Tuesday 15 March 2022

The rise (and fall?) of the iron lady.

How the reds stole the bomb.

The fall of Rome II?

Let them eat cake?

Yet another fail for Christendom?

Lamarck's revenge?

Paper Provides More Evidence that Mutations Aren’t Random

Casey Luskin

Earlier this year we covered a paper in Nature which found that mutations in the Arabidopsis genome were not occurring randomly. As that paper noted, “The random occurrence of mutations with respect to their consequences is an axiom upon which much of biology and evolutionary theory rests.” Yet the findings of the paper overturned these basic principles of modern evolutionary biology. Now another paper, this one published in Genome Research by biologists from Israel and Ghana, reports similar findings about the non-random nature of mutations.

Mutation in Response to Need

A news release from the University of Haifa pulls no punches about the implications: “Groundbreaking study uncovers first evidence of long-term directionality in the origination of human mutation, fundamentally challenging Neo-Darwinism.” They report:

A new study by a team of researchers from Israel and Ghana has brought the first evidence of nonrandom mutation in human genes, challenging a core assumption at the heart of evolutionary theory by showing a long-term directional mutational response to environmental pressure. Using a novel method, researchers led by Professor Adi Livnat from the University of Haifa showed that the rate of generation of the HbS mutation, which protects against malaria, is higher in people from Africa, where malaria is endemic, than in people from Europe, where it is not. “For over a century, the leading theory of evolution has been based on random mutations. The results show that the HbS mutation is not generated at random but instead originates preferentially in the gene and in the population where it is of adaptive significance,” said Prof. Livnat. Unlike other findings on mutation origination, this mutation-specific response to a specific environmental pressure cannot be explained by traditional theories. “We hypothesize that evolution is influenced by two sources of information: external information that is natural selection, and internal information that is accumulated in the genome through the generations and impacts the origination of mutations,” said Livnat. [Emphasis added.]

If they are correct, then some groups of humans have evolved the ability to produce necessary mutations to lead to certain beneficial adaptations more frequently than those humans who lived in environments where those adaptations wouldn’t have been helpful. This suggests that mutations do not necessarily happen without regard to the needs of organisms — which, as they put it, “fundamentally challeng[es] Neo-Darwinism.”

“From the Hawk’s Sharp Eye to the Human Cardiovascular System”

Or does it? After all, they seem to propose that the ability to preferentially produce favorable mutations itself is an adaptation that arose by (presumably) unguided evolutionary mechanisms:

Ever since Darwin we have known that life arose by evolution. But how, exactly, does evolution — in all its grandeur, mystery and complexity — happen? For the past century scientists have assumed that mutations occur by accident to the genome and that natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, favors beneficial accidents. The accumulation of these presumed genetic accidents under natural selection over the millennia leads in turn to adaptations, from the hawk’s sharp eye to the human cardiovascular system. … “Mutations defy traditional thinking. The results suggest that complex information that is accumulated in the genome through the generations impacts mutation, and therefore mutation-specific origination rates can respond in the long-term to specific environmental pressures,” said Prof. Livnat.

But how did this preferential tendency to produce useful mutations itself arise? Most materialists will say that it arose by chance mutations that became fixed in populations because they were beneficial to organisms. So you’re back to a neo-Darwinian view of mutations after all — random mutations produce beneficial traits even if neo-Darwinian mechanisms sometimes produce non-random biases towards beneficial mutations.

A Vague Lamarckian Fashion

But is that the only explanation for the origin of such mutational biases? Could not intelligent design also explain the presence of mutational spectra that spike where there may be a benefit for an organism? Would that not be a good design strategy to build into living organisms? The technical paper ignores such possibilities — preferring to say that “epigenetic” mechanisms exist which allow these preferences to evolve in a vague long-term Lamarckian fashion. From the news release:

While widely held in the scientific community, this view has always left open fundamental questions, such as the problem of complexity. Can the sequential accumulation of small random changes, each beneficial on its own, lead within the timespan available to the evolution of such astonishingly complex and impressive adaptations as we see around us in nature, such as eyes, brains or wings, where complementary parts interweave into a complex whole? However, the only alternative at the fundamental level conceived of up until now consisted of variants of Lamarckism — the idea that organisms can somehow respond directly to their immediate environments with beneficial genetic change. Since Lamarckism has not worked in general, the notion of random mutation remained the prevailing view. … Previous studies, motivated by Lamarckism, only tested for an immediate mutational response to environmental pressures. “Mutations may be generated nonrandomly in evolution after all, but not in the way previously conceived. We must study the internal information and how it affects mutation, as it opens the door to evolution being a far bigger process than previously conceived,” Livnat concluded.

These researchers have done innovative research to investigate rates of “de novo mutations — mutations that arise ‘out of the blue’ in offspring without being inherited from either parent.” Their findings are extremely important: mutations aren’t random and may occur in patterns that are designed to benefit an organism. How did this arise? Epigenetics may be the direct mechanism, but how did those epigenetic mechanisms arise? Their origin has obvious design implications. But if your only alternative to neo-Darwinism is Lamarckism or some hazy materialistic model of evolution, then you are going to miss the viable possibility of intelligent design.

Why we can't take OOL science seriously.

Monday 14 March 2022

On the reset.

The realignment.

"Man to man is a wolf"

Headed for a fall?

The civil war rages on.

War continues to be good business.

Censorship on the march?

On the foundation of reason.

Faith in God Is the Only Coherent Basis for Reason

Michael Egnor

Atheists commonly assert that there is a profound dichotomy between faith and reason. This is exemplified by atheist evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne’s book Faith vs. Fact. He implies that we can have faith in the truth of something or we can have factual knowledge of the truth but we cannot have both. Faith and fact are, in his view, mutually exclusive. But that is not true.

Faith in God provides an indispensable foundation for the power of human reason. In the perspective proposed by medieval philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), we must accept radical skepticism about the veracity of our perceptions and our concepts.

One may ask: How do we know that what we perceive or what we believe corresponds to reality? The answer is that we can’t know, in the sense that we can’t use our perceptive or intellectual abilities to prove the validity of our perceptions or concepts. To do so would be to reason in a circle. If our perceptions and our concepts are not reliable, then how could we use them to validate their reliability?

That’s Radical Enough

The skepticism Thomas requires is radical indeed. For example, even Descartes’s assertion, “I think therefore I am,” is not something we can prove without faith. The problem lies in the “therefore.” We must tacitly assume the validity of logic — specifically the logic of non-contradiction — to link “I think” to “I am.”

