Saturday, December 18, 2010

Sex Determination in Chickens: Evolution Wrong Again

Evolution is, as evolutionists like to say, absolutely necessary to do science. Darwin’s theory, in one version or another, is the underlying framework that guides our research. Nothing in biology makes sense, evolutionists like to repeat, except in the light of evolution. But in fact evolution is constantly upended. We are continually finding special cases, anomalies and exceptions, and evolution is more of a confusing patchwork of “On Tuesday’s it looks like this” than a useful theory. Consider just one example from this steady stream of failed expectations: sex determination in chickens.

Researchers studied three chickens that appeared to be literally half-male and half-female, and found that nearly every cell in their bodies — from wattle to toe — has an inherent sex identity. This cell-by-cell sex orientation contrasts sharply with the situation in mammals, in which organism-wide sex identity is established through hormones.

The confused fowl have upended a century-old rule, established for vertebrates, that all cells in an embryo start off sexually indifferent and remain so until a sex-determining gene directs the development of gonads into either ovaries or testes. The work appears in today’s Nature, and may trigger a rethink of the evolution of sex determination.

So sex determination in chickens is completely different than in mammals. Rather than evolution providing the underlying model allowing us to interpolate and extrapolate our observations, it needs to be explained away.

Gynandromorphs are striking because nothing like them has been seen in mammals. In almost all mammals, including humans, embryonic cells are initially sexually indistinguishable. During development, genetic factors trigger the formation of male or female gonads according to an animal's combination of sex chromosomes (XY for males and XX for females). The gonads then secrete hormones that direct other cells to develop as a certain sex.

We assumed that sex determination in birds would follow the mammal pattern,” Clinton says. Accordingly, the researchers thought that one side of the gynandromorphs would be a normal female (or male) and that the other side would have a some kind of chromosomal anomaly. …

Clinton says the work shows that chickens have a fundamentally different way of determining their sex from mammals: “Hormones do play some role, but nowhere near the extent seen in mammals.”

Naturally the evolutionists assumed that sex determination in birds would follow the mammal pattern. But once again, they were wrong. Instead of evolution explaining the data, it is the data that explain evolution. With each new finding, evolution needs a new special case patched on.

Birds aren’t the only exception to the rule. The mammal model also fails with some marsupials and invertebrates like fruitflies. “The problem is, once people develop a hard and fast rule, it becomes the only game in town,” Clinton says. Sam’s “tubes and plumbing” would suggest there is no rule for all vertebrates.

No rule for vertebrates? So amazingly, with evolution we must believe something as fundamental as sex determination somehow takes on completely different mechanisms. Somewhere along the line, some random biological variation switched, for instance, from hormonal control to chromosomal control. Evolutionists, of course, have no idea how this actually happened. But they are absolutely positive it did happen. Somehow. Religion drives science, and it matters.

66 comments:

  1. Dr Hunter asserts:

    Religion drives science, and it matters.

    You keep saying this but it is a non-sequitur unless you have your own private definition of the word "religion". Just in case you feel like responding to questions at the moment, which religion (as there are many) are you referring to?

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  2. Hunter:

    We assumed that sex determination in birds would follow the mammal pattern,” Clinton says.

    …..

    Naturally the evolutionists assumed that sex determination in birds would follow the mammal pattern.


    Another entry in Hunter’s series Failed Evolutionary Predictions in which a new scientific finding is presented as a falsification of evolutionary theory.

    So Clinton made an assumption and was wrong; therefore birds and mammals did not descend in separate branches from earlier ancestors.

    The issue is not whether some persons made assumptions, but what those assumptions were based on. What is the element of evolutionary theory that is violated by this finding?

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  3. Hunter:

    Instead of evolution explaining the data, it is the data that explain evolution.

    There is truth to this, since inductive logic is a process of interaction between data and hypothesis. So if evolution is a process of descent with modification, discovery of modifications – such as beaks and feathers and mechanisms of sex determination - is part of the research program of those who study evolution.

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  4. For a summary of the varieties of sex determination mechanisms that have been discovered, see the Wikipedia entry Sex-determination system.

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  5. Last time we checked, a major prediction of evolution is that life evolves. Subservience of cellular sexual identity to gonadal hormones is phenotypically invisible except in these very rare chimaeras. Chickens that are not chimeras are no less fit than they would be if hormonal influence were stronger. Therefore, we would expect the degree of hormonal influence to drift aimlessly after vertebrate lineages diverged. The researchers merely "assumed" birds to be like mammals in degree of hormonal influence as a null hypothesis, just as an illiterate geographer who never left western Kansas might assume that all lands are similarly flat. We just didn't know any better until we found out.

    Having found out, there's nothing here that fundamentally changes our understanding of vertebrate evolution. It has been known for some time that the sex-determining chromosomes of therian mammals and birds are not orthologous, and we now understand that genetic influence has been scrapped on multiple occasions in favor of temperature-based determination.

    Perhaps confusion in the OP arises from the assumption that sex is "fundamental" thus its method of determination immutable. Understandable if your worldview is driven by a book that says "male and female, he created them," but biologically ignorant in a world full of species that are asexual, hermaphroditic, or protandric.

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  6. Yawn. Another snoozer from CH. This one made the rounds of C/E boards eight months ago. Funniest part was watching so many Fundies get so excited thinking about chickens and sex. The few that then read the article were so disappointed. :(

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  8. Derick Childress said...

    Time after time, Cornelius has diligently pointed out numerous examples of things that an evolutionist has gotten wrong, but that creationists had known for decades. (or thousands of years, in some cases.)

    It's no wonder that professional scientists are abandoning the theory of evolution in droves.


    I wonder why CH doesn't just cut to the chase and tell us all we evilutionists are degenerate sinners who will burn in hell. You know he wants to.

