CC
It was. Why can't this list automatically make replies go to *it* instead of
to the person who sent the post to the list? Who do we talk to about getting
this changed? Other lists do it, so why can't we? Can't we *evolve*? :-)
>
> On Tue, 7 Dec 1999 12:51:34 -0800, Chris Cogan wrote:
>
> >SJ>Here is an extract from a review of what promises to be a
*sensational*
> >>book. Astronomer Fred Hoyle's "Mathematics of Evolution", in which he
examines
> >>Neo-Darwinism and finds it wanting and as a by-product establishes
Irreducible
> >>Complexity....
> >>"Next it is a small step for Hoyle to claim that the protein histone-4
could
> >>never be produced in small steps. Why? Histone-4 has a chain of 102
amino
> >>acids and the structure is extremely conserved in all eukaryote species.
> >>Bovine histone-4 differs in only 2 positions with peas! And that means
> >>extreme functional constraints must exist. Histones are necessary for
> >>chromosome condensation during cell division. The traditional
> >>neoDarwinian step-by-step method must fail claims Hoyle, because it
> >>implies 100 non-functional steps. The alternative: a jump of 100
mutations
> >>of exactly the right kind would be highly improbable [20^100 or 10^130
> >>SJ]. The histone-4 case is in fact a case of Michael Behe's Irreducible
> >>Complexity long before Behe published his Darwin's Black Box, since the
> >>hand-written version of Mathematics of Evolution was 'published' in
1987."
> >>
> >>Chris has been calling for some evidence for ID, and now he's got it!
> >>If Histone-4 is too complex to have arisen by chance and too invariant
> >>to have arisen step-by-step, then the *only* possibility left is
Intelligent
> >>Design.
>
> CC>If only this were true.
>
> Chris' reply below indirectly confirms that it is! He offers no *real*
> alternative, just an imaginary world where cells don't need histone-4.
CC
Until you can show that there are *no* reasonably likely alternatives
altogether, it really doesn't matter a whit whether it's imaginary or not.
You *still* don't get to argue from ignorance to a positive conclusion. You
can't use ignorance of such alternatives as a form of proof. If you could,
then the *most* ignorant would be able to prove the *most* claims (i.e.,
*anything* for which they were merely ignorant of alternatives).
SJ
> If Chris proposes this hypothesis, he would have to explain how this world
> of cells which did not need histone-4 was replace by the present world of
> eukaryote cells which *all* use histone-4.
CC
No, I don't. See above. All I have to do is point out that that possibility
has not been excluded by Hoyle's narrow-minded approach. I'm just pointing
out the flaws in the Hoyle/Behe argument, not offering any positive claims
of my own.
The Hoyle/Behe argument has the *burden* of proof. That means there is a
requirement for excluding alternatives. The proof is not a proof until that
is done. If there's a maze and you try *one* path it and it doesn't come out
the other side, it does *not* mean that there is no path through the maze at
all. Yet, this is *exactly* the type of "reasoning" you have been trying to
foist off on us for months now. As someone else pointed out in another post,
there's potentially a *huge* number of paths from simpler molecules to
histone-4. Until there is some *evidence* that they are *impossible* or
extremely unlikely, there is no significant case for irreducibility.
> CC>I can see several areas of probable problems already, just from the
review
> >highlights above (assuming that they accurately represent the book). The
> >irreducible complexity argument for histone-4 is pretty shaky because it
> >assumes that if it *did* evolve, it did so in some straightforward manner
to
> >serve its present functions, in cells that need it for what they *now*
need
> >it for, etc. This is a long string of assumptions that *often* don't hold
in
> >evolution, so I don't see any reason to assume that histone-4 would be
> >required to evolve that way, either. This is a major weakness in the
whole
> >"irreducible complexity" *type* of argument, whether it's applied to
> >individual proteins or to entire organ-complexes.
>
> It is not a "weakness in the whole `irreducible complexity' *type* of
> argument". It shows how Darwinism cannot be falsified *in the minds of its
> adherents*!
CC
No, it's a fundamental defect in the arguments. They claim to be proofs of
something that they are *not* proofs of, pure and simple.
