Sunday, March 20, 2016

Debate Debrief: The Two-Prong Canard Demonstrated Within 24 Hours

The Curious Case of Nylonase

Organisms have remarkable adaptation capabilities and evolutionists, ever since Darwin, have insisted that is powerful evidence of evolution. This is a blatant misrepresentation of science—when a heater turns on to warm the room do you think it must have therefore evolved?—and it is being revealed in the findings of epigenetics and directed adaptation. As I recently explained (The New Epigenetic Lie), rather than acknowledge and reckon with these findings, evolutionists have resorted to a two-prong canard: (i) claim that evolution knew it all along and (ii) claim that directed adaptation is simply a mode of evolutionary change. In other words, after resisting and rejecting directed adaptation for a century—and holding back science in the process—evolutionists are now claiming it as their own. Readers may have doubted my reporting. Do evolutionists really commit such a flagrant and bogus misdirection? But that was before last night’s “What’s Behind It All? God, Science, and the Universe” debate.

Within twenty four hours of my explaining the evolutionist’s two-prong canard, evolutionist Denis Lamoureux, in a futile attempt to refute the overwhelming science that Stephen Meyer alluded to regarding the impossibility of the chance origin of a protein-coding gene, gave a live demonstration of the canard. Lamoureux cited nylonase—enzymes that rapidly arose in bacteria, in the last century, and are able to breakdown byproducts of the nylon manufacturing process. Lamoureux made the non scientific claim that such enzymes demonstrate that the chance origin of a protein-coding genes is not a problem. They could have evolved with no problem, after all, we just witnessed it occur with the origin of nylonase.

This is the second prong: “directed adaptation is simply a mode of evolutionary change.” In other words, evolution is directed adaptation writ large.

That is a blatant misdirection.

Unfortunately, many in the audience were fooled by this canard. Evolutionists often make scientific-sounding claims, laden with jargon, and those not familiar with the scientific details are none the wiser.

In the case of nylonase, as with all cases of directed adaptation, the adaptation was in response to the environment. In other words, the environment influenced the adaptation. This is not a case of evolutionary change. The nylonase enzymes did not arise from a random search over sequence space until the right enzymes were luckily found and could be selected for. That would have required eons of time. Instead, cellular structures rapidly formed new enzymes in an evolutionary nano second.

Such adaptation to nylon manufacture byproducts has been repeated in laboratory experiments. In a matter of months bacteria acquire the ability to digest the unforeseen chemical. Researchers speculate that mechanisms responding to environmental stress are involved in inducing adaptive mutations.

That is not evolution. In fact it refutes evolution. Evolution does not have the resources to have created directed adaptation mechanisms. And even if it did, such mechanisms would not have been selected for because they provide no immediate fitness improvement.

And it is not evidence that protein-coding genes can evolve by chance. A new gene, arising within a modern cell responding to an environmental challenge, is not analogous to chance origin. Unfortunately evolutionists have a long history of inappropriately claiming otherwise.

There is still much to learn about directed adaptation. Unfortunately, evolutionists continue to obfuscate the path.

37 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing with us this bit of your scientific understanding. I look forward to your letter to the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology requesting a retraction of the original work. It's your duty as an educator to inform the researchers and the millions of other professional scientists who consider this to be evolution that they all got it so wrong.

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    1. Cornelius Hunter

      You just joined Lamoureux.


      But I'm on your side now. You convinced me you know more than the original researchers and the millions of scientists who have accepted their results for the last 20 years.

      I just wish there was some way you could get the word out to a wider scientific audience.

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    2. I'm depending on you for that ...

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    3. Cornelius Hunter

      I'm depending on you for that ...


      I can't take credit for your brilliant scientific insight. You deserve all the recognition you get from the scientific community.

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    4. I look forward to your letter to the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology
      Who would want to publish anything in a butt-kissers journal other than butt kissers?