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  9. Great post Dr. Hunter, I've been waiting a long time for one; I knew you had it in you. I seen now that evolution is a sham. After all, those creationists had been telling us for years that their model predicts that chicken cells have an inherent sex identity. (Genesis 30:31, if I remember correctly) I don't know why we evolutionists didn't just listen. The final nail in evolution's coffin will come when it is confirmed that no other birds have cells like these, and that there aren't any plausible precursors. I mean, what could be a more striking evidence of God's miraculous handiwork than the fact that two different Classes of organisms have different ways of determining sex? If that doesn't convince those who's hearts have been hardened, nothing will.

    Pedant: What is the element of evolutionary theory that is violated by this finding?

    Pedant, you mean to tell me you've never read that one of the fundamental predictions of evolution is that life shouldn't change all that much over time? It's in practically all the textbooks! (I can't think of a specific example right off the top of my head, but you can google "Genes that are completely unique to humans with absolutely no analogs in other species" and it should bring up the same textbooks and papers) The fossil record makes it look like the most recent common ancestor of birds and mammals lived hundreds of millions of years ago, but I ask you, is that enough time for any significant change to occur? I mean, it took several thousand years for pugs to descend from wolves, and they're both still dogs! Yes, evolutionists are constantly befuddled to find these 'differences' in different species.

    Time after time, Cornelius has diligently pointed out numerous examples of things that an evolutionist has gotten wrong, but that creationists had known for decades. (or thousands of years, in some cases.)

    It's no wonder that professional scientists are abandoning the theory of evolution in droves.

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  10. Derick Childress:

    Pedant, you mean to tell me you've never read that one of the fundamental predictions of evolution is that life shouldn't change all that much over time? It's in practically all the textbooks! (I can't think of a specific example right off the top of my head, but you can google "Genes that are completely unique to humans with absolutely no analogs in other species" and it should bring up the same textbooks and papers)

    I confess that I missed that prediction, but your reference to genes that are completely unique to humans does ring a bell. I believe that Dr Hunter said on October 12, referring to Ken Miller's Dover trial testimony:

    And Miller did not explain the great number (more than a thousand) genes unique to the human genome.

    And then, just a few days ago, on the How Proteins Evolved thread, he said:

    There is plenty of evidence for unique proteins in humans, but if you're an evolutionist they don't count.

    I've asked him on that thread for some examples of unique human protein-coding genes, but he hasn't responded yet...

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  11. Thorton I wonder why CH doesn't just cut to the chase and tell us all we evilutionists are degenerate sinners who will burn in hell. You know he wants to.

    I think you've got Cornelius pegged wrong. I'd say his overarching purpose for this blog is to keep people from hell. The goal of most Christians is to make sure as many people go to heaven as possible. (I have to concede that not all Christians think that way; the people of Westboro Baptist Church seem to be at least one exception; but I don't think they act the way they do because they're Christians, I think they act that because they're sociopaths.)

    It's a common misconception that all Christians believe that hell is a place of conscious torture. This is not the case at all. Even some of the most hyper-fundamentalists like Nephilim Free acknowledge that references to hell in scripture refer to it as an extinguishment of the soul.

    I don't know what Cornelius' view on the subject is, but I would bet my house that he wouldn't take delight in anyone perishing.

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  12. Derick Childress said...

    Thorton I wonder why CH doesn't just cut to the chase and tell us all we evilutionists are degenerate sinners who will burn in hell. You know he wants to.

    I think you've got Cornelius pegged wrong. I'd say his overarching purpose for this blog is to keep people from hell. The goal of most Christians is to make sure as many people go to heaven as possible. (I have to concede that not all Christians think that way; the people of Westboro Baptist Church seem to be at least one exception; but I don't think they act the way they do because they're Christians, I think they act that because they're sociopaths.)


    I probably should have said "I wonder why CH doesn't just cut to the chase and tell us all we evilutionists are degenerate sinners who will burn in hell if we don't change our heathen ways and believe as he does."

    Lying for Jesus is acceptable behavior as long as the goal is to save our souls, remember?

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  14. Relax everyone, nobody is going to hell.

    I don't understand how finding human only proteins will help/unhelp case for/against evolution/ID? I read RobertoC's homework links-proteins are just nuts and bolts of the cell. Looking at it from practical point of view,components should be shared between systems.

    Now lets go on to our Christmas (Darwinmas) shopping. Only 8 days left. Lets help (Chinese) economy.

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  15. John and Derick:

    ===
    [John]: Perhaps confusion in the OP arises from the assumption that sex is "fundamental" thus its method of determination immutable. Understandable if your worldview is driven by a book that says "male and female, he created them," but biologically ignorant in a world full of species that are asexual, hermaphroditic, or protandric.


    [Derick]: After all, those creationists had been telling us for years that their model predicts that chicken cells have an inherent sex identity. (Genesis 30:31, if I remember correctly
    ===

    This has been the argument for centuries. No different today. Creationism underwrites evolution.


    ===
    Last time we checked, a major prediction of evolution is that life evolves.
    ===

    For evolutionists, it is the contraints on evolution that provide do much powerful evidence. But then when radical changes are needed, well evolution does that too.


    ===
    Subservience of cellular sexual identity to gonadal hormones is phenotypically invisible except in these very rare chimaeras. Chickens that are not chimeras are no less fit than they would be if hormonal influence were stronger. Therefore, we would expect the degree of hormonal influence to drift aimlessly after vertebrate lineages diverged.
    ===

    No, this is much more than merely a mutation or two tweaking sex determination.


    ===
    Having found out, there's nothing here that fundamentally changes our understanding of vertebrate evolution. It has been known for some time that the sex-determining chromosomes of therian mammals and birds are not orthologous, and we now understand that genetic influence has been scrapped on multiple occasions in favor of temperature-based determination.
    ===

    This doesn't help evolution. I agree that other problems exist, but that doesn't mean a new problem doesn't count. The fact that similar problems have been known, and not adequately dealt with, doesn't mean you get to discount another similar problem.

    The problem here is that evolutionists have always insisted that evolutionary change is constrained, and from this they find powerful evidences in patterns of similarities. So when you have species here and there with fundamentally different mechanisms, it goes against the evolutionary expectations.

