Re: [asa] Yet again i seek help (Iain s???)

Iain,

Well, since you twisted my arm ..... ;-)

I'll have a shot at answering these. But you should bear in mind that
I'm not a biologist myself - I work in information technology, very
much at the mathematical algorithms end - analysing datasets using the
techniques of statistical pattern recognition. What I know about
evolution is what I've read and learnt through lists such as this; but
as a non-specialist in the field, what I write should not be taken as
Gospel truth (I'm cc-ing Steve Matheson in on this to run the
professional eye over what I write in case there are any mistakes!)

> - ----
> Don't mean to rain on your parade, but can you do something for me
> that evolutionists have so far been unable to do -- tell me how
> blood clotting came about through macro-evolution. Micro-evolution
> has never, and this is agreed to be all, led to a new kind of
> animal. That is, no one has ever seen a cat turn into another kind
> of animal that is new to this planet.
>

I read a year or so back a fascinating book "Darwin in the Genome" by
Lynn Caporale, a leading scientist with the pharmaceutical giant
Merck. I could recommend it thoroughly - it is beautifully and
graciously written, and furthermore she makes her peace with religion
right at the start - saying something vague that what she knows of
evolution is compatible with all the major religions - now let's get
on with talking about the science. However, in places the sheer
detail and complexity of the concepts tends to leave the mind reeling.

Caporale deals with the blood-clotting cascade, and other cascade
forms of metabolic reactions in a chapter titled "Theme and
Variations". As far as I recall (and this is perhaps where Steve may
correct me), she says that many of the proteins involved in the
blood-clotting cascade are very similar, differing only in small
details. Such "sets of variations" occur because of the tendency of
sections of DNA to translate and duplicate, reinserting somewhere else
(usually nearby as I recall). Now as I understand it, whatever the
end point is (e.g. clotted blood), there are times when an extra copy,
mutated slightly at one point, can get slotted into the chain of
reactions, and produce a slight improvement (e.g. in efficiency of the
process). In this way, long cascades of reactions build up; and
eventually, it becomes so complex that to remove any of the steps
would break the whole chain. But if one overviewed it from a "design"
perspective ( ie what would be the most economical, efficient design),
then one might well ask the question as to whether all those steps
were necessary.

An analogous idea I can think of is in developing software; one starts
with some quite simple design - and one implements the solution. But
then, on using it, you find all sorts of things that might have been
done more efficiently, or alternatively, extra things that one could
add in that would be useful. Before long, after a long series of
tweaks, what was a simple and easily maintainable program becomes
cumbersome and difficult to maintain. One such program, produced by a
company I used to work for, was eventually described by a senior
manager as being so complex that "you could not change anything in the
program without affecting about 25 other things that you didn't even
know existed!". That sounds like Irreducible Complexity to me! And
it arose out of small changes being continuously made to the program
without changing the original design, in order to meet user's demands.
 The decision made was to redesign the program from scratch for the
next generation of the software.

> Also, mutations do not lead to good results. I've heard all the
> arguments about things like sickle cell anemia being an example of
> a beneficial mutation because malaria carrying skeeters won't bite
> those with the sickle cell. Not sure how that is a benefit to the
> sick person since they are going to die from the sickle cell.

As I understand it, your correspondent has just misunderstood what
happens. I gather (again, perhaps Steve should correct me if I'm
wrong), that the reason the sickle cell mutation carries on is that if
one has ONE copy of the mutation (and the other from the equivalent
paired chromosome is not mutated), then the mutated copy confers a
resistance to malaria, but the fact that you have a non-mutated copy
means that you don't get the sickle-cell condition. It is only a
problem if BOTH chromosomes carry the sickle-cell mutation.

>
> So, here in more detail is what I'm asking for:
>
> 1. How did the first clotting start given random chance? BTW, God
> never once uses or talks about using chance on His part.
>
> 2. How, again given random chance, did the ability to stop the
> clotting before all the blood clotted come into existence?

I really don't like the term "random chance" frequently used by
Creationists in their rhetoric. My whole career in statistical
pattern recognition is to do with modelling random variables. Ask
your Creationist to define what they mean by "random chance". For
example, if you have an unbiassed die, then each outcome is equally
likely (probability 1/6), and I suppose you could say that is "totally
random". But what if the die is biassed, eg. a 1/2 chance of getting
a six, and a 1/10 chance of each of the other five. Is that "totally
random" or not? Well, not totally random - you can predict the
outcome 50% of the time by guessing the six. If it were unbiassed you
could only predict the outcome 1 in 6 times. But it is STILL RANDOM.

Now here's the key revelation (which I got from Caporale's book, and
have never seen in Dawkins). The probabilty of mutation at any given
point in the sequence of nucleotides is NOT the same. Caporale uses
an elegant metaphor of an unevenly constructed spiral staircase
(because the bond strengths for A-T and C-G differ). Because of this,
there are certain points, climbing the staircase that you are more
likely to trip up than others.

In fact there are large regions where mutations almost never occur (as
I understand it), and local hotspots where it happens quite regularly.

Hence DNA is like a biassed die, and hence predictable things can
happen - the process is not totally random.

(All this is before we've even started talking about Natural Selection!)

I would personally take your YEC person to task over this careless use
of the epithet "random chance".

On another discussion list, an ID proponent made the following
ludicrous statement "We insist that chance is blind because that is
the mathematical definition of chance" !! How can the word "blind"
which is a metaphor, constitute a "mathematical definition"?

>
> But, here is my major issue with evolution: My God, the God that I
> find in the pages of the Bible does not need to use pain, suffering
> and death to create the universe, this planet, and all life on it.
> To say that He used evolution, meaning macro-evolution where one
> kind turns into another kind, means that God HAD TO USE those three
> - -- pain, suffering, and death.

I've run out of time before a bible study meeting, and of course this
question would need volumes.

My own personal take on it is that in order to understand and
appreciate light we have to understand darkness. To create a world
where there is no suffering would not give us the perspective of
appreciation of the good things in life.

And also, even if your friend finds the evolution solution
unpalletable in what God does (re suffering in creation), I find the
alternative (literalist) view equally unpalatable. Now I got taken to
task for being flippant for making the following statement some time
earlier, but it is a serious point. How can one cope with the
unpleasant notion that just because a man and a woman ate a piece of
fruit they weren't supposed to, that God caused all the bad things to
happen, and inflicted immense suffering on all of creation, including
animals? Just look at the suffering inflicted by predatory animals on
their prey. Does one really have to believe that God HAD to make this
happen just because Adam sinned?

So whichever way you look at it, God allows and causes suffering to happen.

I'd better stop there as I've got people coming round. Hope some of
it was useful.

Iain

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Wed Nov 19 14:35:34 2008