Posted on 05/25/2009 5:48:24 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Facilitated variation: a new paradigm emerges in biology
Alex Williams
Facilitated variation is the first comprehensive theory of how life works at the molecular level, published in 2005 by systems biologists Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart in their book The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma. It is a very powerful theory, is supported by a great deal of evidence, and the authors have made it easy to understand. It identifies two basic components of heredity: (a) conserved core processes of cellular structure, function and body plan organization; and (b) modular regulatory mechanisms that are built in special ways that allow them to be easily rearranged (like ®Lego blocks) into new combinations to generate variable offspring. Evolvability is thus built-in, and the pre-existing molecular machinery facilitates the incorporation of new DNA sequence changes that occur via recombinations and mutations. The question of origin becomes especially acute under this new theory because the conserved core processes and the modular regulatory mechanisms have to already be in place before any evolution can occur. The new molecular evidence shows virtually all the main components of neo-Darwinian theory are wrong...
(Excerpt) Read more at creation.com ...
For more recent evolutionary theory see ‘The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution’ by Greg Cochran & Henry Harpending.
2B: You and Henry assert that populations that adopted agriculture were much influenced by the development, and in non-insignificant, deep-in-the-biochemistry sorts of ways. What would your favorite examples of those adaptations be?
GC: Metabolic/diet changes like lactose tolerance, many changes in genes involved with defense against infectious disease, many changes in genes that affect hearing and smell, changes in neurotransmitters and related genes that most likely influence personality, changes in genes involved with the regulation of nerve connections and brain growth.
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2009/01/a_week_with_gre_1.html#005818
mega dittoes!
Thanks! I will be purchasing Kirschner and Gerhart’s book. How the Evos manage to maintain their absolute faith in blind materialism in the face of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary is beyond comprehension.
All the best—GGG
“Facilitated variability”. Sounds so....designed by an intelligence.
Willful ignorance is a term that comes to mind.
“Only intelligent design can explain such data. There are no
naturalistic explanations.”
That statement alone invalidates this paper as any type of creditable scientific review.
This paper could not stand up to peer-review outside of the pseudoscince world known as “Intelligent Design”
We both know that science only looks at naturalistic explantions. Any thing else falls out side of the realm of scince. The supernatural is not testable and thus is not part of the scientific method.
Please explain in detail how you could falsify their assertion?
==This paper could not stand up to peer-review outside of the pseudoscince world known as “Intelligent Design”
Alex Williams is a Creationist writing for the Journal of Creation. I used to be surprised by some of the ignorant things that came out of your mouth, but now I realize they are the norm.
Then why are you here on this thread?
Did you see Ira’s reply in #26? Beyond not understanding the difference between ID and Creation, he seems to think that naturalistic explanations are sufficient to explain supernatural origins. LOL!
I accidentally pinged him. I didn’t take his screenname off one of my computers. Not to worry, the problem is solved now. What did you think of the article? Fascinating stuff!!!
Was the quote incorrect? Did it not come directly from the paper that you linked?
That quote can be found on page 22 :
“Conclusion
Let’s stand back consider the big picture of how life
works at the molecular level.
Life consists of conserved core processes and modular
regulatory circuits. All the special properties of the
conserved processes had to be in place before regulatory
evolution could take place. Where did they come from?
‘They may have emerged together as a suite, for we know
of no organism today that lacks any part of the suite.’
‘The novelty and complexity of the cell [the
most important conserved core processes that has
modular regulatory circuitry built-in] is so far
beyond anything inanimate in the world of today
that we are left baffled by how it was achieved.’
A living organism is ‘a poised response system
[that] responds to mutation by making changes it is
largely prepared in advance to make.’ ‘Genetic variation
or mutation does not have to be creative; it only needs to
trigger the creativity built into the conserved mechanisms.’
It could not be otherwise, because invariable life would
soon become extinct.
Who will be game enough to say the words? Only
intelligent design can explain such data. There are no
naturalistic explanations.”
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j22_1/j22_1_85-92.pdf
So the author in incorrect, I wonder how such a blatant error made through the very rigorous peer-review process that this paper was subject to?
It is interesting how you attacked me for being ignorant for correctly quoting the author of this paper, but failed to address my question to you.
No, what I asked was for you to explain in detail how you could falsify the authors assertion of supernatural explanations.
Thanks for the ping!
Thanks for the ping!