    ===
    The researchers merely "assumed" birds to be like mammals in degree of hormonal influence as a null hypothesis, just as an illiterate geographer who never left western Kansas might assume that all lands are similarly flat. We just didn't know any better until we found out.
    ===

    That's fair if evolutionists can provide a plausible explanations for these major changes. Something like your explanation above is what we need, but it needs to be plausible.

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  16. Derick Childress:

    ===
    I think you've got Cornelius pegged wrong. I'd say his overarching purpose for this blog is to keep people from hell.
    ===

    It is essential for evolutionists to change the subject. Because their position is undefendable, they need to move the attention elsewhere as fast as possible. I have of course made my purposes abundantly clear, so evolutionists like yourself must contrive ulterior motives that I must be hiding. This one you have dreamt up makes absolutely no sense given my position, but so what? At least you have move the subject from your bizarre and undefendable position to something else.

    The irony, and hypocrisy, is that your position is religiously motivated, and here you are trying to find me doing what you are doing. What you do not realize is I am not like you. Believe it or not, there is a whole world out there of people who do not try to manipulate science to fit some parochial religious sentiment. But evolutionists are blind to that. For them it is all about religion, and so this religious motive-mongering is a constant undercurrent in their thinking. Like paranoiacs, evolutionists are living in their own bizarre world, continually imagining the misdeeds of the other guy, while they go about manipulating and misrepresenting science to fit their religious mandates.

    My religious beliefs are evolution-neutral. Not that there are aren't any implications, there of course are. But my religious beliefs do not dictate evolution being true or false. But then again, I've explained that many times before. One more time won't change things. Evolutionists will continue to motive-monger.

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  17. CH: "My religious beliefs are evolution-neutral. Not that there are aren't any implications, there of course are. But my religious beliefs do not dictate evolution being true or false. But then again, I've explained that many times before. One more time won't change things. Evolutionists will continue to motive-monger."

    In previous posts you have made comments that you believe a supernatural agency is involved in evolution/origins of life, and that furthermore that you believe the "Designer" is the Christian God. Do you still hold to this?

    Based on this can you appreciate why many of us have a hard time thinking your religious beliefs are evolution-neutral? This is not motive-mongering, but a reasonable conclusion based on your own statements.

    Again - and CH will disagree - religious beliefs by their very nature have a habit of influencing (or is the word infecting?) other spheres of our lives, consciously or unconsciously.

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  18. Cornelius Hunter said...

    The irony, and hypocrisy, is that your position is religiously motivated, and here you are trying to find me doing what you are doing. What you do not realize is I am not like you. Believe it or not, there is a whole world out there of people who do not try to manipulate science to fit some parochial religious sentiment. But evolutionists are blind to that. For them it is all about religion, and so this religious motive-mongering is a constant undercurrent in their thinking. Like paranoiacs, evolutionists are living in their own bizarre world, continually imagining the misdeeds of the other guy, while they go about manipulating and misrepresenting science to fit their religious mandates.


    Psychological projection or projection bias is a psychological defense mechanism where a person unconsciously denies their own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, such as to the weather, or to other people. Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have those feelings.

    Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted unconscious impulses or desires without letting the conscious mind recognize them.

    An example of this behavior might be blaming another for self failure. The mind may avoid the discomfort of consciously admitting personal faults by keeping those feelings unconscious, and redirect their libidinal satisfaction by attaching, or "projecting," those same faults onto another.


    Wow CH, your behavior even made it into Wiki.

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  19. So sex determination in chickens is completely different than in mammals.

    Beginning at the chromosomal level, for the chromosomal sex-determining mechanism of birds works oppositely to that of mammals. The chromosomal sex-determining mechanism of most mammals (yet, even in mammals there are variations in chromosomal sex-determination), is such that the female has two copies of the one sex-chromosome (XX) and the male has one each of the two sex-chromosomes (XY) -- or, to put it another way, the male gamete determines the sex of the embryo. But, with birds (and I’d not be surprised to learn that there are variations), the mechanism is such that the male has two copies of the one sex-chromosome (ZZ) and the female has one each of the two sex-chromosomes (WZ) -- or, to put it another way, the female gamete determines the sex of the embryo.

    Among insects, there is also more than one method for determining sex.

    Another vertebrate dis-homology has to do with how the gamete-producing germ-cells colonize the gonads of the developing embryo. These germ-cells do not originate in the same regions of the embryo across all vertebrate species, nor do they migrate to the gonads via the same routes.

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  20. Isn't there an obvious contradiction in Hunter's thinking?

    1) Evolutionists are dogmatically rigid, religiously adherent to evolution.

    2) Here is a study (funded following approval review panel of evolutionists, conducted by evolutionists, peer reviewed by evolutionists, and published by Nature, the mouthpiece of evolutionists), that changes our understanding of evolution.

    3) This paper is evidence of evolutionists "manipulating and misrepresenting science to fit their religious mandates."

    Unless you have some actual evidence of coverup, manipulation, or fraud, seems like there's some gaps in the old logic there.

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  21. How odd is this? Darwinists, of all people, accusing someone else of being a liar ... and merely for the offence of disputing the supposedly scientific statements of the supposedly scientific supposed theory commonly called "Darwinism."

    I don’t know: maybe this set of DarwinDefenders didn’t get the memo about keeping their scientism under control. Maybe that don’t really understand the fact that science does not -- and cannot of itself -- establish truth. ‘Cause (and setting aside the question of whether Darwinism really is scientific) they sure are acting as though every statement generated by Darwinism is both absolutely true and determinable as being true.

    Aren't DarwinDefenders just the most amusing things, especially when they herd?

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  22. I'd also be a little more impressed, if Dr. Hunter, in his infinite neutrality, and unburdened by metaphysics also critiqued or explained his fellow ID supporters.

    For example, Behe, in his recent review, finds empirical evidence of multiple gain-of-fct events, where a " “A “gain-of-FCT' adaptive mutation is a mutation that produces a specific, new, functional coded element while adapting an organism to its environment."

    http://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/pdf/Behe/QRB_paper.pdf

    This is shockingly close to fCSI and other ID definitions, and would seem to contradict core ID arguments about information increasing in evolution.

