţionalităţi, şi tot aşa încă câteva părţi cu ajutorul celor dinainte. Se întâmplă uneori însă ca un anumit complex biologic să ajungă la un stadiu în care nu mai are nevoie de anumite părţi de care s-a folosit pentru a evolua şi se eliberează de acestea. Acest proces ne poate face foarte greu să determinăm cum a evoluat acea parte a organismului pentru că nu mai avem anumite părţi cu ajutorul cărora a evoluat.

După umila mea părere, ireductibilitatea complexă ar fi cel mai bun argument pentru design. Cu toate acestea, după cum bine s-a văzut, nu avem motive să credem că există astfel de organisme. ID-ul îşi taie craca de sub picioare. So long Behe!

Hallmarks of Design

I’ve written before about how things that are designed exhibit function or specific complexity.  I’ll give a definition in a bit more detail here.

Systems that are of high complexity, that is functionally integrated multicomponent systems, systems that are of high specificity where only one or very few of many possible arrangements of these components works, and systems which are of low probability, at least spontaneous occurrence . . . these are the hallmarks of purposefully designed engineered systems. (1)

Teleology

Proponents of intelligent design theory often invoke the notion of teleology.  What is teleology?

…. is the philosophical study of design and purpose. A teleological school of thought is one that holds all things to be designed for or directed toward a final result, that there is an inherent purpose or final cause for all that exists. (2)

Irreducible Complexity (IC)

Charles Darwin specified one aspect of his theory that would allow for falsifiability.  Falsifiability is thought to be an essential aspect of a scientific theory.  Darwin wrote:

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case. (3)

Although Darwin at least made an attempt to allow for the falsifiability of modern evolutionary theory, modern evolutionists have rejected any arguments that have been made in terms of irreducible complexity. 

Two major proponents of intelligent design theory have defined IC in these ways:

^{The term “irreducible complexity” was originally defined by Behe as:}

A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. (<emDarwin’s Black Box p39 in the 2006 edition) ….

A second definition given by Behe (his “evolutionary definition”) is as follows:

An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway.

Intelligent design advocate William Dembski gives this definition:

A system performing a given basic function is irreducibly complex if it includes a set of well-matched, mutually interacting, nonarbitrarily individuated parts such that each part in the set is indispensable to maintaining the system’s basic, and therefore original, function. The set of these indispensable parts is known as the irreducible core of the system. (No Free Lunch, 285)

(4)

Evolutionists today dismiss the idea outright.  To my knowledge, they don’t even present a way that evolution can be falsified.  Although there are a number of credible arguments made for irreducible complexity, there are of course counterarguments for each.  This points to the fact that naturalistic evolution has no clear way of being falsified.  For example, all an object would have to do to falsify the law of gravity, is to fall upward once!  But the fact that the argument continues shows that naturalistic evolution has no true basis for falsifiability.

In the everyday practice of research on evolution, the assumption is that naturalistic evolution is true, because a majority of scientists agree.  A mere agreement among scientists as evidence violates the philosophical assumptions of science.  Research on evolution routinely employs research designs that do not allow for causal conclusions (that the results found imply a cause and effect relationship), but that does not stop evolutionary biologists from inferring causality nonetheless.

The type of research that allows for inferences about causal relationships is an experimental design.  Evolutionists argue that, “How do you propose we construct a multi-billion year research design?”  And I reply that if your theory requires a multi-billion year research design, it’s not much of a scientific theory.

(1) Lumsden, Richard, 1995, quoted by Alters, Brian J., 1995, A content analysis of the Institute for Creation Research’s Institute on Scientific Creationism. Creation/Evolution 15(2): 1-15.

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology

(3) Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

(4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity