On Fri, 19 Jul 1996 11:46:20 -0400 (EDT), lhaarsma@OPAL.TUFTS.EDU wrote:
[continued]
LH>If I were to slightly re-word Steve's proposal, above, it would be
>agreeable not only to nearly all progressive creationists, but also to
>nearly all evolutionary creationists/theistic evolutionists. How about
>this:
>
> At strategic points in biological history, God brought about new
> designs (eg. a change to the genetic code specifying a gill-arch
> became a jaw). Thereafter, ordinary (ie. "microevolutionary")
> processes (under God's providential control) would operate on
> that design until the next major step (eg. a foot from a fin).
> This is fully in accord with the scientific facts and also with
> the account of God's progressive acts of creation in Genesis 1.
I fully agree with the above if by "a change to the genetic code"
embraces the possibility of God intervening supernaturally. That is
fully in accord with Genesis 1 and John 1 where the exogenous Word
adds new information:
"The most important statement in Scripture about creation is not
contained in Genesis but in the opening verses of the Gospel of John:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came
into being through him, and without him not one thing came into
being. (John 1:1-3) This statement plainly says that creation was by
a force that was (and is) intelligent and personal. The essential,
bedrock position of scientific naturalism is the direct opposite of
John 1:1-3. Naturalistic evolutionary theory, as part of the grand
metaphysical story of science, says that creation was by impersonal
and unintelligent forces. The opposition between the biblical and
naturalistic stories is fundamental, and neither side can compromise
over it. To compromise is to surrender." (Johnson P.E., "Reason in
the Balance", InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove Ill., 1995,
pp107-108)
Even some eminent evolutionists like Grasse recognise that coded
information cannot arise from known naturalistic forces:
"Any living being possesses an enormous amount of `intelligence,'
very much more than is necessary to build the most magnificent of
cathedrals. Today, this `intelligence' is called information, but it
is still the same thing. It is not programmed as in a computer, but
rather it is condensed on molecular scale in the chromosomal DNA or
in that of eve] other organelle in each cell. This "intelligence" is
the sine qua non of life. Where does it come from? ...This is a
problem that concerns both biologists and philosophers, and, at
present science seems incapable of solving it.... If to determine
the origin of information in a computer is not a false problem, why
should the search for the information contained in cellular nuclei be
one? (Grasse P.P., "The Evolution of Living Organisms", Academic
Press: NY, 1977, p2, in Buell J. & Hearn V., eds., "Darwinism:
Science or Philosophy?", Foundation for Thought and Ethics:
Richardson TX, 1994, p6)
LH>This leaves open the question of whether or not certain "strategic
>points" were necessarily "supernatural;" it also suggests a line of
>research! We look in the fossil record for points of rapid
>morphological change, and then study the genes which determine that
>change in modern species. (Note: there are already a few groups
>doing this kind of research. I recall reading a _Nature_ article
>about a year ago on, I believe, the tetrapod foot.)
This is a good example. A fish grew a foot millions of years before
it needed it on land.
"It is one of those fixed images of evolution: adventurous fish
managing to hoist themselves onto their stubby fins and crawling
clumsily out of the swamps to forage for food. Once these primeval
creatures were on terra firma, their offspring began to adapt to
their new environment, natural selection (over tens of millions of
years) favoring those that developed features well suited to life on
land: paws, hooves, knees, joints, fingers and thumbs. Thus, as
generations of schoolchildren have learned, did these marine
creatures give rise to frogs, birds, dinosaurs and all the rest.
There's only one problem with this familiar version of how our
distant ancestors emerged from the sea: it's probably wrong. For
one thing, the first creatures to waddle ashore were arthropods with
well- developed legs and pincers. For another, newly assembled
fossils-in particular, a 360 million-year-old salamander- like
aquatic animal called Acanthostega- strongly suggest that TOES
AND FEET WERE DEVELOPED BEFORE THE FIRST RELATIVES OF
FISH CLIMBED ONTO LAND, NOT AFTER. Moreover, in shape and
function, Acanthostega's fully jointed toes bear no resemblance to
the spiky, fanlike fins of a fish. Scientists believe they
understand how a fish's gills evolved into an amphibian's lungs. But
how did fins turn into feet like these?
The answer may be in the genes. That's the tantalizing conclusion of
a team of researchers from the University of Geneva in Switzerland.