If we do not have faith in logic, then it would be possible to think but not to exist. Of course we find this possibility absurd, but it is only absurd because of our profound faith in the validity of logic — in this case, the validity of the logical principle of non-contradiction. That is the principle inherent in the belief that thinking presupposes the existence of the thinker. If logic were not reliable, there would be no logical connection between thinking and existence. Thinkers could think without existing.

So we are left with radical skepticism — theists and atheists alike. We can conclusively prove nothing about our knowledge of the world. It might all be a delusion and we have no certain way to be sure that it is not.

But of course sane people believe that — at least to some extent — we have access to truth. But this access is always a matter of faith — the validity of reason cannot be validated by reason itself. The process of this faith differs between those who believe in an omniscient and omnibenevolent God and those who do not.

I will speak here from the Christian perspective as it is the one with which I am the most familiar.

Read the rest at Mind Matters News, published by Discovery Institute’s Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

How Darwinism's ministry of truth warps the origins debate II.

Do Non-Scientists Have Freedom to Question Darwinism?

John G. West

Editor’s note: This article is an excerpt from a chapter in the newly released book The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos. See also Dr. West’s article from last week, “Do Scientists Have Freedom to Question Darwinism?”

Even nonscientists can face problems for suggesting that there might be a serious intellectual debate over Darwinism. At Baylor University, philosopher and legal scholar Francis Beckwith was initially denied tenure despite an outstanding record of academic research and publications.¹ Although Professor Beckwith was well known for his prolife views, he was most controversial for his law review articles and an academic book defending the constitutionality of teaching about intelligent design as an alternative to Darwinism.² It is important to note that Beckwith did not advocate that intelligent design should be taught in public schools — only that it was constitutional to teach it in an appropriate manner. But that nuanced position was too much for some of his colleagues, who were defenders of Darwin’s theory. Fortunately for Beckwith, after a public outcry, the president of Baylor later granted him tenure.³

A Dissertation in Limbo

College professors are not the only targets in academia who face discrimination because of their skepticism of Darwinism. Students can be even more vulnerable. Ohio State University doctoral candidate Bryan Leonard had his dissertation defense put in limbo after three pro-Darwin professors filed a spurious complaint attacking Leonard’s dissertation research as “unethical human subject experimentation.” Leonard’s dissertation project looked at how student beliefs changed after students were taught scientific evidence for and against modern evolutionary theory. The complaining professors admitted that they had not actually read Leonard’s dissertation. But they were sure it must be unethical. Why? According to them, there is no valid evidence against evolutionary theory. Thus — by definition — Leonard’s research must be tantamount to child abuse.⁴

Outside of academia, there have been similar cases of discrimination in government-funded science organizations. David Coppedge was a senior computer systems administrator for the Cassini Mission to Saturn at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California. He faced demotion and discharge after he offended his supervisor by occasionally offering to loan colleagues DVDs about intelligent design.⁵ No one had ever complained to Coppedge about his offers of DVDs, but when the supervisor found out, Coppedge faced a punitive investigation. His employment evaluations, which had been outstanding, suddenly became negative, and ultimately he lost his job. Coppedge’s dismissal was justified as a budgetary reduction unrelated to his views on intelligent design, but that explanation was questionable given the facts of the case.

The Sternberg Case

Evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg faced similar retaliation by officials at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) after accepting for publication a peer-reviewed article supportive of intelligent design in a biology journal he edited. A research associate at the museum, Sternberg said that after the article was published, he was told to vacate his office space and was shunned and vilified by colleagues. Efforts were also made by administrators to discover Sternberg’s personal religious and political beliefs.⁶ Investigators for the U.S. Office of Special Counsel concluded that “it is…clear that a hostile work environment was created with the ultimate goal of forcing [Dr. Sternberg]…out of the [Smithsonian].”⁷

Smithsonian officials denied any wrongdoing, but Sternberg was demoted from a research associate to a research collaborator without explanation.⁸ A 17-month investigation by subcommittee staff of the House Committee on Government Reform subsequently confirmed and elaborated on the previous findings of the US Office of Special Counsel. In a detailed report released to the public, subcommittee investigators concluded that they had uncovered “substantial, credible evidence of efforts to abuse and harass Dr. Sternberg, including punitively targeting him for investigation in order to supply a pretext for dismissing him, and applying to him regulations and restrictions not imposed on other researchers.”⁹

Congressional investigators further accused NMNH officials of conspiring “on government time and using government emails…with the pro-evolution National Center for Science Education (NCSE)…to publicly smear and discredit Dr. Sternberg with false and defamatory information.”¹⁰ The NCSE even provided a set of “‘talking points’ to…NMNH officials on how to discredit both Sternberg and the Meyer article.” In addition, the NCSE was asked by senior museum administrator Dr. Hans Sues “to monitor Sternberg’s outside activities…The clear purpose of having the NCSE monitor Dr. Sternberg’s outside activities was to find a way to dismiss him.”¹¹ Congressional investigators concluded that “the extent to which NMNH officials colluded on government time and with government resources with the NCSE to publicly discredit Dr. Sternberg’s scientific and professional integrity and investigate opportunities to dismiss him is alarming.”¹²

When asked about Sternberg’s plight by the Washington Post, Eugenie Scott of the NCSE seemed to suggest that Sternberg was lucky more was not done to get rid of him: “If this was a corporation, and an employee did something that really embarrassed the administration, really blew it, how long do you think that person would be employed?”¹³

Teachers at Risk

Science teachers in K-12 schools also face challenges if they criticize Darwinian theory. In Minnesota, high school teacher Rodney LeVake was removed from teaching biology after expressing doubts about Darwin’s theory. LeVake, who holds a master’s degree in biology, agreed to teach evolution as required in the district’s curriculum, but said he wanted to “accompany that treatment of evolution with an honest look at the difficulties and inconsistencies of the theory.”¹⁴

In Washington State, longtime high school biology teacher Roger DeHart faced continuing harassment from pro-Darwin activists, who succeeded in getting his school district to prohibit him from discussing scientific criticisms of modern Darwinian theory with his students. DeHart was even banned from sharing mainstream science publications with students that corrected textbook errors about evolution. Although DeHart complied with his district’s gag order, ultimately, he was removed from teaching biology. When he took a job in an adjoining school district so that he could continue to teach biology, the harassment continued. He was eventually reassigned from teaching biology in that district as well, even though there were no allegations by his new district that he was not following the prescribed curriculum. DeHart finally was driven from public education altogether.¹⁵