> Darwin claimed his theory could be falsified by a biological system which
> was too complex to arise in a stepwise fashion:
CC
What that requires is that there be, at least effectively, *no* stepwise
paths to such complexity. This would *still* falsify Darwinism, if such an
instance could be found. The problem is that Hoyle and Behe (and you) are
prematurely claiming to have found such complexity. *Their* failure to do so
is not a weakness of evolutionary theory, since evolutionary theory never
claimed that the kind of straightforward development of complexity that they
are speaking of was the *only* stepwise way to complexity.
All that would be required for a test of evolution would be to show that, in
*every* direction from the molecule involved, there would be somewhere too
large a gap to be crossed in a single step. It obviously does *not* mean
that it has to arrive at the complexity by *one* particular pre-chosen path,
or even by a pre-chosen range of such paths.
The problem is that people like Behe and Hoyle think they've found such an
instance when in fact they've still got huge amounts of work to do to show
that it *is* such a molecule. They've tried *one* path to get through the
maze and then triumphantly declared that there are *no* paths through it,
even though they haven't even *tried* the other paths. That's not science;
that's just simple-minded rationalization. It's disgusting that these people
are pretending to have proved something when they've *ignored* the *basic*
requirements (and it's no help that you blindly follow them, either).
> "Darwin knew that his theory of gradual evolution by natural selection
> carried a heavy burden: `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.'
> It is safe to say that most of the scientific skepticism about Darwinism
in
> the past century has centered on this requirement. From Mivart's concern
> over the incipient stages of new structures to Margulis's dismissal of
> gradual evolution, critics of Darwin have suspected that his criterion of
> failure had been met. But how can we be confident? What type of
> biological system could not be formed by "numerous, successive, slight
> modifications"? Well, for starters, a system that is irreducibly complex.
By
> irreducible complexity I mean a single system composed of several well-
> matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein
the
> removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease
> functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly
> (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues
to
> work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a
> precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system
> that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. An irreducibly
complex
> biological system, if there is such a thing, would be a powerful challenge
to
> Darwinian evolution.
CC
Actually, it would *not* be a powerful challenge, the way Behe defines it.
He defines it as a system in which the "*removal* of any one of the parts
causes the system to effectively cease functioning" (my emphasis). Note
here that he is *already*, at this early stage, setting up to exclude *all*
other paths than those that *merely* build up to the system in question.
Then he *compounds* the error in his following remarks, by talking about
"continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the
*same* mechanism" (my emphasis again).
Why is this an error? Because this is *not* a falsification of Darwin's (and
especially not of neo-Darwinian) theory. Evolution requires complex
structures to be arrived at by stepwise fashion, but does *not* require that
they be arrived at from any particular *direction*. In other words, they can
be arrived at from the side or from above, as well as directly from below.
> Since natural selection can only choose systems that
> are already working then if a biological system cannot be produced
> gradually it would have to arise as an integrated unit, in one fell swoop,
for
> natural selection to have anything to act on." (Behe M.J., "Darwin's Black
> Box", 1996, p38)
CC
Again, consider the maze example. Or consider a building with many doors on
all sides. If the ones on the front are locked, does it mean that *all*
doors are locked?
SJ
> But when faced with such an example, Darwinists just conjure up an
> imaginary world of "cells" which don't need histone-4, despite the fact
that
> it is *universal* in all known eukaryotic cells.
CC
Did you forget that there were cells around before eukaryotic cells? Did you
forget, if evolutionary theory is true, that existing eukaryotic cells
probably do not well reflect the *original* eukaryotic cells? If there was a
period in which something *more* complex than histone-4 was used, it would
be an evolutionary improvement to simplify it to histone-4, and that, if
this *was* a significant improvement, such newcomers might well have
completely supplanted the earlier eukaryotic organisms?
> CC>In short, while I reserve the right to change my mind upon seeing the
book,
> >it certainly does not seem, from the above review highlights, that it
really
> >has the evidence that Stephen is already claiming for it (apparently
without
> >having read the book himself, at that).
>
> This is an important admission by Chris that there is at least "evidence"
for
> irreducible complexity, and hence intelligent design.
CC
I didn't say there was evidence. I merely expressed my willingness to *see*
if there was evidence. I'm very doubtful that there *is* such evidence. I'd
be willing to bet, if suitable objective tests could be made, that no such
evidence will *ever* be found in the case of Earth life, because I seriously
doubt that Earth-based life *was* designed.
SJ
We *are* making progress!
