Darwinism: What CAN it do?
Anyone who has studied the topic of evolution has had to come to grips with the facts. Darwinian evolution has a permanent place in the science books, and for good reason. The theory of natural selection has become a standard in biology not because it is a hopeful “pie in the sky” hypothesis, but because it is routinely demonstrated in the lab and even in the wild (extinction). But as a non-Darwinist, there are still some pressing issues that I have with the non-demonstrable claims that Darwinists make.
One of those questions would be, is Darwinism a valid explanation for the addition of truly complex functional information?
Mike Behe explains the idea of “minimal function” in his book “Darwin’s Black Box” fairly well. Minimal function is the smallest amount of function gain (or loss) during a mutation for natural selection to deem it “beneficial”. The addition or deletion of function has to be large enough for it to make the organism truly more fit than any of the others. But, everyone knows that Darwin himself claimed that the the additions (modifications) had to be “slight”, that is, they had to be small steps rather than giant leaps. Unfortunately for Darwin, he had no way of knowing how to quantify a “small step”. It seems that only natural selection itself can answer the question.
But even if we did know what a minimal function was, the question still remains, can a random occurrence (mutation) produce enough functional novel information for natural selection to recognize it? We know that natural selection recognizes loss in function, and often selects for that loss (color in a bear’s fur is quite harmful in snowy areas, hence the polar bear), but can mutation produce enough novel functional information for for natural selection to consider it more likely to survive than its peers?
Many of you remember my friend Matthew from his original guest blog. He has a wonderful post over at his blog concerning the nature of randomness, what it can produce, and why it simply leaves too much room for luck to be considered a valid explanation. I encourage everyone to go check it out:
Darwinism and Information – The nature of randomness
A large portion of the argument between Darwinists and non-Darwinists in recent years has been over the demonstration of “information adding” genes. What is of great interest is the response of non-Darwinists if and when presented with an incontrovertible example of exactly such an event. Seriously – let’s say just a tiny bit of functional information just happens to be added by mutation to the genome. Is Darwinism finally given quantitative footing?
Wow! I have asked myself this question a hundred times before, but have never been able to successfully articulate my concern. Matthew sums it up quite nicely.
Remember the title to this article, “Darwinism: What CAN it do?”. Since Darwinism is inextricably tied to the random nature of mutation, you have to ask the question, “What can randomness do?” You’ll have to read Matthew’s article to find out! 
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically each day to your feed reader. If you don't have a feed reader, you can always have these articles delivered to your email inbox every day. Click here to sign up.
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
Comments
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Nice post Nathan. It is refreshingly different than much of what I see out here. Thanks!
I am not a darwinist. I studyed under several of them at the university level, but since I’ve never seen a jelly fish turn into a giraffe, I am going to remain on this side of the fence.
I think that evolution is one of the many remarkable things built into nature by God. Not evolution of one species into another, but the evolution of particular species, in order to adapt to our world, and survive to procreate. How awesome is that? Procreating rocks!
Well, that’s not exactly what Darwinism claims. Like I said in the post, Darwinism is about small successive changes. We would never see a jellyfish turn into a giraffe and they don’t claim that it ever did, would, or could.
Also, speciation is also something the occurs pretty rapidly in insects like fruit flies.
Yes, “evolution” is an everyday occurrence. The question raised here, and answered at Matthew’s site is, is Darwinian evolution a process that does more than just deletes information for the purpose of survival? Can it add complex functional information sufficient for the kind of change necessary in the evolutionary tree of life?
Nathan,
You almost have me laughing – I just had a lengthy conversation with a physics professor on the nature of random flow and its applications to biology, as well as a discussion of minimum functionality, selective competition, etc… It is just funny that your blog covers exactly the topic of my blog plus the discussion I was just having here at the university!
Although I don’t completely expand on the Demskian definition of CSI in the article, you have basically summed up the point in your intro here: observed “evolution” works in non-complex jumps (i.e. the simple groups like ‘111′ in our random sequences), and can’t explain the high complexity actually observed – because random flow does not allow agglomeration of those low complexity groups (it destroys them over time).
-Matthew
Matt,
Great minds think alike!
Also, I’d like to expand on your last sentence:
Exactly. It destroys them because they don’t meet the minimal function requirement. It seems that Darwinists like to have it both ways. One the one hand a non-darwinist may say “I don’t see a monkey having human babies” to which the Darwinist says “that’s not how evolution works, it works in small steps”. On the other hand the Darwinists still claim that mutations are big enough to fulfill a large enough functional increase.