Notes

John West, “Scandal Brewing At Baylor University? Denial of Tenure to Francis Beckwith Raises Serious Questions About Fairness and Academic Freedom,” Evolution News and Views (March 28, 2006), https://evolutionnews.org/2006/03/scandal_at_baylor_university_d/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
See, for example, Francis J. Beckwith, Law, Darwinism, and Public Education: The Establishment Clause and the Challenge of Intelligent Design(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003); Francis J. Beckwith, “Science and Religion Twenty Years After McLean v. Arkansas: Evolution, Public Education, and the New Challenge of Intelligent Design,” Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 26 (Spring 2003), 455-499; Francis J. Beckwith, “Public Education, Religious Establishment, and the Challenge of Intelligent Design,” Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics, & Public Policy 17 (2003), 461-519; Francis J. Beckwith, “A Liberty Not Fully Evolved?: The Case of Rodney LeVake and the Right of Public School Teachers to Criticize Darwinism,” San Diego Law Review 39 (November/December 2002), 1311-1325.
Robert Crowther, “Welcome News as Scholar Francis Beckwith Is Granted Tenure At Baylor,” Evolution News & Views (September 27, 2006), https://evolutionnews.org/2006/09/welcome_news_as_scholar_franci/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
For information about the Bryan Leonard case, see Catherine Candinsky, “Evolution debate re-emerges: Doctoral student’s work was possibly unethical, OSU professors argue,” The Columbus Dispatch (June 9, 2005); “Attack on OSU Graduate Student Endangers Academic Freedom,” Discovery Institute (April 18, 2005), https://www.discovery.org/a/2661/ (accessed November 24, 2020); “Professors Defend Ohio Grad Student Under Attack by Darwinists,” Discovery Institute (July 11, 2005), https://www.discovery.org/a/2715/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
For information and documentation about the Coppedge case, see Robert Crowther, “Trial to Begin in Intelligent Design Discrimination Lawsuit against NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab,” Evolution News and Views (March 5, 2012), https://evolutionnews.org/2012/03/trial_to_begin_/ (accessed November 24, 2020); “Facts of the Coppedge Lawsuit Contradict the Spin from Jet Propulsion Lab and National Center for Science Education,” Evolution News and Views, March 12, 2012, https://evolutionnews.org/2012/03/facts_of_the_co/ (accessed November 24, 2020); Joshua Youngkin, “Why Did NASA’s JPL Discriminate Against David Coppedge and Why Does It Matter?” Evolution News and Views (November 22, 2011), https://evolutionnews.org/2011/11/what_happened_t/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
See David Klinghoffer, “The Branding of a Heretic,” The Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2005, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB110687499948738917 (accessed November 24, 2020). For more information about the controversy surrounding the publication of the journal article supportive of intelligent design, see “Sternberg, Smithsonian, Meyer, and the Paper That Started It All,” https://www.discovery.org/a/2399/ (accessed November 24, 2020); Richard Sternberg, “Smithsonian Controversy,” http://www.richardsternberg.com/smithsonian.php (accessed November 24, 2020).
Letter to Richard Sternberg from the US Office of Special Counsel, August 5, 2005, available at http://www.richardsternberg.com/smithsonian.php?page=letter (accessed November 24, 2020). Also see Klinghoffer, “The Branding of a Heretic.”
Intolerance and the Politicization of Science at the Smithsonian: Smithsonian’s Top Officials Permit the Demotion and Harassment of Scientist Skeptical of Darwinian Evolution, Staff Report Prepared for the Hon. Mark Souder, Chairman, Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources (Washington, DC: US House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform, December 11, 2006), 3, 20-21, https://www.discovery.org/m/securepdfs/2020/11/IntoleranceandthePoliticizationofScienceattheSmithsonian.pdf (accessed November 26, 2020).
Intolerance and the Politicization of Science At the Smithsonian, 4.
Intolerance and the Politicization of Science At the Smithsonian, 5-6.
Intolerance and the Politicization of Science At the Smithsonian, 22, emphasis in original. The congressional report further explained, “Dr. Sues hoped that the NCSE could unearth evidence that Dr. Sternberg had misrepresented himself as a Smithsonian employee, which would have been grounds for his dismissal as a Research Associate: ‘As a Research Associate, Sternberg is not allowed to represent himself as an employee of the Smithsonian Institution, and, if he were to do so, he would forfeit his appointment.’”
Intolerance and the Politicization of Science at the Smithsonian, 23, emphasis in original.
Quoted in Michael Powell, “Editor Explains Reasons for ‘Intelligent Design’ Article,” The Washington Post (August 19, 2005), A19.
Quoted in Rodney LeVake vs. Independent School District #656, State of Minnesota Court of Appeals, C8-00-1613 (May 8, 2001); https://web.archive.org/web/20130314100547/http://www.lawlibrary.state.mn.us/archive/ctappub/0105/c8001613.htm (accessed November 24, 2020). Additional information on the LeVake case can be found in James Kilpatrick, “Case of Scientific Heresy is Doomed,” Augusta Chronicle (December 23, 2001), A4. The Minnesota Court of Appeals found that the school district’s interest in maintaining its curriculum overrode LeVake’s First Amendment interest in teaching material critical of Darwinian evolution.
John G. West, Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007), 231-232, 234-238.

The bravest newest world yet?

Our Looming Procreative Anarchy

Wesley J. Smith

It is no secret that the traditional family is under unprecedented assault. But we haven’t seen anything yet. A time is coming — I would say, within the next twenty years — when there will be no limits to the creation of novel family structures enabled by biotechnology.

We get a hint of that coming dystopia (from my perspective) in an article published in the Reproduction and Fertility medical journal. A bioethicist claims there are no moral reasons for disallowing skin cells to be turned into ova and sperm (in vitro gametogenesis, IVG) — already done in mice — so as to allow open-ended means of having children. When coupled with other emerging biotechnologies, there would be few impossibilities! From, “Is There a Valid Ethical Objection to the Clinical Use of In Vitro-Derived Gametes?”:

IVG affords biological parenthood to more family constructions than does natural conception. Concerns regarding this fact constitute a large proportion of those found in the literature. Biological parenthood could conceivably be made accessible to the deceased; postmenopausal women; single individuals; same-sex couples; groups of more than two individuals; children, fetuses and embryos.