    So what must Behe conclude? "..... I of course think the more complex ones likely resulted from deliberate intelligent design....."

    http://www.uncommondescent.com/darwinism/mike-behe-replies-to-jerry-coyne/

    So there we have it. G od did it. Without a shred of evidence, Behe solved the problem by introducing a metaphysical intelligent designer who interfered with lab experiments, and introduced gain of function mutations (in ordinary ways consistent with known natural mechanisms).

    Is this moderate empiricism? Is this metaphysically and religiously neutral? Or is this a post-hoc rationalization of empirical data to twist it fit to one's personal belief? How is it falsifiable? How is it science?

    Just curious!

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  23. Janfeld:

    ===
    In previous posts you have made comments that you believe a supernatural agency is involved in evolution/origins of life, and that furthermore that you believe the "Designer" is the Christian God. Do you still hold to this?
    ===

    Of course.

    ===
    Based on this can you appreciate why many of us have a hard time thinking your religious beliefs are evolution-neutral? This is not motive-mongering, but a reasonable conclusion based on your own statements.
    ===

    Here's the problem. Evolutionists say that everything, and I mean everything--every molecule of air, the neutrinos flying through the earth, organisms at the bottom of the ocean, the distant quasars, butterflies--everything in the universe spontaneously arose. Then, after raising eyebrows all over the room, they dogmatically insist that this strange notion of theirs is a compelling fact. At this point people are no longer merely giving each other sideways glances and shuffling away. Now their running away. I avoid hyperbole and strong terms, but here it would be hyperbole *not* to use strong terms. This is one of those cases where words such as "absurd" and "ludicrous" really are appropriate and necessary.

    The problem is not with the theory of evolution, per se. I don't think there is anything wrong with imagining strange, seemingly unlikely ideas. Who knows, it might lead somewhere. It might even be true.

    But this is not what evolutionary thought is about. Evolution is another religiously motivated notion. If you don't understand this, then you haven't studied the literature--it is no big secret, it is explicit. And this is why you have the dogma. Evolution must be a fact, not because of the evidence but because of the religion.

    My position is that science counts. You can't just make up ideas and then force-fit the science. Science must be allowed to stand on its own. So of course I am doubtful that everything spontanously arose. It is possible, and I'm willing to consider it, but that is not what science indicates.

    Therefore, I take the less heroic view that the world was designed / created. Now since I am a Christian, that means I have the liberty to consider a wide spectrum of possibilities, ranging from a creation process that is miraculuous at the one extreme, to one that is through natural law at the other extreme, or anywhere in between.

    When evolutionists then claim, "ah hah, you are religiously motivated because you allow for divine action," they are simply revealing their own metaphysics. ID is not ID, ID is IDC. That is how evolutionists characterize ID. Here's how you put it:

    ===
    Based on this can you appreciate why many of us have a hard time thinking your religious beliefs are evolution-neutral? This is not motive-mongering, but a reasonable conclusion based on your own statements.
    ===

    Yes, I understand why evolutionists have a hard time thinking my religious beliefs are evolution-neutral. I have read the literature. I have discussed it with evolutionists. They have a fundamental metaphysic at play that can only understand an inference to the supernatural as religiously motivated.

    Simply put, when a person makes such an inference to the supernatural, that means he *allows* for such an inference in the first place. It means they have not ruled out supernatural causation, a priori. That, for evolutionists, is simply unacceptable. It is the evolutionist, not the skeptic, for whom the metaphysics is determinative. The solution is already cast for evolutionists, only the details need to be worked out. Hence evolution is both a fact and a theory.

    The problem is not with skeptics like me Janfeld. The problem is with evolutionary thinking and commitments. I can take it or leave it. If science suddenly starts revealing that natural law is capable of producing everything we see, then fine, I'm on board. But I'm not going to buy religiously-driven zealotry that makes no scientific sense. I know a scam when I see it.

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  24. So, even neutrinos now need a permission slip from teh Designer? This guy is a control freak.

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  25. "Evolutionists say that everything, and I mean everything--every molecule of air, the neutrinos flying through the earth, organisms at the bottom of the ocean, the distant quasars, butterflies--everything in the universe spontaneously arose."

    Does Francis Collins say that? Or is he not a supporter of evolution? Or the definition of an "Evolutionist" something of your own making, to falsely equate the naturalistic investigation of the world with the atheism?

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  26. oleg, only if they don't have free will :D

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  27. "Evolutionists say that everything, and I mean everything--every molecule of air, the neutrinos flying through the earth, organisms at the bottom of the ocean, the distant quasars, butterflies--everything in the universe spontaneously arose."

    Well, that's one possibility.

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  28. Hunter:

    But I'm not going to buy religiously-driven zealotry that makes no scientific sense.

    But you have.

    I know a scam when I see it.

    Apparently not.

    (More than one can play at the silly game of one-line terseness.)

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  29. Hunter, discussing the limits of current knowledge:

    That's fair if evolutionists can provide a plausible explanations for these major changes.

    Why?

    (Terse enough?)

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  30. Cornelius Hunter said...

    Here's the problem. Evolutionists say that everything, and I mean everything--every molecule of air, the neutrinos flying through the earth, organisms at the bottom of the ocean, the distant quasars, butterflies--everything in the universe spontaneously arose. Then, after raising eyebrows all over the room, they dogmatically insist that this strange notion of theirs is a compelling fact. At this point people are no longer merely giving each other sideways glances and shuffling away. Now their running away. I avoid hyperbole and strong terms, but here it would be hyperbole *not* to use strong terms. This is one of those cases where words such as "absurd" and "ludicrous" really are appropriate and necessary.


    CH, since you're the self-appointed world's foremost authority of what evolutionary biology should teach, isn't it your civic duty to contact these guys?