CC
In a way, yes. It may have been demonstrated by Hoyle and Behe that the
naive view that *all* complex molecules that exist must be arrived at by a
straightforward bottom-up process is false. But, since evolutionary theory
never claimed such a thing to begin with, it will only falsify evolutionary
theory if it is shown that such complex molecules cannot be arrived at by
*any* evolutionary, stepwise process, just as Darwin said.
> CC>Again, I may be premature in saying
> >this, but it appears that Hoyle should stick with astronomy (or writing
> >rule-books for card games! :-) ).
>
> I note the :-). But Hoyle was no mere astronomer. As the bio below at
> Amazon.com states, Hoyle is by training "a theoretical physicist" and "At
> the University of Cambridge, he was a lecturer in mathematics for eleven
> years" before he became a professor of astronomy at Cambridge:
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> [...]
>
> On Tue, 7 Dec 1999 13:51:25 -0800, Chris Cogan wrote:
>
> >CC>Hoyle is definitely not ignored in the evolution literature. The
following
> >>stories circulate in the literature: Panspermia, Hoyle's famous
Boeing-747
> >>story, his cosmological design argument and the Archaeopteryx forgery.
> >>The last three are not present in the current book. The Boeing-story in
> >>Hoyle's own words:
> >>
> >>A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered
> >>and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is
the
> >>chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will
be
> >>found standing there? ["The Intelligent Universe",1983, page 19.]
CC
> >>Essentially zero.
> >
> >However, the point of the story is only remotely related to evolutionary
> >theory, since evolutionary theory contains *nothing* analogous to this
> >situation. Evolution'
SJ
> In the context Hoyle is talking about the origin of life:
> "The popular idea that life could have arisen spontaneously on Earth
dates
> back to experiments that caught the public imagination earlier this
century.
> If you stir up simple nonorganic molecules like water, ammonia, methane,
> carbon dioxide and hydrogen cyanide with almost any form of intense
> energy, ultraviolet light for instance, some of the molecules reassemble
> themselves into amino acids, a result demonstrated about thirty years ago
> by Stanley Miller and Harold Urey. The amino acids, the individual
building
> blocks of proteins can therefore be produced by natural means. But this is
> far from proving that life could have evolved in this way. No one has
> shown that the correct arrangements of amino acids, like the orderings in
> enzymes, can be produced by this method. No evidence for this huge jump
> in complexity has ever been found, nor in my opinion will it be.
> Nevertheless, many scientists have made this leap-from the formation of
> individual amino acids to the random formation of whole chains of amino
> acids like enzymes-in spite of the obviously huge odds against such an
> event having ever taken place on the Earth, and this quite unjustified
> conclusion has stuck. In a popular lecture I once unflatteringly described
> the thinking of these scientists as a "junkyard mentality". As this
reference
> became widely and not quite accurately quoted I will repeat it here. A
> junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and
> in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the
> chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be
> found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were
> to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe." (Hoyle F.,
> "The Intelligent Universe", Michael Joseph: London, 1983, pp18-19)
>
> >CC>Unless, of course, Hoyle *can* prove irreducible complexity where
> >Behe has failed. Does anyone want to bet that no fewer than three
possible
> >ways for building histone-4 have already been proposed (I'm going to do a
> >little checking before accepting any such bets, but I'd guess I'd be on
good
> >grounds).
>
> Note the switch from "evidence" to *proof"! No one, certainly not
> "Behe", is claiming to *prove* irreducible complexity. All Behe is
> claiming is that IC is the best *inference* from the evidence,
> because the only alternatives, chance and law are inadequate.
CC
Ah. Well, in that case, it's not much of a falsification, now, is it? If
it's merely an "inference," and if Behe does not bother to perform a similar
inference for all other prospective paths to such molecules, he *still* has
a lot of work to do, just as I said above (and probably below, too, since it
seems to be a theme here :-) ).
SJ
> But Behe concedes in Darwin's Black Box that it is always possible
> for materialist-naturalists to invent other explanations, including
> multiple universes, anthropic principles, aliens and time-travellers:
CC
Not to mention, of course, merely *other* pathways (remember, the side and
back doors of the building may not be locked). I'm willing to concede right
off that the front doors may be locked in some cases (except for the aliens
and such, who, presumably, have the keys to the front doors).
Note also, please, that Behe only offers rather bizarre alternatives to his
theory, rather than the ones that evolutionists would naturally suggest (but
that he so far can't refute).