Back to math. So many possible outcomes, and so few functional outcomes. The numbers just don’t add up. Or do they? Discussion?
Nathan,
The problem is that natural selection has to select for net fitness. You can plot multiple fitness curves, and the net fitness over all metabolic pathways is taken. This means that a minor increase in fitness with respect to one metabolic pathway may not outweigh the rest of the traits expressed, because the jump in functionality was indetectable with regard to the whole system.
Hmm… Might be the subject of another article…
-Matthew
You just hit the nail on the head. This is the case much of the time.
Although to be fair, in cases where the additional information is necessary for survival (which is the case in much of the bacteria lab examples), the loss of information is irrelevant and NS has no choice but to select for it. Is the organism weaker as a result? Sure. But at least he’s alive. Obviously, this sort of “beneficial” mutation cannot be the origin of the loads of genetic information necessary to explain the progressive nature of the evolutionary tree of life.
I am not terribly familiar with the different nuances of evolutionary theory, which is why I am in finance, not science. But I was hoping you would recognize my jellyfish reference from a folk song I heard a few years back. David Wilcox sang “Big Mistake” not as anti-darwin, but to confess his confusion on the issue. How can this all be just random? There must be something out there greater and smarter than me.
Check it out:
“They taught us kids in school between the recess breaks
That the universe just sorta fell together like a Big Mistake
It started with a bang that sent the pieces flying
Then it cooled and twirled into dinosaurs and dandelioins
Chorus:
It was a Big Mistake to have eyes that see
To have love like this inside of me
To have lips that smile as I swim your kiss
To have minds that will forever every part of this
All the moonlight shrouded in the clouds above and
the autumn leaves and the falling love
The still reflection in the moonlit lake
All, they said, it was a big mistake, it was a big mistake
Now back to science class through the looking glass
We were magnifying little ancestors of our ancient past
Watch ‘em break a couple chromosomes, wait a zillion years or so
And get an ostrich, a jellyfish, a kangaroo, and a Romeo
Chorus
The choreography of a coincidence
At the turning point there was eternity behind a moment’s glance
It was for you and me the timing made us laugh
The fact that anyone could find their only one along this darkened path.
It was a big mistake to have eyes that see
To have love like this inside of me
To have lips that smile, as I swim your kiss
To have minds that will forever, every part of this.
All the moonlight shrouded in the clouds above
The autumn leaves and the falling love
The still reflection in the moonlit lake,
All they said, it was a big mistake.”
I like the honesty of his confusion, not willing to take a stand on any point, since he admits he doesn’t get the science or the theology of it, he just gets to enjoy the ride.
And that line, “swim your kiss.” That is good stuff.
No problem Jason.
There’s no doubt it’s confusing to people who don’t study it. I guess that’s one reason this blog is here. We’re trying to make the topic easier for everyone to grasp.
Nate, I’ve already sent this to you, but here it is again for everyone else: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/books/review/Dawkins-t.html?ei=5090&en=a8d3b05b1f9ae784&ex=1340942400&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1185590291-h7×2Bxe1PgeDcLBVJ3ZEvw
The existence of dogs proves that random genetic mutations are enough.
Seriously.
An elaboration on my last post (sorry for the monster URL):
Nathan, you asked “Can mutation produce enough novel functional information for for natural selection to consider it more likely to survive than its peers?”
If it couldn’t, then dogs couldn’t exist. How could you possibly domesticate wolves, aurochs, cabbage, maize or bananas if random mutation wasn’t powerful enough? How could farmers breed their livestock if the fortuity of mutations wasn’t statistically guarenteed? Are God’s long hands (or the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s long noodly appendages) meddling in this as well?
I’m sure you are aware that in Western hospitals some viruses have evolved a resistance to antibiotics. If the information isn’t coming for brute force attacks of mutations, where? Is Satan meddling too?
Maybe I’ve misunderstood the question and you’re really asking “How sensitive is natural selection?” George Ledyard Stebbins calculated that a mouse-sized animal that had a selection pressure too small to be detected in the field would take only 20 000 generations to become elephant-sized. This is too quick to be recorded in the fossil record.
Also, for the record, you’ll find many science-believers calling themselves “Darwinians” rather than “Darwinists.”
Hope you can get back to me on this.
~Trent
Ubuntu/trent,
You are still maintaining the 19th century naivety of pretending all phenotypic change is equivalent. This argument was dead the day genetics was discovered.