They have discovered that genes associated with the formation of fins
in fish are the same ones that orchestrate the development of paws in
mice. "Think of a mouse as a fish with limbs, or a fish as a mouse
with fins," says University of Geneva developmental biologist Denis
Duboule. "What a mouse does is take a fin and put something extra on
top of it." That something extra, Duboule and his colleagues suggest
in the journal - Nature, is provided by a special set of genes that
act as master architects in a surprisingly broad range of animals,
from rodents to roundworms. These gossamer strands of DNA-known as
homoeotic homeobox genes, or Hox genes for short-lay out the embryo
from head to tail, controlling everything from the development of
limbs and the wiring of the spinal cord to the patterning of the gut
and urogenital tracts. "What's amazing," says University of
Pennsylvania paleontologist Neil Shubin, "is that evolution of
complex structures appears to be controlled by this same small set of
genes." How do Hox genes pack such power? The DNA in all genes
carries instructions for assembling proteins out of chemical building
blocks called amino acids. What sets the proteins made by Hox genes
apart is the biochemical motif known as a homeobox, a stylized string
of 60 amino acids that enables Hox proteins to stick to DNA like
strips of molecular Velcro and, in the process, activate still other
genes. Hundreds of genes belong to the extended homeobox family, but
those that are also homoeotic- associated with changes in body
parts-are the most important. Though they are few in number (38 out
of an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 genes in modern vertebrates, the
Hox genes control much of what happens during embryonic development.
...Duboule believes that over the eons of prehistory, Hox genes
played a key role in the origin of species, facilitating the process
of evolutionary change. Scientists now know, for example, that the
genes that trigger the formation of hands and feet also control many
other developmental processes in posterior part of an animal-among
them, the addition of an anal opening to the digestive tract and, in
four-legged creatures, the fusion of the lower vertebrae to make a
pelvis. Isn't it curious, says Duboule, that fish lack a true pelvis
as well as hands and feet? This suggests to him that both
structures-the appendages for walking and the bony apparatus that
anchors them to the spine-are linked at some deep genetic level that
is yet to be plumbed....
..The drawback for scientists is that NATURE'S SHREWD ECONOMY
CONCEALS ENORMOUS COMPLEXITY. RESEARCHERS ARE FINDING
EVIDENCE THAT THE HOX GENES AND THE NON-HOX HOMEOBOX
GENES ARE NOT INDEPENDENT AGENTS BUT MEMBERS OF VAST
GENETIC NETWORKS THAT CONNECT HUNDREDS, PERHAPS
THOUSANDS, OF OTHER GENES. CHANGE ONE COMPONENT, AND
MYRIAD OTHERS WILL CHANGE AS WELL-AND NOT NECESSARILY
FOR THE BETTER. Thus dreams of tinkering with nature's toolbox to
bring to life what scientists call a "hopeful monster"-such as a fish
with feet-are likely to remain elusive. Scientists, as Duboule
observes, are still far from reproducing in a laboratory the
biochemical artistry that nature has taken millions of years to
accomplish."
(J. Madeleine Nash, "Where Do Toes Come From?", TIME, August 7,1995,
pp68-69. emphasis mine)
IMHO, this is abasolutely fatal to Dawkins (ie. Neo-Darwinism's)
Blind Watchmaker. Dawkins' model needs to explain specified
complexity by an accumulation of simplicity. But here in Hox genes
we have already have specified complexity.
LH>Here comes the difficult part, which is still beyond our
>scientific abilities: we try to determine if this morphological
>change could have happened with a single mutation (or perhaps a very
>small number of changes with viable intermediates), or if this
>change would have required a large number of precise mutations
>without viable intermediates. (Personally, I'm hopeful that we
>WILL, eventually, have the ability to make that sort of
>determination.) In the former case, we would be inclined to say
>that God brought about that new design through "ordinary" (albeit
>strategic) providential control (though logically, we couldn't
>exclude a "supernatural intervention"); in the latter case, we would
>have a strong case for supernatural intervention.
Agreed. But if the Hox genes indeed conceal "enormous complexity"
within a "shrewd economy", and if "the hox genes...are not
independent agents but members of vast genetic networks that connect
hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other genes" such that to "change one
component, and myriad others will change as well-and not necessarily
for the better", and this is beyond modern day scientsts "dreams of
tinkering with nature's toolbox", then this is the mark of an Intelligent
Designer, not of a mythological "nature".
LH>In the mean time, PC's like Steve are willing to go out on a limb
>and say that the scientific and theological data suggests that there
>were a number of "supernatural interventions." (Thus, PC's will no
>doubt prefer Steve's proposal's wording over mine.) That's
>reasonable, but EC's like me are willing to go out on a limb and say
>that the scientific and theological data we have so far suggests
>"providential control" at those "strategic points."
See above. We keep hearing about this mysterious "scientific and
theological data" that "so far suggests `providential control' at
those `strategic points' ", but we never seem to be told what exactly
it is? And what exactly is meant by "providential control" that is
not "supernatural interventions"? If such "providential control" is
just the ordinary laws of nature (ie. random mutation guided by
natural selection), with no "supernatural interventions", how does
that account for the mind-numbing hierarchies of error-checked coded
information that is is inherent in even the simplest living organism?
God bless.
Steve
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