Well Beyond Merely Radical

Embryos as fathers, mothers, or whatever, would go well beyond merely radical, to the socially destabilizing. But other than safety concerns, the author sees no reason not to charge full speed ahead into this biotechnologically enabled social anarchy:

Ethicists discourage objections based on natural law as they have been illustrated to be flawed and morally prejudiced. Even if this were not the case, an attack on the unnatural is a prima facie move which targets the entire medical profession, including medicines, vaccines and other ARTs. This is something that, one must assume, is not the intention of proponents of such a view.
Therefore, one may say instead that reproductive IVG somehow crosses a line and is more unnatural than other medical interventions but even this is difficult to justify. When one is less accustomed to a certain practice, it may attract more distrust or criticism than is warranted; this is a manifestation of the mere-exposure effect, a cognitive bias that renders individuals more averse to the unfamiliar. Such a belief does not reflect the moral value of the practice in question. As an example, IVF was initially regarded as morally suspect for many years – it is only as its practice has become commonplace that public opinion has shifted in its favour. Therefore, while ethical policy should recognise pluralism, it should be developed from rational arguments that are accepted as valid from the perspective of all stakeholders

Which means that moral objections will never be deemed valid. Think about it. People will always be found who want what they want with regard to having children — no matter the moral threats that their desires pose to cultural stability or to the social well-being of future children.

The Bottom Line

That’s clearly the author’s bottom line:

In light of the arguments presented in this review, I conclude that there is no coherent and justifiable in-principle ethical objection to the use of IVG as an ART [assisted reproductive technology] for those who cannot, by any other means, parent offspring with whom they share genetic material. Although both practical and safety concerns currently prevent its application in humans, the approval of reproductive IVG ought to be enacted upon their resolution.

The West is engaged in the most radical remaking of the basic structure of the family in human history — enabled by the most powerful technologies ever devised — methods that can literally change our genomes down the generations and erase fundamental family definitions.

And we are inert in the face of the chaos that could (would, in my view) result therefrom. Not only are we not creating reasonable boundaries; we aren’t even talking about it.

Saturday 12 March 2022

The fossil record v. Darwin once more.

Digital currency: The future of money?

Analog is back in the game?

Darwinian occultism produces yet another Zombie.

Zombie Science: Miller-Urey Experiment Is Back from the Dead, Barely

David Coppedge

With the flasks, tubes, and sparks, the Miller-Urey experiment of 1953 was too good a propaganda visual to let die. This story of what biologist Jonathan Wells calls zombie science should have died the year it went viral, because Harold Urey and Stanley Miller, both well-informed biochemists, knew well that the formation of a few simple amino acids was a far, far cry from a living cell.

They observed the tar of toxic byproducts that formed in the flask. By trapping out the products they wanted, they committed investigator interference. Scientifically speaking, the Miller experiment was a non-starter. Then later, when the atmosphere they used was called into question, the evolutionary icon was doubly dead.

Now It’s Back

But only twitching on the table. Three geophysicists from the Technical University of Denmark, writing in Geophysical Research Letters, simulated the requirements to light sparks in the assumed prebiotic atmosphere. They used Miller’s original mixture and the revised mixture by Kasting (1993) that was more weakly reducing than Miller’s mixture of hydrogen, methane, and water vapor. The results were not encouraging. The possibility of spark generation is too doubtful to raise the Miller-Urey zombie to walking position.

In the 1950s Miller and Urey performed discharge experiments in a gas mixture resembling the atmosphere of Ancient Earth and showed that a significant amount of prebiotic material was produced, possibly laying the foundation for the further synthesis of the first biomolecules. We perform numerical computer simulations of electron avalanches in the gas mixture used by Miller and Urey as well as in a mixture suggested more recently for the composition of Ancient Earth’s atmosphere 3.8 Ga ago and study the conditions needed for the inception of filamentary discharges. We calculate electron and discharge properties and compare them with results for discharges on Modern Earth…. Our simulations show that discharges in the Miller-Urey mixture incept at lower fields than in Kasting’s mixture and partly on Modern Earth which implies that discharges in the atmosphere of Ancient Earth might have been more challenging to incept than previously thought. [Emphasis added.]

No sparks; no amino acids. No amino acids, no life. Perhaps some molecules would form from UV light or cosmic rays, but those energy sources lack the pizzazz of sparks. The textbook cartoons would be boring without those blue sparks in the flask. Everybody seems to have assumed that sparks in the flask were a good proxy for sparks in a prebiotic atmosphere. One should never assume such a key piece of the story without evidence. These authors believe it “might have been more challenging… than previously thought.”

What Did the Team Accomplish?

It’s not clear what the team accomplished if anything. They didn’t operate a Miller-type setup. They didn’t try instigating discharges in Miller’s strongly reducing atmosphere, nor in the weakly reducing atmosphere revised by Kasting in 1993 to be more plausible for the prebiotic Earth. That atmosphere eliminated the methane and hydrogen from the mix and relied primarily on nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Neither did they try getting sparks to start in a modern Earth atmosphere, although lightning is a common observation to us all. In fact, they admit that they don’t even know how lightning starts in our modern atmosphere.

Since it is known for Modern Earth that the large-scale electric fields in thunderstorms are in the order of 0.1E_k, hence seemingly too low for streamers and subsequently for lightning to occur, it is still an enigma how lightning can occur on Modern Earth (Dubinova et al., 2015; Gurevich & Karashtin, 2013). Thus, although the difference in the streamer inception electric field is rather small, it could potentially make a big difference on how efficiently streamers incept. Nonetheless, it is more difficult to incept streamers as precursors of lightning in the weakly reducing Kasting mixture than in the mixture used by Miller and Urey or in modern day air. On the contrary, in local environments, with a significant contribution of methane and ammonia, it might be easier to incept streamers, to observe discharges and maybe even create prebiotic molecules.

Might? Maybe?

All they did was create a computer model of the requirements for streamer formation that might initiate the avalanche of electrons we call lightning. Once again, they say it was probably more challenging than thought:

We provide a table summarizing the electric fields needed for discharge inception in these different atmospheres. Our simulations show that discharges in the Miller-Urey mixture incept at lower fields than in Kasting’s mixture and partly on Modern Earth which implies that discharges in the atmosphere of Ancient Earth might have been more challenging to incept than previously thought.

Without performing experiments, and without calibrating the conditions required for spark inception, their model is basically useless. So, what did their paper achieve?

PR for Their Work

The only motivation that seems apparent was to get some PR for their work by tying it to the Miller-Urey experiment. In Icons of Evolution (2000), Jonathan Wells summarily executed the Miller-Urey experiment as having any relevance to the origin of life, but it didn’t stay dead. He slew it again in Zombie Science (2017). Now, again, the dead theory makes another appearance in the academic literature of the American Geophysical Union. It’s too popular to let go. Google search on “Miller-Urey” and scroll through dozens of illustrations. The focal point of them all is the spark in the flask.