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    5. Hi Cornellius
      Do you think this adaption is a modification to an existing enzyme to allow nylon to bind and be broken down?

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    6. Bill:

      Well that was the original hypothesis. Later work suggests there may be multiple pathways.

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  2. "Millions of other professional scientists" performed the nylonase experiments? I'm calling ghostrider's bluff!

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    1. I said millions of other scientists consider this to be evolution, which they do. Please learn to read for comprehension.

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    2. It's not evolution. It's directed adaptation. It was designed that way. Get an education.

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    3. "t's not evolution. It's directed adaptation. It was designed that way."

      So, God foresaw the invention of nylon? So much for humans having free will.

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    4. Billy boy, aren't you the typical Darwinist cretin? You foresee that you're gonna have a bowel movement sooner or later, don't you? Does that suddenly make the universe a deterministic universe?

      You know. I would not be surprised if you had some kind of worthless PhD like Krauss. Stupid is as stupid does, I guess.

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    5. W.S. "So, God foresaw the invention of nylon? So much for humans having free will."

      Um, theologians have been bumping into the foreknowledge of God and the free will of man for aeons. Doesn't take nylon to get us there. All prophesy is based upon the presumption that God knows, even when man makes his choices.

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    6. Let me get this straight. Every mutation that results in an advantageous adaptation is directed by God (either directly or through front-end loading). Then, what about the deleterious mutations? You can't claim that the former are directed by God and say that the latter are not. This sounds like a very capricious God. After all, what sin is the unborn guilty of.

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  3. "Millions of other professional scientists" performed the nylonase experiments? I'm calling ghostrider's bluff!

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  4. I love checking other sources. 'Found wikipedia on "nylon eating bacteria"
    It states, "There is scientific consensus that the capacity to synthesize nylonase most probably developed as a single-step mutation ..." Ie, no irreducible complexity here. It goes on to say: "This is seen as a good example of how mutations easily can provide the raw material for evolution by natural selection." Love that word "easily". A single mutational event leading to an improvement everyone agrees is easy for natural selection. The power of nylonase as proof of NS is very weak.

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    1. What are you babbling about Irreducible complexity for when no one mentioned it? No one said this is proof for NS either since science doesn't do "proof". This phenomenon is just one more piece of empirical evidence demonstrating the power of mutations filtered by selection to improve reproductive fitness.

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    2. How can any organism adapt to environmental pressure unless there is a change somewhere in the organism? The point of the article, which went over ghost's pointy little head, is that it is a single mutation among countless trillions of other possible mutations. It could not have been found so quickly if it was a purely random mutation, as brainless and clueless Darwinists have been claiming for over a century. The combinatorial explosion kills any stochastic search dead.

      Wake up, ghost. Only one of the two neurons between your ears is working.

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  5. I read that nylonase is smaller and less efficient that the original protein. So you can't extrapolate from there that a larger, or more efficient enzyme can evolve.

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    1. Evolution doesn't require something be larger or more efficient for NS to operate. It only requires the new protein give a better chance at reproductive success in the current environment than the old. That's exactly what happened with nylonase.

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    2. Again, it was not evolution. It was programmed adaptation. Stop lying.

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    3. GR:

      Even ifit was evolution, it is only evidence that evolution can make smaller less efficient things. You need to coome onto design to explain the origin of bigger, better things.

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    4. natschuster

      Even ifit was evolution, it is only evidence that evolution can make smaller less efficient things. You need to coome onto design to explain the origin of bigger, better things.


      No you don't. Animals can evolve to be bigger or smaller depending on their environmental pressures. It's the identical process. Make changes stochastically, keep those that give you a better chance to survive and reproduce. The process has been going on for over 3 billion years.

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  6. "(i) claim that evolution knew it all along"

    Evolution knew it all along? Evolution did? A process of nature? Did gravity know about relativity all along?

    Or did you substitute that word because of the absurdity of claiming something is wrong because humans didn't know it "all along."

    You shouldn't be taken seriously.