Behe
> "For our present purposes, the interesting part of Crick's idea is the
role of
> the aliens, whom he has speculated sent space bacteria to earth. But he
> could with as much evidence say that the aliens actually designed the
> irreducibly complex biochemical systems of the life they sent here, and
also
> designed the irreducibly complex systems that developed later. The only
> difference is a switch to the postulate that aliens constructed life,
whereas
> Crick originally speculated that they just sent it here. It is not a very
big
> leap, though, to say that a civilization capable of sending rocket ships
to
> other planets is also likely to be capable of designing life-especially if
the
> civilization has never been observed. Designing life, it could be pointed
out,
> does not necessarily require supernatural abilities; rather, it requires a
lot of
> intelligence. If a graduate student in an earthbound lab today can plan
and
> make an artificial protein that can bind oxygen, then there is no logical
> barrier to thinking that an advanced civilization on another world might
> design an artificial cell from scratch. This scenario still leaves open
the
> question of who designed the designer-how did life originally originate?
Is
> a philosophical naturalist now trapped? Again, no. The question of the
> design of the designer can be put off in several ways. It could be
deflected
> by invoking unobserved entities: perhaps the original life is totally
unlike
> ourselves, consisting of fluctuating electrical fields or gases; perhaps
it does
> not require irreducibly complex structures to sustain it.
CC
Well, Behe is at least showing some honesty in admitting that, even if life
could not or did not evolve *here*, it might nevertheless have evolved
somewhere *else* and then have produced or started life here. This would
still fall well within the realm of naturalistic views. I accept it
certainly as possible that life on Earth began that way, but it certainly
does not seem to be the *only* purely naturalistic way for it to have come
about on Earth.
Behe
> Another possibility
> is time travel, which has been seriously proposed by professional
physicists
> in recent years. Scientific American informed the readers of its March
1994
> issue that: `far from being a logical absurdity...the theoretical
possibility of
> taking such an excursion into one's earlier life is an inescapable
> consequence of fundamental physical principles.' Perhaps, then,
biochemists
> in the future will send back cells to the early earth that contain the
> information for the irreducibly complex structures we observe today. In
> this scenario humans can be their own aliens, their own advanced
> civilization. Of course, time travel leads to apparent paradoxes (things
like
> grandsons shooting grandfathers before their offspring are born), but at
> least some physicists are ready to accept them. Most people, like me, will
> find these scenarios entirely unsatisfactory, but they are available for
those
> who wish to avoid unpleasant theological implications." (Behe M.J.,
> "Darwin's Black Box" , 1996, p248)
CC
I find the time travel idea even less acceptable than the alien idea. For
one thing, time itself has to be effectively redefined to be something
*other* than the progressive causal ordering of change. I can certainly
imagine a universe in which time-travel could *appear* to be real (using
something like Hawking's "imaginary time" as a kind of "meta-time"), but,
again, such farfetched alternatives are not necessary until Behe is able to
ensure that other paths to such molecular complexity are eliminated. This he
has not done. He has merely *dismissed* them, which is not quite the same
thing, in scientific terms, though Stephen seems to think it is.
> >CC>One problem with critics of evolutionary theory is that they don't
realize
> >that Nature is smarter than *they* are. The mere fact that *they* cannot
> >figure out a way for something to happen does not mean that it *can't*
> >happen. It means only that they (and perhaps the rest of us as well) are
> >*ignorant* of how it happened.
SJ
> Again Chris shows why Darwinism is unfalsifiable in the minds of its
> adherents. When faced with real world evidence that something can't
> happen, . . .
CC
Well, we're still waiting for that evidence. What we have so far is evidence
that it can't happen in *one* particular way, a way that is *not* required
for evolution to be true, and so it therefore does not count as a
falsification at all.
SJ
. . . they retreat to imaginary worlds where it can happen but we don't
> know how.
CC
Indirect pathways are hardly *imaginary.* They are found all the time in
biology. Why should this case be any different from thousands of others?
