A Finding That “Directly Contradicts the Standard Biological Model”
We have always underestimated cells. Undoubtedly we still do today. But at least we are no longer as naive as we were when I was a graduate student in the 1960s. Then, most of us viewed cells as containing a giant set of second-order reactions: molecules A and B were thought to diffuse freely, randomly colliding with each other to produce molecule AB—and likewise for the many other molecules that interact with each other inside a cell. This seemed reasonable because, as we had learned from studying physical chemistry, motions at the scale of molecules are incredibly rapid. … But, as it turns out, we can walk and we can talk because the chemistry that makes life possible is much more elaborate and sophisticated than anything we students had ever considered.
Or as one science writer put it, “the depth and breadth of cellular complexity has turned out to be nearly unbelievable, and difficult to manage”.
Now a new paper out this week on how cells communicate with each other, in house flies, is again revealing a profound level of detailed, intricate workings which are in stark contrast to the traditional view. Specifically, one way cells communicate with each other is with signaling proteins. One cell sends out these proteins and other cells receive them. This was thought to occur by random motion but the new research has found that cells extend long, thin tubes that conduct these proteins to the surface of the target cell. In fact the tubes can stretch to long distances.
All of this greatly contrasts with the traditional view that cells, as one research explained, “basically spit out signaling proteins into extracellular fluid and hope they find the right target.” And that traditional view has been highly influential:
There are 100 years worth of work and thousands of scientific papers in which it has been simply assumed that these proteins move from one cell to another by moving through extracellular fluid. So this is a fundamentally different way of considering how signaling goes on in tissues.
Evolution’s just-add-water view of biology has not served science well. And findings like this one, aside from contradicting evolutionary expectations, reveal yet more problems for the theory. For how could such a signaling system have evolved by chance mutations? As usual, aside from vacuous speculation, evolutionists have no realistic, let alone probable, explanation.
For most theories this would signal a major problem. But not for evolution because evolution is assumed to be a fact from the start. Religion drives science, and it matters.
Einstein's work on Brownian motion involved an analysis based on what we now would call a "random walk." I suppose that if one were to do a simple calculation as to the time needed for any one 'signaling protein' to randomly travel from, say, half-way between the cell nucleus and membrane, out to the cell membrane, it would turn out to that it would take an astronomically long time for it to make it there. That means that 'intelligence' is needed to overcome these astronomically small odds. Lo, and behold, the cell has "tubes" that perform the task: a complex, specified structure.
ReplyDeleteCH: If all of biology just happened to arise by chance events then organisms and their designs must be pretty straightforward.
ReplyDeleteWe create models for the expressed purpose of being found incomplete and in error to some degree. That's how we make progress. It's unclear why you would expect otherwise. Specific estimates of complexity are one such model.
Oh wait, I've already explained why you would expect otherwise.
Furthermore, aren't you assuming that any designer that could design complex organisms wouldn't itself be complex and, therefore, by your own criteria, need a designer, etc?
Oh, wait, I've already explained why you would assume that as well.
You hold the idea that knowledge in specific spheres comes from authoritative sources, rather than being genuinely created.
Scott:
ReplyDeleteYou hold the idea that knowledge in specific spheres comes from authoritative sources, rather than being genuinely created.
Did Einstein "create" his General Theory of Relativity, or did he intuit it? Just how do you think intelligence works--nothing but trial and error?
Apply trial and error to Euclidean Geometry. Where does that get you?
Cornelis argues that, since because we can’t know that God didn’t choose to create the world we observe, evolutionary theory is religious. However, this is parochial since one could also argue we cannot know this same God did not choose to create the world we observe by creating the entire universe at once. And he could have done so at the very moment some great create discovery was supposedly made.
Delete“Consider this: if a supernatural creator were to have created the universe at the moment when Einstein or Darwin or any great scientist (appeared to have) just completed their major discovery, then the true creator of that discovery (and of all earlier discoveries) would have been not that scientist but the supernatural being. So such a theory would deny the existence of the only creation that really did take place in the genesis of that scientist’s discoveries.
And it really is creation. Before a discovery is made, no predictive process could reveal the content or the consequences of that discovery. For if it could, it would be that discovery. So scientific discovery is profoundly unpredictable, despite the fact that it is determined by the laws of physics. I shall say more about this curious fact in the next chapter; in short, it is due to the existence of ‘emergent’ levels of explanation. In this case, the upshot is that what science – and creative thought in general – achieves is unpredictable creation ex nihilo. So does biological evolution. No other process does.