Use of the wrong atmosphere is just one of an array of showstoppers that kill the Miller-Urey experiment. Others include chirality, probability, damaging cross-reactions, lack of most of the amino acid species that exist in life, and the lack of other requirements for life: a membrane, metabolism, and genetics. As if overkill were needed, this paper removes the assumption that sparks were available to get the celebrated “building blocks of life” in the first place.

The Miller-Urey experiment is dead, dead, dead. Its promoters keep it walking with special effects, not science.

For more on problems with the Miller-Urey experiment, see also:

Thaxton et al., The Mystery of Life’s Origin: The Continuing Controversy (2020)
Intelligent Design in a Nutshell (2020), Chapter 2
Meyer, Signature in the Cell (2009)
Evolution News, “A New Flaw in the Miller-Urey Experiment, and a Few Old Ones” (2022)
Documentary film, Origin: How Did Life on Earth Begin? by Illustra Media (2016)
Video, Long Story Short: Origin of Life (2021)

Darwin:Prophet of the Alt-wrong?

Ties that Bind: The Alt-Right’s Connections to Social Darwinist Madison Grant and Eugenics

Gary Varner

In his new book Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism, historian Richard Weikart devotes a chapter to explaining the continuing influence of Darwinian racism in American society today, including its connection to the “Alt-Right.” It’s a topic that we’ve covered before at Evolution News, but it deserves more attention.

Unfortunately, in recent years the term Alt-Right has been misused as something of a catch-all for “conservatism.” That’s a slander. Most conservatives have nothing to do with the actual Alt-Right. In reality, the Alt-Right has an ideology of its own, a mix of both left-leaning and right-leaning elements. But their various positions are united by one belief: that the white race is genetically superior. And as Weikart points, they draw toxic inspiration from the claims of Darwinian biology.

Understanding the Alt-Right

In claiming that the white race is superior, Alt-Right articles and podcasts cite certain early 20th-century social Darwinists. Three of these thinkers are Madison Grant, Sir Francis Galton, and Lothrop Stoddard. The last of these three, perhaps a less familiar name, served as a director for Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood.

The ideas of the social Darwinists permeate the Alt-Right ideology. Some years ago Richard Spencer, an Alt-Right writer — most notably recognized for his role in the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” demonstration in 2017 — interviewed thinker and painter Jonathan Bowden on Spencer’s podcast Vanguard. The episode is titled “The E Word: Eugenics & Environmentalism, Madison Grant & Lothrop Stoddard.” During their interview, Spencer and Bowden not only detail the history of the eugenics movement, they defend it, even attempting to connect eugenics with both abortion and environmentalism, using Grant as their justification. They argue that if the Left could only embrace the notion that some men and women are genetically inferior, then they could deal with the environment effectively.

Academic Language and a Harsh Message

During the podcast, Bowden states:

…if one eschews the politics of human rights in a grandstanding and universalist way and sees human identity and glory in very much an individual or localized manner then deep green and ecological ideas have a lot to say to all forms of conservativism that wish to preserve and restore as against that which is transitory and that which is to our end and which is purely and only concerned with human life to the detriment of the ecology without which mankind couldn’t subsist.

These men have a habit of using academic language to mask their harsh message. What he’s basically saying is that if we’d just get rid of this troublesome notion of human rights, we could deal with overpopulation and save the environment.

When it comes to abortion, both Bowden and Spencer consider it a backwards form of eugenics. As Spencer explains, “they [the elites] are in some ways pursuing negative eugenics in the sense that they are certainly much more willing to abort a child with Down syndrome or so on, and that, of course, can be discovered in the womb. In some ways, one could also suggest that eugenics is still living on.”

Bowden adds:

I also think it’s important to realize that essentially what’s happened is that two concepts have been conflated into one another in order to summarily dispatch both. This is the idea of eugenics as against dysgenics. Dysgenics, which is, if you like, the negative side of eugenics whereby you act though as to prevent harm, but you also act as to, in some senses, prevent life through abortion or through selective contraceptive use or through sterilization. The proactive and yet sort of snip-oriented and negative side of eugenics is its really controversial feature. The wholesome side, the building people up, the tonics for the brave sort of side, is one which only the most… nihilistic and sordid Left-winger would be opposed to, because they find nauseous the idea of happy, athletic, intellectually precocious families beaming for the camera in an Osmonds-like way, you know.

Both Bowden and Spencer blame the public’s rejection of eugenics on the move away from Galton’s understanding of Darwinism after the Second World War. Spencer says, “…you were talking about the academic side of this issue and the fact that so many of these researchers who were quite predisposed to Galton, Darwinism, eugenics that switched. Is that part of the so-called Boasian revolution in anthropology? What I mean by that is, of course, Franz Boas, who was a sworn enemy of Madison Grant.”

Bowden affirms Spencer’s suspicion and then adds a revealing statement about the motives behind this switch. He comments, “Yes, I do think it happened in a certain context though. I think that people who supported eugenics found that unless they found a different vocabulary for it their support couldn’t be sustained in polite society.”

Eugenics as a Worthy Practice

Regarding this switch, the two conclude their conversation when Spencer says, “When you had baby boomers and our generation, you were essentially having people who were influenced by Boasian anthropology. They did not think in terms of Galton and let’s call it classical Darwinism. Really those people lost the battle, and this is the reason why eugenics kind of vanished after the Second World War.”

These two think eugenics was a worthy practice and they lament that it is no longer openly used. Spencer summarizes his thoughts on the subject:

What do you think about our unique ability to reclaim conservationism or naturalism and how, much like Grant, that should be a major cause for us, which is to keep the world green and beautiful and to fight things like the terrible overpopulation that you see in some kind of horrifying city like Mexico City or São Paulo? We want quality over quantity, and we want to live on a beautiful Earth.

While venerating Galton and Stoddard, the conversation mostly centers on the legacy of Madison Grant, a New York lawyer who popularized the eugenics movement with his books, including The Passing of the Great Race and The Conquest of a Continent. Here are some samples of his thought:

“…the intelligence and ability of a colored person are in pretty direct proportion to the amount of white blood he has, and…most of the positions of leadership, influence, and prominence in the Negro race are held not by real negroes but by Mulattoes, many of whom have very little Negro blood.” (The Conquest of a Continent)
“Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race.” (The Passing of the Great Race)
“Where the environment is too soft and luxurious and no strife is required for survival, not only are weak strains and individuals allowed to survive and encouraged to breed but the strong types also grow fat mentally and physically.” (The Passing of the Great Race)

Clearly, Grant has been an influence on Spencer’s thinking. In that connection, Spencer has a book to recommend, historian Jonathan Spiro’s Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant: “He [Spiro] offers a very useful and rich biography of Grant, which has really influenced my interest in Grant, and one of his major themes is that if you tell someone that Grant is an early environmentalist that’ll usually bring a smile to their face, but if you tell someone he’s also an early eugenicist, that will usually inspire shock and horror. But as Spiro points out, there was no contradiction in Grant’s mind between saving the redwoods and saving the White race.”