The article seems to be a technical restatement of the big question, chicken or egg first. That's not disparagement, it's a simple question that goes to the heart of the argument. Information doesn't float free like fog in the air, it is expressed in the a physical reality, the organism, in whole or in part.
But it takes information for the organism to exist.
Chicken or egg first.
I think this catches the flavor of the article:
“Living organisms have two main components: (a) enzyme mediated
biochemistry and (b) information-based regulatory
processes. Which came first? De Duve favours an ‘enzymes
first’ model because the information-based systems are so
optimal and specialized that he believes some process of
selection was needed to separate out the spectacularly clean
(100% purity) components from the ‘dirty gemisch’ (impure
mixture) of the environment.
However, physicist Hubert Yockey has studied information
in biology for 50 years and persuasively argues that because life has no reverse code for transferring information from proteins to RNA or DNA then it is impossible for life to have arisen in
a ‘proteins first’ scenario.
The information must have come first. The simplest code would have been a binary (two-letter)alphabet but all life works upon a more complex four-letter alphabet, so Yockey concludes that the question of origin is undecidable.4
This is not a necessary conclusion however, and appears to be no more than a ruse to avoid the uncomfortable conclusion that life may have been intelligently designed.”
And it is apparent that the question of life having been created cannot be avoided by saying, ‘We just don't talk about that’.
So in my wordy way, I'm saying I enjoyed reading it. I'll have to go over it again soon.
And secondly, do not scientists look for corroboration of their theories instead of contradiction? For example, if I perform an experiment I repeat it with the hope, expectation that I will get a similar result not a failure to do so. More positivism than falsificationism?
The philosophy of falsificationism is being offered up as an objection so it prompts my question.
Find the natural explanation.(and that explanation will not be a "just so story")
To PSS.. Your Yockey comment seems to have been answered by GGG in post 18, but your "interpretation" of Kirschner and Gerhart's work as "a modification and explanation of how the steps occurred!" of Darwin needs to be addressed. A modification lacking any description as to its extent can be pretty big. I would say that the modification guts Darwin. For many years now, I have posted this article by Dr. James Shapiro, A 21st Century View of evolution. Each time I posted it, the same response came from the Darwinists, they ignored or belittled it. Well, Kirschner and Gerhart's book contains a spitting image of Dr. Shapiro's arguments. So it leads me to believe that the Darwinist's novel embracing of the ideas behind Dr. Shapiro's arguments are an admission of the stark inadequacy of the neo-Darwinist paradigm. To give you an idea of how Dr. Shapiro fits into the scheme of things, here is something he wrote for the "Boston Review", A Third Way.
A further indication of the thinking of Dr. Shapiro is that he willingly and happily participated in an online conversation concerning his ideas on the ISCID(International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design) site whose fellows are the intelligent design ogres in the Darwinists minds. Here, How molecular biology opens up a 21st Century view of evolution.
Finally, K and G, if quoted correctly, still admit that Darwinism is inadequate to explain the genesis of the required elements of this new "vision",
QUOTE
‘… evolvability … is the greatest adaptation of all … Variation is facilitated largely because so much novelty is available in what is already possessed by the organism’ (pp. 252, 273). ‘The theory of facilitated variation opens up a new set of questions about the origins of the conserved core processes … [they] may have emerged together as a suite, for we know of no organism today that lacks any part of the suite. … The most obscure origination of a core process is the creation of the first prokaryotic cell. The novelty and complexity of the cell is so far beyond anything inanimate in the world of today that we are left baffled by how it was achieved’ (pp. 253, 256).
END QUOTE
The implication apparently being that, if lacking the core elements, the original cell could not have survived and therefore it could not have evolved into being.(a little bag of chemicals not being sufficient for life)
For more on Shapiro,
http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/2006.APS.augmented.pdf
http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/Shapiro.2005.Gene.pdf
For more on evolvability...Evolvability
Notice the author puts intelligent design in all lower case so he is not confused with the Intelligent Design movement. Surely you know that creationists were using that phrase long before the ID movement came along? Surely you know that Creationists mean something very different than IDers do when they refer to intelligent design?
==So in my wordy way, I’m saying I enjoyed reading it. I’ll have to go over it again soon.
LOL...I enjoyed it too. And like you, I will have to go over it a few more times, and look a few things up to fully digest it. And, as I mentioned above, I plan on purchasing Kirschner and Gerhart’s book and reading it as well...I want to know what Alex Williams means by “easy to read”!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.