Creationism, therefore, is misleadingly named. It is not a theory explaining knowledge as being due to creation, but the opposite: it is denying that creation happened in reality, by placing the origin of the knowledge in an explanationless realm. Creationism is really creation denial – and so are all those other false explanations.”
Excerpt From: David Deutsch. “The Beginning of Infinity.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/F1G6A.l
IOW, rather than the scenario in which the entire universe is created all at once when some great completed some great discovery, creationism focuses on the claim that knowledge in specific spheres (to the topic at hand, the knowledge in the genomes of biological organisms) was “created” by a supernatural “designer”. But the effect is still the same. It’s an attempt to deny that creation actually took place.
While creating the universe all at once, last Thursday, two weeks, or even 150 years ago is a possibility we cannot rule out either, Cornelius ignores these scenarios and the impact on knowledge it would have. In doing so, he’s selectively employing an argument against evolution that could be used to deny that absolutely anything was created. This is why his argument is parochial.
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DeleteScott:
DeleteFirst, what Deutsch states is gobbely-gook. I won't bother critiquing it, though that would be simple.
Let me just point out to you that Deutsch makes the very SAME claim that IDists do. Here's what I mean.
Deutsch writes:
In this case, the upshot is that what science – and creative thought in general – achieves is unpredictable creation ex nihilo. So does biological evolution. No other process does.
Here he EQUATES human intelligence--capable of viewing reality in a logical way, with ever deeper ways of understanding physical reality being considered "discoveries", or outbursts of 'creative thought'--with biological evolution!
You see, the only thing that could bring about biological evolution is 'creative thought'='intelligence.'
Lino: First, what Deutsch states is gobbely-gook. I won't bother critiquing it, though that would be simple.
DeleteWhich isn’t genuine criticism because it can be applied to anything. Example?
Lino: You see, the only thing that could bring about biological evolution is 'creative thought'='intelligence.'
That’s gobbely-gook. I won't bother critiquing it, though that would be simple.
See how that works?
Lino: Let me just point out to you that Deutsch makes the very SAME claim that IDists do. Here's what I mean.
First, I though what Deutsch states is gobbely-gook? Are you saying ID is gobbely-gook? Which is it?
Second, Deutsch isn’t making the same claim.
So scientific discovery is profoundly unpredictable, despite the fact that it is determined by the laws of physics. I shall say more about this curious fact in the next chapter; in short, it is due to the existence of ‘emergent’ levels of explanation. In this case, the upshot is that what science – and creative thought in general – achieves is unpredictable creation ex nihilo. So does biological evolution. No other process does.
First, “In this case” refers to an ‘emergent’ level of explanation. Is ID’s designer ‘emergent’?
Second, both biological evolution and human creative thought are examples of our current, best explanation for the universal growth of knowledge. Both are forms of trial and error. That’s Deutsch’s point.
The real issue here is conflicting ideas about the growth of human knowledge. Example?
Was there ever a time where ID’s designer didn’t know how to build any biological organism that ever existed, currently exists or could exist?
I agree that the source of knowledge is an interesting question in itself. Did Einstein "intuit" or "create" his theories and what is the difference in meaning between the two? Is Euclidean geometry 'out there' somewhere, waiting to be discovered or is it better understood a 'language' we have invented for modeling spatial relationships?
ReplyDeleteAnd returning to the OP, does a discovery in the laboratory which "contradicts" current thinking, fatally undermine a theory or, strengthen it by showing where it needs to be modified in order to be more accurate? In a complex organism, cells still need to signal to one another. This research has found that the method used is different from what was previously conjectured but that's all.
Ian, I don't think you're 'owning up' to how bad things are for ev-biol. people.
DeleteIf you wanted cement poured down on a footing for your future house, and the closest the cement truck could get was 40 feet away, would you just keep pouring out cement from the truck with the hope that eventually it would find its way to the footing, or would you build a channel/canal by which to deliver the cement directly?
I know how you would answer. And it point to how 'intelligence' solves problems of how to get material A at point B to point D. My first comment was intended to illustrate that the tubes function like a 'channel' would in the house-building problem, which is analogous to what the cell faces as it attempts to signal other cells.