SJ
> But this is nothing new. Darwin himself pioneered this
> "argument from ignorance" line of defence:
>
> "As possibilities were promoted into probabilities, and probabilities into
> certainties, so ignorance itself was raised to a position only once
removed
> from certain knowledge. When imagination exhausted itself and Darwin
> could devise no hypothesis to explain away a difficulty, he resorted to
the
> blanket assurance that we were too ignorant of the ways of nature to know
> why one event occulted rather than another, and hence ignorant of the
> explanation that would reconcile the facts to his theory. When one
botanist
> argued that his theory was contradicted by the fact that some forms
> remained unaltered through long periods of time and wide expanse of
> space, Darwin admitted the objection to be "formidable in appearance, and
> to a certain extent in reality." But this did not deter him:
>
> `Does not the difficulty rest much on our silently assuming that we know
> more than we do? I have literally found nothing so difficult as to try and
> always remember our ignorance. I am never weary, when walking in any
> new adjoining district or country, of reflecting how absolutely ignorant
we
> are why certain old plants are not there present, and other new ones are,
> and others in different proportions.... Certainly a priori we might have
> anticipated that all the plants anciently introduced into Australia would
> have undergone some modification; but the fact that they have not been
> modified does not seem to me a difficulty of weight enough to shake a
> belief grounded on other arguments.'
>
> Somehow the fact that no adequate explanation suggested itself today
> seemed a warrant for the belief that such an explanation would suggest
> itself in the future, and that the explanation, moreover, would be bound
to
> vindicate his theory. Thus the argument from ignorance was made the
> prelude to a confident affirmation:
>
> `We are far too ignorant, in almost every case, to be enabled to assert
that
> any part or organ is so unimportant for the welfare of a species that
> modifications in its structure could not have been slowly accumulated by
> means of natural selection. But we may confidently believe...'
>
> It may be objected, however, that in the logic of science, as in the logic
of
> grammar, three negatives do not normally constitute a positive."
> (Himmelfarb G., "Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution", 1996, pp335-336)
CC
Darwin was not using his ignorance as a positive. He is not saying, "We
don't know this or that, therefore evolution is true." His argument *for*
evolution was evidence. He was merely pointing out here that we *are*
ignorant. It is a weakness in any field that there be ignorance, but it does
not refute the theory. It is falsification that refutes the theory, and that
falsification depends as much on evidence as does the theory itself. Not
*checking* whether all the doors are locked is not proof that they *are*
locked.
SJ
> If Darwinism, when faced with a difficulty, can always retreat to this
> argument from ignorance, how could Darwinism ever be falsified?
CC
It can only do this insofar as there *is* ignorance. If Behe (or Hoyle) had
done a (much!) better job, we might all be ID theorists today. All he had to
do was check to ensure that the other doors were in fact locked. But, he
didn't even walk around to the side doors, let alone the back doors.
SJ
> Or to put it another way, if Darwinism was false, how would Chris
> ever know it?
CC
Check all the naturalistic doors.
>
> >CC>Hoyle's argument appears to be the usual: An
> >argument from this very ignorance.
SJ
> The boot is on the other foot. It is *Hoyle* who is producing the
evidence.
> It is *Chris* who is using the "argument from...ignorance"!
CC
Since all I'm claiming is that prospective alternatives were not rationally
excluded, and since I am not using *my* ignorance, but Hoyle's and Behe's
ignorance, and since I'm not trying to prove evolution but merely showing
the glaring flaws in one particular argument against it, I don't see how
*my* argument is an argument from ignorance.
Now, *IF* I were saying something like, "We can't exclude alternatives to
evolution, therefore evolution is *true*," Stephen would have a good point.
But, I'm making no such claim. I'm criticizing an argument that *assumes*
that what is *not* known supports *its* conclusion, and I'm pointing out
that this is not necessarily true.
> >CC>Now, if he could *prove* that histone-4
> >is irreducible, that would be a different matter.
SJ
> Again how Chris has raised the bar from "evidence" to "prove". But once
> the challenge to Chris' atheistic worldview is over, he will revert back
to
> "ID has no evidence". Then when ID provides evidence, Chris will again
> raise the bar and say "ID has no proof"!
>
> If IC (and therefore ID) were true, how would Chris, with his panoply of
> defence mechanisms, ever know it?
CC
Simple: All naturalistic evolutionary mechanisms would be logically
excluded. Hoyle and Behe only exclude *one* such mechanism (or pathway, in
this case). When they check all the side and back doors to the building and
can show that *they* are locked, too, then they'll have something. But, as I
said, they haven't even bothered to walk around the side of the building.
--Chris C
Now is the time for all good people to come to.