    Harvard, Florida State, U of South Florida, Princeton, Purdue, Rice, Rutgers, U of Rochester, U of New Hampshire, U. Of Connecticut, U of Massachusetts, Lehigh, U of California/Santa Cruz, U of California/San Diego, U of California/Santa Barbara, U of Arizona, U of Chicago, Yale, Cornell, Tulane to name but a few?

    All those schools offer undergraduate and graduate degrees in Evolutionary Biology.

    Why don’t you write a letter to the dean of each of those schools telling each that their university is teaching ideas that are absurd and ludicrous.

    Let us know how they respond, OK?

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  31. Dr. Hunter:

    Evolution is another religiously motivated notion. If you don't understand this, then you haven't studied the literature--it is no big secret, it is explicit. And this is why you have the dogma. Evolution must be a fact, not because of the evidence but because of the religion.

    There you go again! What literature makes explicit your claim that evolutionary theory is religious? Give us a link.

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  32. Alan Fox:

    ===
    Religion drives science, and it matters.

    You keep saying this but it is a non-sequitur unless you have your own private definition of the word "religion". ... which religion (as there are many) are you referring to?
    ===

    Well the short answer would be christianity.

    ===
    What literature makes explicit your claim that evolutionary theory is religious? Give us a link.
    ===

    You could read my book *Science's Blind Spot.* Or you could look over this blog. I have a label called "Evolution's religion."

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  33. Cornelius Hunter said...

    Alan Fox:

    ===
    Religion drives science, and it matters.

    You keep saying this but it is a non-sequitur unless you have your own private definition of the word "religion". ... which religion (as there are many) are you referring to?
    ===

    Well the short answer would be christianity.


    Wow. So Christianity drives science. Who knew?

    Kinda screws all those Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist scientists though, donnit?

    ===
    What literature makes explicit your claim that evolutionary theory is religious? Give us a link.
    ===

    You could read my book *Science's Blind Spot.* Or you could look over this blog. I have a label called "Evolution's religion."


    LOL! When asked to provide a reference for his inane claims, CH of course refers back only to his own previous same inane claims.

    Given CH's general lack of understanding of how science works, I suppose it's not surprising he's unclear what an unbiased independent reference is either.

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  34. CH: "Therefore, I take the less heroic view that the world was designed / created. Now since I am a Christian, that means I have the liberty to consider a wide spectrum of possibilities, ranging from a creation process that is miraculuous at the one extreme, to one that is through natural law at the other extreme, or anywhere in between."

    Well you have already invoked the supernatural inference here (and the Christian one specifically) - not without any specific reason that I can discern other that you are already a Christian. I do not know how one goes from "there could be a supernatural agency" to "I believe it is the Christian God who designed/created" - not from a scientific viewpoint. The only one to get there is through a metaphysical a priori view of the world - it's again it's hard for somebody looking at your reasoning to not come to the conclusion that your own specific theological and metaphysical biases are at play. You can assert that they don't - and you have done so eloquently in your speech above - but in the end it has no persuasive power and comes across merely as an assertion. Again, if you do not think religious beliefs do not consciously or subconsciously influence one's worldview, you are kidding yourself. But then I guess since you have a special "relationship" with the Almighty you have no doubt convinced yourself that you must be right.

    But of course there could be numerous other natural explanations for evolution that have yet to reveal themselves (that would not be the first time that's happened in science), so isn't this metaphysically presumptuous on your part? It sounds like you might be open to that possibility, but I suspect you are at least consider that the Almighty has or does tinker in some fashion.

    As the "wide range of possibilities" within Christianity, isn't it just a little strange that God seems to have made this so open-ended and non-conclusive? And that the BIble has so little (if any) information to really help out here? One could almost come to a conclusion that perhaps God does not want people tinkering or messing around with this stuff. Or of course the Bible was merely written by ancient people with only the barest rudimentary understanding of science? And that it really is just a human-inspired book with no divine provenance? Which one better fits?

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  35. RobertC:

    ===
    For example, Behe, in his recent review, finds empirical evidence of multiple gain-of-fct events, where a " “A “gain-of-FCT' adaptive mutation is a mutation that produces a specific, new, functional coded element while adapting an organism to its environment."
    ===

    I think if you read the paper carefully, you will find not only a big difference between the types of FCTs that are gained vs lost, but you will find that loss of FCT adaptations are selected for much more often because they occur with a much higher frequency. Make sure you read the list of what is counted as a gain of FCT. It's much easier for a mutation to cause a new DNA binding site that affects the level of expression of some gene than to develop a new protein subunit that just happens to be the last piece of the puzzle in say, something like ATP synthase. Also, make sure you look at the actual gain-of-FCT events that were found. Most were back mutations. One was an HGT. One was the "gain" of sickle cell anemia conferring resistance to malaria. A similar type allowed a regulatory protein to bind to an additional type of sugar. Compare these to the losses - inactivation of entire regulators or entire genes. The implication is clear; evolution clearly breaks things much faster than it build things and it breaks and eliminates bigger things than it creates in the same span of time. So for every time you see a person with sickle cell anemia surviving malaria, at the same time, his genome is also responding to selection pressure by breaking or blunting many more FCTs. This is more of a formal demonstration of something John Sanford predicted.

    ===
    This is shockingly close to fCSI and other ID definitions, and would seem to contradict core ID arguments about information increasing in evolution.
    ===

    While I'm not a big defender of the CSI stuff (I think it's hard to effectively quantify "awesomeness"), none of the gain of FCT events mentioned in that paper seemed to increase complexity very much. Which one was it that shocked you particularly?

    ===
    So what must Behe conclude? "..... I of course think the more complex ones likely resulted from deliberate intelligent design....."
    ===

    It really seems here like your trying to take advantage of a reader possibly misunderstanding that Behe was still referring to the examples listed in the paper you cited. I think it's pretty clear he's switched to talking about larger protein assemblies and those specifically "in nature".

    ===
    So there we have it. G od did it. Without a shred of evidence, Behe solved the problem by introducing a metaphysical intelligent designer who interfered with lab experiments, and introduced gain of function mutations (in ordinary ways consistent with known natural mechanisms).