Confused Terms

It’s a strange thing to hear these individuals claim they are on the Right while simultaneously affirming abortion, an act considered a form of murder by many conservatives. The reason for this confusion of terms is that Spencer, Bowden, and others on the Alt-Right regard themselves as the Right in the same way Mussolini or Hitler might be considered on the “Right” today. That, however, ignores that Hitler’s platform was, after all, “national socialism.” Conservatism today is not only defined by social issues but by a belief in limited government, and there can be nothing more invasive than eugenics.

It’s important to understand what the Alt-Right believes. They are not just an extreme offshoot of either the Right or the Left. Instead, they have their own ideology based on antiquated ideas from the early 20th century, an ideology heavily influenced by eugenics, which was inspired in turn by — as Spencer puts it, not incorrectly — classical Darwinism.

How Darwinism's ministry of truth warps the origins debate.

Do Scientists Have Freedom to Question Darwinism?

John G. West

Editor’s note: This article is an excerpt from a chapter in the newly released book The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos.

The list of scientists, teachers, students, and others who have faced retaliation or discrimination for their public skepticism of Darwinism is long and growing.

A Fortunate Darwin Critic

At San Francisco State University, tenured biology professor Dean Kenyon was removed from teaching introductory biology classes. Once an influential proponent of Darwinian evolution, Kenyon had come to doubt key parts of Darwin’s theory and expressed those doubts to students in class, including his belief that some biological features exhibited evidence of intelligent design. Kenyon was more fortunate than many academic critics of Darwin. After his plight was publicized by an article in the Wall Street Journal, the university was shamed into reinstating him.¹

Biology professor Caroline Crocker at George Mason University was “barred by her department from teaching both evolution and intelligent design” after committing the crime of mentioning intelligent design in a course on cell biology. “It’s an infringement of academic freedom,” she told the journal Nature.² Subsequently her contract was not renewed.³

Oregon community college instructor Kevin Haley was terminated after it became known that he criticized evolution in his freshman biology classes. Haley’s college refused to state why his contract was not renewed, but some of Haley’s colleagues were upset that students who took his biology class were starting to challenge evolution in their classes.⁴ Before the controversy over evolution, Haley had been regarded as an excellent teacher. Indeed, his former department chair had praised him in glowing terms, saying that students “perceive that he is interested in them. He generates curiosity and stimulates their thinking. Those are things that I think are not always there in a professor.”⁵

Discrimination and Bullying

Scientists outside of biology who express skepticism about Darwinism can also face discrimination and bullying. At Baylor University, mathematician William Dembski was fired as director of an academic center he had founded to explore the idea of intelligent design as an alternative to unguided Darwinian evolution. Eventually his faculty contract was not renewed as well, and he lost his job. Dembski, who holds doctorates from the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago, had exemplary academic credentials and publications, but his research center had been strenuously opposed by Baylor’s biology faculty.⁶

Chemistry professor Nancy Bryson was removed from her post as head of the science and math division of Mississippi University for Women after she delivered a lecture to honors students about some of the scientific weaknesses of chemical and biological evolution. “I was harshly attacked by Darwinist colleagues,” she explained later. “…students at my college got the message very clearly, do not ask any questions about Darwinism.”⁷

Blacklisted for Openness

Sometimes scientists can find themselves blacklisted if they merely express openness or sympathy to a critical examination of Darwinism. Astronomer Martin Gaskell was a top applicant to become the head of an observatory at the University of Kentucky. In the words of one university faculty member there, “his qualifications…stand far above those of any other applicant.”⁸ But Gaskell was ultimately rejected for the job after the biology faculty waged an internal war against his hiring. Why did they want to prevent him from getting the job? First, Gaskell was perceived by other faculty to be “potentially evangelical.”⁹ Worse, although he identified himself as a supporter of evolution, in online notes for a science and faith talk, Gaskell respectfully discussed the views of intelligent design proponents and acknowledged that modern evolutionary theory had unresolved problems — just like any scientific theory.

The Gaskell case illustrates how some Darwinian biologists are not content to stop dissent over their theory within their own field. They want to censor disagreement with Darwin in other scientific disciplines as well. Indeed, sometimes they try to silence other scientists from raising the issue of intelligent design outside of biology without any reference to evolution. Eric Hedin was an assistant professor of physics at Ball State University. Like Gaskell, he had a long list of peer-reviewed science publications.¹⁰ For many years, he taught an interdisciplinary honors class at Ball State called “The Boundaries of Science,” which explored the limits of science.

During one small part of the course, Hedin discussed the debate over intelligent design in physics and cosmology — not biology.¹¹ Hedin’s course received positive student reviews.¹² However, atheist evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne at the University of Chicago and the Freedom from Religion Foundation filed complaints.¹³ Ball State then violated its own procedures and appointed an ad hoc committee stacked with avowed critics of intelligent design, including two who spoke at a previous Darwin Day conference organized by the Ball State Freethought Alliance,¹⁴ a group whose “original goal,” according to its president, was “belittling religion.”¹⁵ Hedin’s class was eventually cancelled by Ball State. In addition, the university president issued a campus speech code not only banning professors from covering intelligent design in science classes but also from expressing support for the concept in social science and humanities classes.¹⁶

Next, “Do Non-Scientists Have Freedom to Question Darwinism?”