Dogs are a perfect example of what I mean, as are all domesticated animals. I used to breed exotic finches and helped write national standards for one domesticated species – most of what we work with is the genetic result of recombination. Recombination does NOT add information content to the genome – it merely alters phenotype expression.
So, no, mutations are not inventing information in these species. In fact, many of the obvious mutation events (i.e. blue body mutation in the gouldian finch) are the result of lost metabolic functionality (in this case lost carotenoid expression). Which is the direct opposite of information gain…
Furthermore, your example of resistant mutation is yet another example of your ignorance of quantitative information treatment. It is well recognized that almost all (if not all) resistant strains are a result of malfunctioning genes – i.e. failure to cap enzyme production, misproduction, etc. This = information loss.
You would do well to read a bit on the subject before trying to argue your point so poorly.
-Matthew
Matt-
There’s no getting around the fact that whatever mechanism is at work here, it is powerful enough to turn the aurochs into the cow, the wolf into the dog, and the wild banana into the domesticated banana in only a few thousand years — and it hinges on selection by people, rather than nature. Whatever is happening, it isn’t intelligent design, and it’s driving descent with modification based on the selection pressures from humans.
As for what is widely recognized, I have to disagree. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases takes this stance:
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/antimicro.htm
Does that qualify as “malfunctioning” genes? Does a mutation that turns junk DNA into something meaningful count as an increase in information?
-Trent
Matt- hopefully you are subscribed to this blog topic so that this message will land in your inbox.
First, something abstract: it is inconceivable that singular mutations carry along evolution. With innumerable mutations creating random (non)information, however, sooner or later one will have to hit upon something that will raise — however slightly — the number of viable offspring an organism has. When you have a number of genomes each individually changing slightly over time (from generation to generation), let it carry on over time and you will notice that genomes whose changes result in their self-destruction will be unable to copy themselves and therefore will be infrequent or nonexistent in the population. Those genomes that produce harmless but nonadvantageous changes will copy themselves equally as often as they did before. The genomes whose alterations produce changes that (happen to) increase its ability to copy itself will produce many more copies and it will spread through the population. Since genomes are being constanly destroyed by their environment, the genomes better at copying themselves (and at foiling the environment’s attempts to destroy them) will be the only ones left existing in the population. Replace “genome” with any other self-contained body of information, and the same principles apply. This is why we can use Darwinian algorithms to produce CSI using computers.
The other topic I’d like to bring up is one particular empirical confirmation of evolution: we humans have two fewer chromosomes than the other Great Apes (we have 46, they have 48). Did this information get lost or ‘deleted’ somewhere in our ancestors’ descent to humanity? If so, then Darwinism would be disconfirmed. Using the evolutionary model, however, one could reconcile this seemingly fatal flaw by positing that the two chromosomes fused so that the amount of information is actually the same (or more, depending what happens to the chromosome in the successive generations). The entirety of Darwinism hinges on this prediction. And guess what. Our chromosome #2 — as confirmed by the anomalously placing on the telomeres and centromeres and a deactivated centromere (corresponding to chimp chromosome #13 — is just such a chromosome. Ken Miller presented this in his talk on ID at Brown University: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Gs1zeWWIm5M
How does ID explain why this happened? That is to say, why does it look exactly as if Darwinism has done the job and not sentient design?
Oops – silly me – I screwed up the formatting on that URL. I meant to write “This is why we can use Darwinian algorithms to produce CSI using computers.” The address is http://tinyurl.com/3dayxr.
Sorry! This is a perfect example of stupid design.
Stephen c. meyer, a proponent of Intelligent design,perpetuates the hoax first claimed by Crick and Watson that DNA (deoxynoradrenaline)exists in “cells” and makes all life somehow magically work!
This is utter balderdash. there are no “cells” in any living creature. Science has never ever shown that “cells” or DNA exist. The whole crumbling edifice of biology has hastily thrown together a hoax to blinker people to the real world. “Cells” are nothing more than bacteria feeding on the material of our bodies. DNA is nothing but a fiction cooked up by Crick and Watson to get a Knobel prize.
There are no “cells” in the human body. It doesn’t need them. There is only dead matter that the Almighty, in his infinite knowlege, has animated by putting a soul into it. The soul is electromagnetic in nature and vanishes to heaven when the body “dies”. Heaven can be heard on radio telescopes. It is the background “noise” created by the big bang.
Intelligent Design denies the creator his due and perpetuates the hoaxes of “cells and DNA. Evolution does not occur.