Evolution's new wrinkle: Proteins with cruise control provide new perspective (DIRECTED MUTATION!)

Princeton University ^ | November 10, 2008 | Kitta MacPherson

[GodGunsGuts]

A team of Princeton University scientists has discovered that chains of proteins found in most living organisms act like adaptive machines, possessing the ability to control their own evolution.

The scientists do not know how the cellular machinery guiding this process may have originated, but they emphatically said it does not buttress the case for intelligent design, a controversial notion that posits the existence of a creator responsible for complexity in nature...

[Texas Songwriter]

I disagree with everything you said. I will leave it at that.

[muawiyah]

Gene repair mechanisms must certainly exist ~ Deinococcus radiodurans ~ a radioactivity resistant bacteria certainly demonstrates that.

Could well be the inspiration behind this latest discovery. No doubt there will be more such discoveries, and eventually someone will come up with a generalized thesis describing what's up with these proteins, and "how they know that they know".

I anxiously await the first doctoral award in this exciting new field!

[AndrewC]

Quantum events have no cause in the classical sense. Certainly no local cause. This may or may not hold as we learn more, but the best empirical evidence is that things at the quantum level happen without cause.

Care to elucidate that point. And "non-deterministic" is not "not caused".

[gracesdad]

Intelligent design is religion. Period.

[muawiyah]

It is? ID is simply the thesis that life here on Earth exhibits signs that it has been "designed".

There's no more to it than that.

[Coyoteman]

ID is simply the thesis that life here on Earth exhibits signs that it has been "designed".

There's no more to it than that.

The Discovery Institute, the leading proponent of the recent version of ID, spilled the beans in the Wedge Strategy, a document somehow leaked from their organization.

While they might now claim that ID has no relation to religion, this is what they said in the Wedge Strategy:

We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions. ...

Governing Goals

--To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
--To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.

Doesn't sound much like science to me, eh?

Sounds a lot more like a stealth effort to promote religion under the guise of science, much like creation "science" prior to its unfortunate demise in the 1988 Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguillard.

[AndrewC]

Sounds a lot more like a stealth effort to promote religion under the guise of science, much like creation "science" prior to its unfortunate demise in the 1988 Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguillard.

Whatever it sounds like to you does not make the Discovery Institute synonymous with Intelligent Design. And the fact that DI has an agenda does not make ID any more a religion than Richard Dawkins pronouncements makes his writings science.

[mlo]

"I'd suggest the biological supercomputer behind this directed process KNOWS all about evolution and wants no part of that game."

Are you attributing intent to a protein molecule?

[gracesdad]

Please, ID is creationism. Nothing else.

[mlo]

"I understand that you believe that every living organism designed itself through “Natural Selection.”

"Designed itself"? No, design is not the right word.

"It does not matter how many engineered systems exist within a living organism,..."

What is an "engineered system" in an organism, and how do you tell?

"...Nothing is guiding it nor propelling it, it just is."

The same thing is guiding it that always has. The competition to reproduce.

[mlo]

"If that is so, then a personal decision to create rather than remain in abject nothingness was made."

No, this doesn't follow. Conceding for the sake of argument that there is a point before which science can say nothing, that just means we can know nothing about it. You can no more say that some "personal decision to create" was made, than you can talk about what came before.

Creationists would like their belief to be a default answer that takes over wherever other answers are unavailable. It doesn't work that way.

[mlo]

"ID is simply the thesis that life here on Earth exhibits signs that it has been "designed"."

How do you have design without a designer?

[muawiyah]

Who or what the "designer" might be may or may not be totally relevant.

If "we" started out as specially modified critters whose purpose was to assist intergalactic calcium miners, it's probably meaningless. On the other hand, if the apparant "evolution" we see in our samplings of fossils is really a record of "improved species" being brought to Earth, then it could be really, really, really important.

Religion, which includes the worship of demigods such as "Natural Selection", is a totally different sort of subject.

[GourmetDan]

"Just so we understand each other, you are asserting that you can make up things I never said and continue the discussion as if I said them. Does that really make sense to you?"

Just so we understand each other, you are asserting that realities don't exist unless you say they exist and cannot be discussed unless you say so.

Does that really make sense to you?

[muawiyah]

The Discovery Institute is not a good source of information for ID.

What they've done is played on the fears of the "Natural Selection" worshippers and dragged in the prospect of "God's Gonna' Get You", and there you have it.

It's like attending Reverend Phelps church ~ looks like a church, sounds like a church, uses all the church words, but their business is to get rid of homosexuals come Hell or Highwater.

To wit, the Discovery Institute and Fred Phelps are both "false witnesses" who have an agenda not at all consistent with that of those who they seek to associate with.

[GourmetDan]

"Repeating yourself provides no heft to your attempt at an argument."

Neither does it provide any heft for your attempt at an argument, but you seem to have engaged in quite a bit of it yourself.

"Stating "you have no critical thinking skills" pretty much says "I have no idea what I am talking about, but I'll put it on you.""

No, it says that you have no critical-thinking skills and cannot recognize that fact.

[muawiyah]

We need to follow this little protein "mechanism" back up the line to the point of its generation and figure out what's going on in greater detail.

[muawiyah]

The “Competition to Reproduce” is yet another demigod ~ best avoided in this sort of discussion. These young people have worked long and hard to find out what’s fixing broken DNA. Now, if they can discover how that stuff is manufactured, they’ll probably become quite famous.

[js1138]

Since it's first state cannot be explained in terms of earlier initial conditions and natural laws leading up to, it seem to to mandate an uncaused cause.

I think you are somewhat behind the times in terms of what science can and cannot investigate.

We have already been around the issue of causation. If you axiomatically require causation, you wind up with an infinite regress. Asserting that there is an entity that does not require a first cause is logically indistinguishable from asserting that first cause in not required.

An honest person might conclude that we just don't know.

[GourmetDan]

"Science, in its current state merely is."

Failing to recognize the philosophical basis for science (that of naturalism) is exactly what I have been trying to get you to recognize. If you simply refuse to admit that and repeat your statements, that provides no heft for your attempt at argument.

"I asked a simple yes/no question. You refuse to answer it."

Again, I have answered your question directly several times now. You simply refuse to admit that philosophical naturalism is the basis for science and insist that I pretend that is not true. Your attempt at the old "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" tactic is well recognized.

"This thread has degenerated into you just repeating yourself in your assertions of a bunch of gobbledygook and saying "logical fallacies" a lot (unfounded, as anyone who knows what logical fallacies really are can see)."

I am forced to repeat my arguments because you repeat the same philosophically-based question. The reason you think it's gobbledygook is because you are incapable of understanding the answer. I have repeatedly pointed out the types of logical fallacies and where they are used. You engage in hand-waving in an attempt to dismiss them simply because your belief in philosophical naturalism has destroyed your ability to think critically.

"Since we aren't even discussing the OP anymore and you continue to refuse to answer my very simple question, I am outta here."

We are discussing the basic foundational beliefs of science and I have answered your question each time such that you complain that I repeat myself. If you cannot understand that my answers address your question at its basic foundation that isn't my fault.