    Is this moderate empiricism? Is this metaphysically and religiously neutral? Or is this a post-hoc rationalization of empirical data to twist it fit to one's personal belief? How is it falsifiable? How is it science?
    ===

    Whose problem did Behe solve? The problem you have because you are equivocating about what FCTs he was discussing? Isn't that why you ran into difficulty imagining he was talking about God interfering with lab experiments? If you had just looked four words away you would have seen he was talking about those "IN NATURE" and specifically those "MORE COMPLEX" (than the context you are proffering) [caps mine... to help with visibility]. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assumed that you read too quickly.

    When Behe sees nature breaking things up faster than it can create them, but yet he sees created things, he feels that empirically demonstrates that the creative power to explain those things is more likely to exist outside of nature than within. If a thing looks designed to him, that empirically necessitates a designer. If a designer exists but is not within a thing, that empirically necessitates that it is without.

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  36. Here's another example of Cornelius naively evaluating evolutionary predictions as if they are empirical mandates of reality by which any variation represents failure.

    However, this is clearly a flawed approach. Without considering how a prediction is related to the underlying explanation it's based on, one cannot determine if the variation is actually relevant.

    In this case, Cornelius fails to explain how the variation of sexual determination via chromosomes in chickens, rather than hormones in nearly all other mammals is relevant to evolution's explanation of biological complexity. He merely points his finger at an empirically observed exception and asserts it must represent a failed prediction. It's typical hand waving we see here all the time.

    For example, Cornelius conveniently fails to note that the same research in the referenced article also suggests this difference isn't just limited to chickens, but avians in general, which use a ZW/ZZ sex determination system rather than a XY determination system in most mammals.

    Furthermore, Cornelius writes:
    Somewhere along the line, some random biological variation switched, for instance, from hormonal control to chromosomal control. Evolutionists, of course, have no idea how this actually happened.

    Given that evolutionary theory explains the appearance of avians an evolution of dinosaurs (a form of reptiles), it would seem that evolution does have a relatively specific point in which this change occurred: during the transition from reptiles to mammals. As such, a variation in sexual determination seems to collaborate a number of other observations which suggest that avians represent a boundary point between reptiles and mammals.

    Again, Cornelius makes no attempt to show how this variation actually relates to the underlying explanation of biological complexity evolution provides. He merely points his finger and waves his hands as if a slow transition over millions of years should somehow result in all mammals sharing the same sex determination method at a clear boundary.

    However, should avians have thought to evolved from a species which had already made the transition to using XY sex determination, then this variation could have been relevant. But the actual details of the theory that evolution presents is merely inconvenient fact which does not suit Cornelius' agenda.

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  37. Scott: "Here's another example of Cornelius naively evaluating evolutionary predictions as if they are empirical mandates of reality by which any variation represents failure."

    Translation: "evolution" is true, even when it's false.

    As I asked earlier: is there eanything more amusing than DarwinDefenders swarming? It there anything more amusing, and more worthy of mockery, than DarLogic?

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  38. Oleg:

    "So, even neutrinos now need a permission slip from teh Designer? This guy is a control freak."
    ====

    Let's see now, you're putting Cornelius on the same list as Karl Marx, Lennin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbchov, Yeltsin, Putin, Mao, Pol Pot, Dawkins, Dennet, Meyers, etc, etc, etc ???

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  39. Cornelius Hunter:

    "Here's the problem. Evolutionists say that everything, and I mean everything--every molecule of air, the neutrinos flying through the earth, organisms at the bottom of the ocean, the distant quasars, butterflies--everything in the universe spontaneously arose. Then, after raising eyebrows all over the room, they dogmatically insist that this strange notion of theirs is a compelling fact."

    "I avoid hyperbole and strong terms, but here it would be hyperbole *not* to use strong terms. This is one of those cases where words such as "absurd" and "ludicrous" really are appropriate and necessary."

    "But this is not what evolutionary thought is about. Evolution is another religiously motivated notion. If you don't understand this, then you haven't studied the literature--it is no big secret, it is explicit. And this is why you have the dogma. Evolution must be a fact, not because of the evidence but because of the religion."
    =====

    So evolution is assumed as fact as opposed to actually being proven scientifically as a FACT. This is admitted here by "THE" foremost holyman of this religious movement whose worshipful following have a perverted sense of meaning and purpose wovening into their otherwise empty lives by a selfpromoting celebrity evangelist who candidly and honestly admits the fraud behind his pseudo-evidenced religious beliefs.

    Richard Dawkins Assumes Evolution to be a FACT

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  40. John: While I'm not a big defender of the CSI stuff (I think it's hard to effectively quantify "awesomeness")...

    Tee hee.

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  41. I wrote:
    Here's another example of Cornelius naively evaluating evolutionary predictions as if they are empirical mandates of reality by which any variation represents failure."

    Translation: "evolution" is true, even when it's false.

    No. You seem to be confusing scientific predictions with religious prophecy.

    We do not expect a theory's predictions to discovered merely because they were empirically mandated by the will of a supernatural being. We expect to discover predictions because they represent one of many possible underlying explanations of phenomena. This is how science works.

    A evolutionary prediction that all mammals would have similar properties is not based on an explanation that some designer pre-defined the category of mammal and merely had to will each species of mammal to have these exact same properties. This is a typical straw man representation of evolution we see here time and time again.

    Instead, evolution predicts that mammals should share similar properties because they share a common ancestor that also had the same properties. And evolution theorizes their common ancestor of Avians were mammal like reptiles that did not use XY sex determination.

    Of course, these are merely inconvenient facts which Cornelius just so happened to left out of his OP since they do not suit his agenda.

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  42. Scott, don't you ever get tired of being intellectually dishonest?

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  43. IlĂ­on wrote:

    Scott, don't you ever get tired of being intellectually dishonest?