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  7. "(i) claim that evolution knew it all along"

    Evolution knew it all along? Evolution did? A process of nature? Did gravity know about relativity all along?

    Or did you substitute that word because of the absurdity of claiming something is wrong because humans didn't know it "all along."

    You shouldn't be taken seriously.

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    1. Then why didn't you complain when they said that dinosaurs were experimenting with flight?

      [http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2014/08/evolutionist-dinosaurs-were.html]

      Or any of the other endless teleological statements about evolution? By your logic evolutionists shouldn't be taken seriously.

      Or did you substitute that word because of the absurdity of claiming something is wrong because humans didn't know it "all along."

      But then again, that's not what I said, was it. So why the strawman?

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  8. Great article, Cornelius. Keep them coming.

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  9. Very interesting article. Organisms repeatedly find solutions with an ease for which there is no materialistic/Darwinian (random search) explanation. And next Darwinians have the audacity to present such a conundrum to their theory as evidence for their theory.

    In fact by staying alive organisms do something that has no materialistic explanation. From a materialistic perspective, why doesn't a bag of chemicals not fall apart, as it does in fact at the moment of death?

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  10. Interesting article. I know you are interested in the social impacts of evolution, such as eugenics. I would like to know your take on the disintegration of Sweden and other secular Western societies because of the replacement of evolutionary hedonism for God fearing morality.

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    1. Peter:

      I don't think there is any question that Adam Sedgwick's concerns are today's reality. Ideas have consequences, and false ideas often have bad consequences. Evolution certainly has had its share.

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    2. Sorry, I'm not familiar with Adam Sedgwick's concerns on evolution. Wasn't he a geologist?

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    3. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2012/12/an-early-critique-of-darwin-warned-of.html

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    4. Did Darwin ever reply to Sedgwick?

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    5. No, but Darwin was relieved when he read this line in Sedgwick's letter: I can prove that God “acts for the good of His creatures."

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  11. The problem, as I see it, with claiming that the Modern Synthesis has any predictive value, is that no one takes into account how hard the evolutionary consensus has fought new findings and theories, and then how easily it was pretended that they mad perfect sense within the Synthesis, and were practically predicted all along. We've always been at war with Eastasia.

    The problem(s) with the case of nylonase have to do with (1) whether or not directed mutation is involved and (2) whether frame-shift mutations are a useful general a priori strategy for finding new proteins. If the nylonase adaptation is a reaction that is based on something presumably learned in the deep evolutionary past (i.e. a strategy) then it's not part of an existing evolutionary explanation but something in need of an explanation. As of now, there is probably no researcher looking into how this is could be a directed mutation in response to "smelling" a chemical like nylonase, because nylonase is much more useful as an icon of evolution than as a potential window into the workings of a cell. Nylonase demonstrates that evolution is easy, and we'd like to keep it that way at least until a better icon comes along. Just like there was no point in finding out the truth about Piltdown until there were more credible missing links. However, if it is demonstrated that there is a sophisticated mechanism for sensing a specific kind of chemical and selecting a particular strategy, why that's just the sort of useful thing that the Synthesis has always predicted, because all sorts of very useful things are found by accident and then seized upon by natural selection. So it goes.


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  12. Fully agree, Cornelius. Epigenetics and directed adaptation are pre-programmed methods to permit rapid adjustments. Although the mechanisms involved in detail are not well understood yet, some things are becoming clear.
    - For bacteria, a huge number of different genes are already available in an ecology, and can be easily shared around. The pangenome of a single species, E. coli, inludes 90,000 genes and is still climbing lineary (p.8 of C.Ku and W.F. Martin, BMC Biology, (2016)14:89).
    - Enzymes work on categories of problems, instead of 1 enzyme per substrate. Different enzymes can focus on a specific functional group, and often minor mutational changes can optimize their effectiveness for that purpose. Jointly they can thus degrade novel molecules, including synthetic ones.

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