Preadaptation: A Blow to Irreducible Complexity?

ACTS & FACTS ^ | November 2009 | Brian Thomas, M.S.

[GodGunsGuts]

Molecular biologist Michael Behe described a system made of several interacting parts, whereby the removal of one part would disrupt the functioning of the whole, as irreducibly complex. Both creation scientists and intelligent design proponents highlight examples of irreducible complexity in their studies. The very structure of these systems--with their interdependent parts working all together or not at all--demands design, not chance.

Nevertheless, a team of evolutionary molecular biologists think they may have refuted irreducible complexity. They recently studied the parts of a particular cellular machine involved in protein transport, claiming that it was actually reducible to its component parts...

[GodGunsGuts]

Ping!

[Psycho_Bunny]

lol

[votemout]

Is there an English translation?

[ClearCase_guy]

Boy, they keep coming up with magic ideas, don't they? No evidence, no observed phenomenon. Just a wild "Hey, maybe this explains it!"

More and more, evolution looks like the cartoon of the scientists at the blackboard, with a long equation which contains "a miracle occurs" as a step, and the older scientist says "I think you need more detail in Step Two".

[metmom]

Not IBT inane comment by an evo.

Do you actually have anything to say about the article?

Perhaps some comment as to why irreducible complexity isn’t a realistic scenario?

Maybe how all these unrelated parts with no use on their own, just happened to be floating around somewhere until they decided to get together and make something useful?

[rsobin]

This is their religion. Your speech is hateful.

[Cicero]

Irreducible complexity on the molecular level was, for me, the finishing blow for a general theory of evolution, when I read Michael Behe’s book.

I never had a religious problem with the General Theory, because it seemed to me that God could perfectly well have worked through evolution if He so chose. And the Catholic Church has gone out of its way to accommodate Evolution. But I have always had scientific problems with it.

Sure, there is intra species evolution. Darwin was quite right about that. Birds can develop longer beaks if they need them to pick insects out of the bark of trees or suck their food out of deeper flowers. Dogs can be bred to be faster, or larger, or whatever their owners find desirable, within reasonable limits. Deer can grow longer and faster legs at the same time that wolves do the same thing.

But how do you explain, using evolutionary theory, the development of the first eyeball, or the first wings. Because these excrescences would be counterproductive,a drag on the individual animals who developed them, UNTIL they finally became usable over a period of presumably thousands of years. How would an animal with half-developed wings slowing it down and holding it back and getting tangled in the grass beat out an animal who had the advantage of no burdensome half-wings? What advantage would there be in a half-developed eye that couldn’t yet see anything? Yes, lower order plants are phototropic, and respond to light, but there’s an unbridgeable gap between that and growing an eyeball.

That occurred to me as a teenager when I first studied biology. Of course, Behe’s cellular level complexity takes it to a whole new level of astronomical improbability.

Moreover, inter-species evolution has never been observed, only theorized about. And the general theory is no closer to being proved than it was when Darwin first proposed it.

Molecular “Machines” build themselves, when they have no point in even existing? How likely is that? This latest response to Behe sounds like a work of desperation.

[GodGunsGuts]

Kind of like the infinite universe hypothesis, which was invented out of whole cloth to provide an unintelligent explanation (hehe) for our finely tuned Universe.

[raygunfan]

Hello, and welcome to secular humanism’s Handwaving 101.

[metmom]

How would an animal with half-developed wings slowing it down and holding it back and getting tangled in the grass beat out an animal who had the advantage of no burdensome half-wings?

You'll get ganged up on for that one. I asked a similar question about limbs that would be evolving to flippers for use in water and just got mocked for that one.

I never did get a decent explanation of how a limb that was halfway between leg and flipper could be of decent use as either.

A leg that was half flipper, wouldn't be good for running or climbing. A fin or flipper that was half leg wouldn't be as efficient for swimming.

In either case, it would slow down the creature to be caught in whatever medium it was in. The creature couldn't run fast enough to elude fully legged land creatures, and couldn't swim fast enough to escape fully finned and streamlined water creatures.

[GodGunsGuts]

Excellent reply! I would only add that things have gotten far worse for Darwin’s ToE since he first unveiled it—especially re: molecular biology!