    Translation: Since I don't actually have a counter argument: logical fallacy?

    http://www.fallacyfiles.org/loadques.html

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  44. CH: For evolutionists, it is the contraints on evolution that provide do much powerful evidence. But then when radical changes are needed, well evolution does that too.

    Evolution involves divergence from common ancestry. Change has been radical in some instances, more stately in others. Constraints (especially phylogenetic constraints) are indeed part of the evidence that is explained by common descent. Our knowledge of genetic regulation and networks leads us to understand that substantive change over time need not be credited to mystical forces that we imagine to be present.

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  45. ===
    Subservience of cellular sexual identity to gonadal hormones is phenotypically invisible except in these very rare chimaeras. Chickens that are not chimeras are no less fit than they would be if hormonal influence were stronger. Therefore, we would expect the degree of hormonal influence to drift aimlessly after vertebrate lineages diverged.
    ===

    CH: No, this is much more than merely a mutation or two tweaking sex determination.

    Of course, like most other interesting evolutionary examples, this involves changes in gene regulatory networks. Some interesting progress toward understanding the nature of these changes has been made.

    Valenzuela, N. 2008. Evolution of the gene network underlying gonadogenesis in turtles
    with temperature-dependent and genotypic sex determination. Integrative and Comparative Biology 48:476-485. Online free.

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  46. CH: So when you have species here and there with fundamentally different mechanisms, it goes against the evolutionary expectations.

    Your adverb seems to be your argument. To the fundamentalist, a change can't happen if it's to something "fundamental". As GSD in birds and mammals is analougous anyway, there's no expectation that regulation would be identical.

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  47. Cornelius says:"When Behe sees nature breaking things up faster than it can create them, but yet he sees created things, he feels that empirically demonstrates that the creative power to explain those things is more likely to exist outside of nature than within."

    Is this a valid conclusion when Behe only considers experimental microbial evolution?

    Not that this is a flaw in any way in his review, but it limits the scope to observe gains of complexity e.g. via HGT. HGT and duplication events are the sources of 'complexity'. We would be unwise to generalise to real-world microbial evolution from this, nor to eukaryotic evolution.

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  48. It is unwise to claim to be "evolution neutral" when one's post is entitled "Evolution Wrong Again".

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  49. Scott,
    You haven't made an argument. Now, I understand that in terms of DarLogic, asserting as you did that Mr Hunter is both disingenuous and not very bright counts as an irrefutable argument. But, in reality, things don't work that way.

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  50. Paul:

    ===
    It is unwise to claim to be "evolution neutral" when one's post is entitled "Evolution Wrong Again".
    ===

    That's what the science is indicating. Two different subjects.

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  51. Paul:

    ===
    Cornelius says:"When Behe ...
    ===

    I didn't say that.

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  52. Cornelius Hunter said...

    Alan Fox:

    ===
    Religion drives science, and it matters.

    You keep saying this but it is a non-sequitur unless you have your own private definition of the word "religion". ... which religion (as there are many) are you referring to?
    ===

    Well the short answer would be christianity.


    Are you going to explain to us how Christianity drives science? Or is that another one of the many things you typed without thinking and are now going to evade and ignore?

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  53. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  54. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  55. IlĂ­on,

    When did the presentation of an argument become contingent on it being irrefutable?

    Also, still waiting for your counter argument.

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  56. Cornelius said:"I didn't say that."

    Apologies - that was sloppy of me.

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  57. IlĂ­on,

    I'm still waiting.

    Specifically, please show us how…

    - A theory's predication can be reasonably evaluated without considering the underlying explanation it is based on.

    - Cornelius actually demonstrates knowledge of the underlying explanations behind evolutionary predictions and actually considers them in his arguments. This is in contrast to the sort of misrepresentations and hand waving we see here on a regular basis.

    Example: Theory X predicts the discovery of a iPod but we actually discover a Walkman.

    Clearly, a Walkman is radically different than a iPod in that the former is completely analog while the latter is almost completely digital. One stores music on removable analog tapes while the other stores music on either a hard drive or Flash memory and supports several digital audio formats. An iPod also communicates with other devices via USB or firewire connect.

    However, despite these significant differences, both an iPod and Walkman clearly represent concrete instances of personal music players.

    So, unless we know why theory X predicted an iPod, we cannot say the discovery of a Walkman actually represents a falsification of the theory or even qualifies as a failed prediction.

    For example, if theory X predicts an iPod because it's underlying explanation for the phenomena it encompasses is a civilization which is as technologically advanced as we are today, then a discovery of a Walkman, rather than an iPod, could be considered a failed prediction. This is because the variation between an iPod and a Walkman is actually reflects the technological capabilities of civilization used to explain the phenomena.

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  58. For example, Cornelius wrote:

    Naturally the evolutionists assumed that sex determination in birds would follow the mammal pattern. But once again, they were wrong. Instead of evolution explaining the data, it is the data that explain evolution. With each new finding, evolution needs a new special case patched on.

    However, Cornelius does not elaborate on what is meant by "mammalian pattern" and fails to demonstrate an understanding of the underlying evolutionary explanation behind the prediction that mammals would share similar properties. He merely notes that the pattern was "violated" and chocks it up to yet another failed evolutionary prediction.

    In the absence of such demonstration and consideration, this represents hand waving and naive empiricism.

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  59. (If any of you is going to try and answer the following, remember that my point is about hypothesis about some detail of evolutionary history, versus a prediction from evolution. Don't start diverting hoping that I will not notice that you missed the point.)

    Oh but Cornelius failed at the most basic level. What some scientists might have as a hypothesis, or even an expectation, does not necessarily mean that such hypothesis is a prediction arising from evolutionary theory. No matter how much the authors mention evolution. The only way this could be a prediction from evolutionary theory would be if you could come with a step by step set of rules that could go from rounds of selection from variation to a necessity, given the theory, that sex determination should be the same in both mammals and chickens [or else evolution is false].

    Distinguishing a prediction of evolution from a hypothesis, even if the hypothesis could have been inspired by some evolutionary thinking, is basic scientific literacy. In this case the hypothesis is about getting information about some character's evolution, sex determination, rather than about whether evolution is true. Cornelius "fails" at too basic a level.