Notes

Stephen Meyer, “Danger: Indoctrination, a Scopes Trial for the 90s,” The Wall Street Journal (December 6, 1993), https://www.discovery.org/a/93/(accessed November 24, 2020).
Geoff Brumfiel, “Intelligent design: Who has designs on your students’ minds?,” Nature 434 (April 28, 2005), 1062-1065.
See “Intelligent Design and Academic Freedom,” All Things Considered, National Public Radio (November 10, 2005).
See Gordon Gregory, “Biology instructor’s doctrine draws fire,” OregonLive.com (February 18, 2000); Gordon Gregory, “Creationist instructor likely will lose his job,” OregonLive.com (March 28, 2000); Julie Foster, “Biology professor forced out; Pointed to flaws in theory of evolution, encouraged critical thinking,” WorldNetDaily.com (April 14, 2000), https://web.archive.org/web/20010427122836/http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=17856 (accessed November 25, 2020).
Haley’s former department chair Bruce McClelland, quoted in Gregory, “Biology instructor’s doctrine draws fire.”
Fred Heeren, “The Lynching of Bill Dembski: Scientists say the jury is out—so let the hanging begin,” The American Spectator 33 (November 2000), 44-51.
Testimony of Nancy Bryson before the Texas State Board of Education, Transcript of the Public Hearing Before the Texas State Board of Education, September 10, 2003, Austin, Texas (Austin, TX: Chapman Court Reporting Service, 2003), 504-505.
Email from University of Kentucky physicist Thomas Troland, quoted in Casey Luskin, “E-mails in Gaskell Case Show That Darwin Skeptics Need Not Apply to the University of Kentucky,” Evolution News and Views (February 10, 2011), https://evolutionnews.org/2011/02/e-mails_in_gaskell_case_show_t/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
Casey Luskin, “Evidence of Discrimination Against Martin Gaskell Due to His Views on Evolution,” Evolution News and Views (December 15, 2010), https://evolutionnews.org/2010/12/evidence_of_discrimination_aga/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
“Refereed Publications [of Eric Hedin],” Ball State University, https://web.archive.org/web/20130526183917/http://cms.bsu.edu/-/media/WWW/DepartmentalContent/Physics/PDFs/Hedin/PublicationsHedin%20(3).pdf (accessed November 24, 2020).
John G. West, “Misrepresenting the Facts about Eric Hedin’s ‘Reading List’,” Evolution News and Views (July 11, 2013), https://evolutionnews.org/2013/07/misrepresenting/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
Joshua Youngkin, “What Does Eric Hedin Really Teach? Self-Professed Agnostic Speaks Out About ‘Boundaries of Science’ Seminar,” Evolution News and Views (August 2, 2013), https://evolutionnews.org/2013/08/what_does_eric/ (accessed November 24, 2020); Joshua Youngkin, “Hedin Witness #3: ‘This Course Made Me a Better Learner,’” Evolution News and Views (August 9, 2013), https://evolutionnews.org/2013/08/hedin_witness_3/ (accessed November 24, 2020); Joshua Youngkin, “Dr. Hedin’s Student Could Teach Ball State University a Thing or Two,” Evolution News and Views (July 16, 2013), https://evolutionnews.org/2013/07/what_happened_i/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
David Klinghoffer, “At Ball State University, Intimidation Campaign Against Physicist Gets Troubling Results,” Evolution News and Views (May 22, 2013), https://evolutionnews.org/2013/05/at_ball_state_u/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
John G. West, “Questions Raised About Impartiality of Panel Reviewing Ball State University Professor’s Course,” Evolution News and Views (June 25, 2013), https://evolutionnews.org/2013/06/review_panel_or/ (accessed November 24, 2020); Joshua Youngkin, “Indiana Professors Question Ball State University’s Disregard For Rules on Academic Freedom,” Evolution News and Views (August 25, 2013), https://evolutionnews.org/2013/08/indiana_profess/ (accessed November 24, 2020); John G. West, “Clarifying the Issues At Ball State: Some Questions and Answers,” Evolution News and Views (September 13, 2013), https://evolutionnews.org/2013/09/clarifying_the_/ (accessed November 24, 2020).
“Atheist Rift!!,” BSU Freethought Alliance: The Official Blog of Ball State University Freethought Alliance (October 23, 2009), http://freethoughtbsu.blogspot.com/2009/10/atheist-rift.html (accessed November 24, 2020).
John G. West, “Ball State President’s Orwellian Attack on Academic Freedom,” Evolution News and Views (August 1, 2013), https://evolutionnews.org/2013/08/ball_state_pres/ (accessed November 24, 2020).

Monday 28 February 2022

Rise (and fall?) of the atom.

The truth has fallen.

The dragon as merchant.

Physics can rehabilitate OOL science?

Origin of Life Is Not Reducible to Physics

Evolution News @DiscoveryCSC

Yesterday, we critiqued a proposal by Eugene V. Koonin and three colleagues who presented an expanded theory of evolution as “multilevel learning.” (See, “Evolution Is Not Like Physics.”) The proposal commits the fallacy of equating the properties of biological “laws of evolution” with those of physics, and borders on vitalism, which undermines their goal of naturalizing evolution. The proposal was published in two papers in PNAS last month. This time, we look at the second paper that takes their proposal to the special case of the origin of life. Their attempt to incorporate thermodynamics into a highly negentropic process is sure to provoke interest.

From Vanchurin, Wolf, Koonin, and Katsnelson, “Thermodynamics of evolution and the origin of life”:

We employ the conceptual apparatus of thermodynamics to develop a phenomenological theory of evolution and of the origin of life that incorporates both equilibrium and nonequilibrium evolutionary processes within a mathematical framework of the theory of learning. The threefold correspondence is traced between the fundamental quantities of thermodynamics, the theory of learning, and the theory of evolution. Under this theory, major transitions in evolution, including the origin of life, represent specific types of physical phase transitions. [Emphasis added.]

How Can Nature Learn?

Perceptive readers will want to know how they deal with several well-known issues: (1) probability, (2) entropy increase, and (3) harmful byproducts. The authors have already presented their view of the universe as a “neural network” in which natural selection operates at multiple levels, not just in biology. The only neural networks that any human has observed coming into existence were designed by a mind. How, then, can physical nature learn things?

Under this perspective, all systems that evolve complexity, from atoms to molecules to organisms to galaxies, learn how to predict changes in their environment with increasing accuracy, and those that succeed in such prediction are selected for their stability, ability to persist and, in some cases, to propagate. During this dynamics, learning systems that evolve multiple levels of trainable variables that substantially differ in their rates of change outcompete those without such scale separation.

The vitalistic tendencies in this proposal become evident where they claim that nonliving entities are able to predict, train, and compete. They are further evident when the environment can select them according to specific criteria. How do Koonin and his colleagues know this happens? Just look around: there are atoms, stars, and brains that survived the competition by natural selection. Their existence confirms the theory. This is like the anthropic principle supporter who says, “If the universe weren’t this way, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it.”

To deal with the entropy problem, the authors say that learning decreases entropy. They add a second variable Q to the entropy equation that allows them to overcome the problem. “Q is the learning/generalized force for the trainable/external variables q.”

In the context of evolution, the first term in Eq. 3.1 represents the stochastic aspects of the dynamics, whereas the second term represents adaptation (learning, work). If the state of the entire learning system is such that the learning dynamics is subdominant to the stochastic dynamics, then the total entropy will increase (as is the case in regular, closed physical systems, under the second law of thermodynamics), but if learning dominates, then entropy will decrease as is the case in learning systems, under the second law of learning: The total entropy of a thermodynamic system does not decrease and remains constant in the thermodynamic equilibrium, but the total entropy of a learning system does not increase and remains constant in the learning equilibrium.