Is Euclidean geometry 'out there' somewhere, waiting to be discovered or is it better understood a 'language' we have invented for modeling spatial relationships?
Euclidean geometry is, essentially, 'out there' waiting to be discovered. But other than intelligent human beings, what objects, or beings, are able to "discover" anything? If you talk about 'discovery,' therefore, then you are talking about 'intelligence' at work via the process of abstraction.
I disagree with you when you say that Euclidean Geometry is invented/used for "modeling spatial relationships." It was a way of understanding the logical--hence, intelligent--relationships that exist between different types of objects, and for analyzing again, in a strictly logical--hence intelligent--fashion what can be known and inferred about the relationships between objects. As such, it already signals that physical reality has an intelligent structure to it, a structure, I might add, that can be, and is, detected and understood.
Lino Di Ischia: Apply trial and error to Euclidean Geometry. Where does that get you?
ReplyDeleteNon-Euclidean geometry?
Zachriel:
DeleteNon-Euclidean geometry? >
It gets you thrown out of college.
Euclidean geometry has basic axioms definitions, and everything is deduced from those axioms and definitions. The entire mathematics of Euclidean geometry 'flow' from these first principles. To get to "Non-Euclidean" geometry you have to change some axioms and definitions. It is all the work of intelligence, although trial and error is part of the deductive process. Nevertheless, what guides the development of both Euclidean and Non-Euclidean geometry along the way is pure intelligence. It is, after all, the intellect that decides that the trial is in error. This isn't a random process at work.
Lino
ReplyDeleteTo get to "Non-Euclidean" geometry you have to change some axioms and definitions. It is all the work of intelligence, although trial and error is part of the deductive process.
Trial and error is what caused Non-Euclidean to come to exist.
Nevertheless, what guides the development of both Euclidean and Non-Euclidean geometry along the way is pure intelligence
I am not sure what pure intelligence would look like, intelligence in part is the manipulation of knowledge, one of the ways knowledge is acquired is thru trial and error, models and data. Perhaps a working definition of intelligence.
It is, after all, the intellect that decides that the trial is in error. This isn't a random process at work.
In evolution , failure to reproduce decides. The random, up to a point since evolution is much more constrained than a human designer, is the trial. Even in human design there can be a random aspect to the trial.
Velikovskys:
ReplyDeleteTrial and error is what caused Non-Euclidean to come to exist.
Really? And what is the basis of this belief?
Here's this from Wikipedia:
The beginning of the 19th century would finally witness decisive steps in the creation of non-Euclidean geometry. Circa 1813, Carl Friedrich Gauss and independently around 1818, the German professor of law Ferdinand Karl Schweikart[9] had the germinal ideas of non-Euclidean geometry worked out, but neither published any results.
Does this sound like: (a) trial and error, or (b) intellectual exploration of a mathematical theory?
What was at stake was Euclid's "Fifth Postulate" which said that straight parallel lines stretch all the way out to infinity without ever touching. This 'postulate' (axiom) was in dispute already from the beginning---i.e., this was no "trial and error." The mathematicians knew what was troubling them from the start.
I am not sure what pure intelligence would look like, intelligence in part is the manipulation of knowledge, one of the ways knowledge is acquired is thru trial and error, models and data. Perhaps a working definition of intelligence.
This response, and the next, are simply obfuscations. You know what intelligence is, since you have it, and employ it, and when someone makes a mistake in employing it, you can spot it.
Is intelligence now like 'pornography,' undefinable, and, at a personal level, not knowable?
When you say that "failure to reproduce decides" this is anthropomorphic. You say you don't know what "intelligence" is, but somehow you know that nature "decides." Humm. Interesting.
But, nonetheless, the only basic operation that Darwinists can provide is that of 'trial and error': nature provides a 'trial' (mutation, as you see it), and 'errors' are eliminated--i.e., they don't reproduce.
But, as I pointed out in my first post, it would require a huge amount of time--given the 'random walk' that is Brownian motion--for the signaling protein to make it to the cell membrane. A solution outside of 'trail and error' must be in play, and the only way one can overcome the severe limits of 'trial and error' is though intelligence. And, sure enough, we see there in the cell a structure that looks "designed' for its purpose.
Someone once said, "It snowed so hard, I caught the drift." It snows, and snows, and snows. And, yet, Darwinist refuse to "catch the drift."