[ColdWater]

“Molecular biologist Michael Behe “ believes that God may be dead since we have no evidence of his existence in the last few hundred million years and believes that we should teach in public schools that God may be dead.

[Ira_Louvin]

It seems that Mr. Thomas seems to have “overlooked” vital parts of the article in his is attempt to refute its findings

Intelligent design mavens once cited flagella as evidence of their theory. Scientific fact dispelled that illusion. The mitochondria study does the same for protein transport.

“This analysis of protein transport provides a blueprint for the evolution of cellular machinery in general,” write the researchers, led by molecular biologist Trevor Lithgow at Australia’s Monash University. “The complexity of these machines is not irreducible.”

When they analyzed the genomes of proteobacteria, the family that spawned the ancestors of mitochondria, Lithgow’s team found two of the protein parts used in mitochondria to make TIM23.

The parts are located on bacterial cell membranes, making them ideally positioned for TIM23’s eventual protein-delivering role. Only one other part, a molecule called LivH, would make a rudimentary protein-transporting machine — and LivH is commonly found in proteobacteria.

The process by which parts accumulate until they’re ready to snap together is called preadaptation. It’s a form of “neutral evolution,” in which the buildup of the parts provides no immediate advantage or disadvantage. Neutral evolution falls outside the descriptions of Charles Darwin. But once the pieces gather, mutation and natural selection can take care of the rest, ultimately resulting in the now-complex form of TIM23.

“It hasn’t been possible up until this point to trace any of those proteins back to a bacterial ancestor,” said Dalhousie University cell biologist Michael Gray, one of the researchers who originally described the origins of mitochondria, but was not involved in the new study. “These three proteins don’t perform precisely the same function in proteobacteria, but with a simple mutation could be transformed into a simple protein transport machine that could start the whole thing off.”

“You look at cellular machines and say, why on earth would biology do anything like this? It’s too bizarre,” he said. “But when you think about it in a neutral evolutionary fashion, in which these machineries emerge before there’s a need for them, then it makes sense.”

I think the quote mining was a nice touch, subtle and not too obvious

[Blood of Tyrants]

I saw the fallacy of their logic immediately. Why would these useless individual components “evolve” and then be kept around the cells for untold generations if they did not afford an advantage to the host?

[GodGunsGuts]

What part of that confused mix of italics and underlines convinced you that mindless preadaption, invisible as it is to Darwin’s natural selection god, is somehow a better explanation for the existence of these supersophisticated bio-nano machines than Creation/ID?

[Chode]

kinda like heart and lungs... air goes in and out, blood goes round.

[ElectronVolt]

My problem with these attempts to disprove evolution is that they ultimately say that God isn't good enough to produce a system that can adapt, improve and flourish. No, the system needs those constant creationist tweaks to keep going. People point to unexplained areas of evolution and saying the absence of proof is precisely the evidence for Creation.

However, there are quite a few unexplained areas of particle physics that defy explanation, but that only means we haven't found the cause yet. One by one, the holes get patched.

Some people start with the belief that an active, Creationist God is the fact, and that science then must conform. I absolutely believe in intelligent design and that God had intentions for the Universe and for each person in it, but that for God to interfere and direct things, He would have to interfere with laws of physics, laws that He wrote. Ah, but some say that quantum mechanics allows for such tinkering. Well, no. QM is governed by strict laws of probability, and tinkering would put those out of balance. A god that needs to interfere with his own laws doesn't say very much about his power.

Yet it should be obvious that the Universe is well designed and life is not a violation of the Third Law of Thermodynamics (entropy). Clearly there is purpose and a design that we see all about us.

[Mudtiger]

“But when you think about it in a neutral evolutionary fashion, in which these machineries emerge before there’s a need for them, then it makes sense.”

Why would machineries emerge (be selected for) if there is no need for them? If they offer no advantage why would they come to predominate in the population?

[GodGunsGuts]

Indeed, the more science learns, the more absurd the evos explanations become...which is one of the hallmarks of a bad scientific theory. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't also point out that the more scientists learn about the incredible ingenuity and sophistication of life, the more rational the argument from Creation/ID becomes!