    Of course, given the rhetorical devices he uses to adorn his posts, I am tempted to conclude this to be a purposeful fail on his side. He knows what he is doing. Misguided religion drives his pseudoscience, and it matters.

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  60. This thread demonstrates yet again why evolution is unfalsifiable. Anything discovered, regardless of how big an anomaly it is with respect to current evolutionary theory, is assumed to be explainable by an adjustment to that theory.

    Hence the wry comment that evolution is right even when it's wrong, that is, even when the facts turn out not to be what was previously predicted by evolution, it's not because evolution is wrong. Rather, it's because a further adjustment needs to be made to the epicycles of evolution.

    Had Astronomy worked the same way, we'd still be adjusting the Ptolemaic epicycles. Although Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions is flawed in many respects, he did usefully demonstrate how difficult it is to change the reigning paradign (in this case, evolution). The evolutionary paradign is particularly difficult to change, because philosophically naturalist investigators cannot conceive of another non-theistic (thus naturalist) way for life to develop. This is quite different from astronomy and why astronomy was able to change paradigms and to develop and progress (unlike evolutionary theories).

    It is this commitment to philosophical naturalism that constitutes the religiosity of evolutionary thought. There is a faith commitment to its truth even in the face of problems with, and gaps in, the evidence. It seems pretty obvious that this is what Hunter is getting at, and that the cutsey attempts to parse words avoids getting at this heart of the matter.

    John I.

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  61. John I: Anything discovered, regardless of how big an anomaly it is with respect to current evolutionary theory, is assumed to be explainable by an adjustment to that theory.

    Evolution concerns not just mechanisms, but historical reconstruction. Though the broad outlines of this history are known, many of the details are still subject to investigation.

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  62. Zachriel:

    "Evolution concerns not just mechanisms, but historical reconstruction. Though the broad outlines of this history are known, many of the details are still subject to investigation."
    =====

    Cornelius Hunter:

    "How can evolutionists know whether the causes of a past event are strictly natural? How can evolutionists decide which phenomena fall into their research program?"

    "The answer is they can't. Evolutionists have no test for naturalism. They have no way of knowing whether a phenomenon is the result of strictly natural causes."

    "Imagine an evolutionist using natural laws and processes to describe a phenomenon that does not follow such laws and processes. By searching and searching, he may find a partial fit. So he may have some success, but there are always unexplained observables—data anomalies for which the naturalistic explanation cannot account. Naturalistic explanations will always be problematic. More data will be collected, further analysis will be done, and theories will be modified or replaced altogether. All good scientific research and—in this hypothetical example of a non natural phenomenon—wrong."

    "Consider the following example. What if it were found that a code existed in all living species and that, within each organism, complicated machinery was used to read vast amounts of stored information via the code? The machinery was so complicated that it automatically (i) read the information, (ii) used the code to interpret the information, and (iii) acted on the instructions."

    "And what if there were hundreds of other such problems for which naturalistic explanations offered little more than speculation and were consistently falsified?"

    "The answer is, of course, "so what?"

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  63. Zachriel:

    "Not sure who these "evolutionists" might be, but science can never completely rule out any number of possible scenarios."
    =====

    Sure you do, you are one of them. You wouldn't be here otherwise. Cornelius blog gives you life and purpose sadly lacking off the Net.
    -----

    Zachriel:

    "Perhaps a monolith tampered with the human genome."
    =====

    Ah yes, a good old 1960s counter culture protesting Icon's personal take on Panspermia.
    -----

    Zachriel:

    "Maybe the universe was created Last Thursday."
    =====

    Of course, never underestimate the power of a good drug induced hallucination to escape reality when real world answers are lacking.

    Beam me up Scotty!!!
    -----

    Zachriel:

    "It could be that angels tweak the planets in their orbits."
    =====

    This is probably the closest you've ever come to a possible truth. But who can know for sure since no human being was there from the start. However, the Angels actually were there and may well have been given assignments as noted in the Bible account at Job.

    Job 38:4-7 (New International Version, ©2010)

    4 "Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
    Tell me, if you understand.
    5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
    Who stretched a measuring line across it?
    6 On what were its footings set,
    or who laid its cornerstone—
    7 while the morning stars sang together
    and all the angels shouted for joy?"

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  64. Zachriel:

    "But there is no scientific evidence of such, robust alternative scientific explanations, rendering such claims scientifically vacuous."
    ======

    All folks here present and lurking would most whole heartedly agree that YOU most certainly wouldn't have it any other way. However the truth of the matter does not hinge on your condescending approval or acceptance of it. There are several scriptural accounts which clearly illustrate this attitude long before it manifested it's ugly head in our present time-

    Romans 1:21 (New International Version, ©2010)

    21 "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened."

    Ephesians 4:18 (Amplified Bible)

    18 "Their [a]moral understanding is darkened and their reasoning is beclouded. [They are] alienated (estranged, self-banished) from the life of God [with no share in it; this is] because of the ignorance (the want of knowledge and perception, the willful blindness) that is [b]deep-seated in them, due to their hardness of heart [to the insensitiveness of their moral nature]."

    Psalm 14:1 (Holman Christian Standard Bible)


    1 "The fool says in his heart, "God does not exist." (A)
    They are corrupt; their actions are revolting."

    Romans 1:25 (Amplified Bible)

    25 "Because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature[creation] rather than the Creator, . . "

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  65. Eocene: Sure you do, you are one of them. You wouldn't be here otherwise.

    Sorry. Confused you with someone who wanted to have a discussion.

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  66. Zachriel:

    "Sorry. Confused you with someone who wanted to have a discussion."
    =====

    Discussion is wonderful and desirable. However debating science fiction gets us nowhere. But then it's clearly documented around the Net where you've already experienced these same comments multiple times from others who refused to even attempt to play the intellectual mind games. Hence the need to seek out Fundies to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Not everyone is a kool-aid sucking Fundie who will take the bait.

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