Very clever; introduce a magic variable that allows the theory to avoid the consequences of the second law. Entropy increases overall (which must happen) but can stabilize or decrease locally in an evolving system, like a warm little pond.

The maximum entropy principle states that the probability distribution in a large ensemble of variables must be such that the Shannon (or Boltzmann) entropy is maximized subject to the relevant constraints. This principle is applicable to an extremely broad variety of processes, but as shown below is insufficient for an adequate description of learning and evolutionary dynamics and should be combined with the opposite principle of minimization of entropy due to the learning process, or the second law of learning (see Thermodynamics of Learning and ref. 17). Our presentation in this section could appear oversimplified, but we find this approach essential to formulate as explicitly and as generally as possible all the basic assumptions underlying thermodynamics of learning and evolution.

Special Pleading with Handwaving

If this sounds like special pleading with handwaving, watch how they take a wrong turn prior to this by ascribing vitalistic properties to matter:

The crucial step in treating evolution as learning is the separation of variables into trainable and nontrainable ones. The trainable variables are subject to evolution by natural selection and, therefore, should be related, directly or indirectly, to the replication processes, whereas nontrainable variables initially characterize the environment, which determines the criteria of selection.

Assume a replication process. It’s like a can opener. It allows them to visualize endless things most beautiful emerging from the can if they had the opener. Theoretically, trainable variables q overcome the increasing entropy generated by the nontrainable variables x if the probability distribution p(x|q) favors q. “We postulate that a system under consideration obeys the maximum entropy principle but is also learning or evolving by minimizing the average loss function U(q),” they say. Natural selection, or learning, does that. Therefore, life can emerge naturally.

Convinced? They derive their conclusions with some whiz-bang calculus, but clearly if a magic variable q is inserted, the derivation becomes unreliable even if the operations are sound. For instance, if you define q as “a miracle occurs,” then of course you can prove that life is an emergent property of matter. At that point, further sub-definitions of q into different categories of miracles fail to provide convincing models of reality. Watch them define learning as a decrease in entropy:

If the stochastic entropy production and the decrease in entropy due to learning cancel out each other, then the overall entropy of the system remains constant and the system is in the state of learning equilibrium… This second law, when applied to biological processes, specifies and formalizes Schrödinger’s idea of life as a “negentropic” phenomenon. Indeed, learning equilibrium is the fundamental stationary state of biological systems. It should be emphasized that the evolving systems we examine here are open within the context of classical thermodynamics, but they turn into closed systems that reach equilibrium when thermodynamics of learning is incorporated into the model.

Further handwaving is seen in their definition of “evolutionary temperature” as “stochasticity in the evolutionary process” and “evolutionary potential” as “a measure of adaptability.” Does anyone really want to proceed hearing them compare a population of organisms to an ideal gas?

The origin of life can be identified with a phase transition from an ideal gas of molecules that is often considered in the analysis of physical systems to an ideal gas of organisms that is discussed in the previous section.

A Cameo by Malthus

Reality left the station long ago. Malthus makes a cameo appearance: “Under the statistical description of evolution, Malthusian fitness is naturally defined as the negative exponent of the average loss function, establishing the direct connection between the processes of evolution and learning.” Learning solves every problem in evolution: even thermodynamics! Tweaking Dobzhansky, they say, “[n]othing in the world is comprehensible except in the light of learning.”

The key idea of our theoretical construction is the interplay between the entropy increase in the environment dictated by the second law of thermodynamics and the entropy decrease in evolving systems (such as organisms or populations) dictated by the second law of learning.

What is this “second law of learning”? It’s Vanchurin’s idea that variables can be defined as ones that “adjust their values to minimize entropy.” A miracle happens! Minds can do this; but matter? Sure. It’s bound to happen.

The origin of life scenario within the encompassing framework of the present evolution theory, even if formulated in most general terms, implies that emergence of complexity commensurate with life is a general trend in the evolution of complex systems. At face value, this conclusion might seem to be at odds with the magnitude of complexification involved in the origin of life [suffice it to consider the complexity of the translation system] and the uniqueness of this event, at least on Earth and probably, on a much greater cosmic scale.Nevertheless, the origin of life appears to be an expected outcome of learning subject to the relevant constraints, such as the presence of the required chemicals in sufficient concentrations. Such constraints would make life a rare phenomenon but likely far from unique on the scale of the universe. The universe is sometimes claimed to be fine-tuned for the existence of life. What we posit here is that the universe is self-tuned for life emergence.

We’re Here, Aren’t We?

Koonin’s colleagues never get around to solving the extreme improbabilities for getting the simplest building blocks of life by chance. They never discuss harmful cross-reactions, which are certain to occur due to known chemical laws. And they wave the entropy problem away by inserting magic variables that they define as systems that “adjust their values to minimize entropy.” These systems also magically possess memories! How do they know that? Well, neural networks have them, and life has them. Genes must have evolved to be the carriers of long-term memory. After all, we’re here, aren’t we?

Evidently, the analysis presented here and in the accompanying paper is only an outline of a theory of evolution as learning. The details and implications, including directly testable ones, remain to be worked out.

Indeed.

On mapping the boundaries of evolutions.

How Much Can Evolution Really Accomplish?

Eric H. Anderson

Editor’s note: In 2020, Michael Behe published A Mousetrap for Darwin, a collection of his essays and responses to critics. Professor of biochemistry Laurence Moran argued that Behe had misinterpreted evidence and had misunderstood the significance of chloroquine resistance. This is the first in a two-part response.

In 2007, biochemist Michael Behe had the temerity to ask a question — a question that should have been asked with repeated and urgent sincerity by all biologists since the ink from Darwin’s quill first dried on his manuscript: What can evolution actually accomplish?

The question is at once reasonable and utterly crucial to the evolutionary story. Yet, for the most part it has been ignored in the history of evolutionary thought. The deeply held assumption of nearly all evolutionists is that evolution can do everything. After all, we’re here aren’t we! So there is little point in even asking the question. To be sure, occasional lip service has been paid to this inquiry over the decades, but such efforts typically descend into a question-begging exercise that simply assumes evolution must have this great creative power. Again, we’re here, and so even if we don’t understand the precise mechanisms of evolution, even if we’re still trying to fill in the details, even if there is some as-yet-undiscovered evolutionary mechanism, evolution simply must have this great creative power.

Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould famously used this tactic, arguing that even if we don’t understand exactly how evolution works, we must still regard evolution as a fact, because, well, things have evolved. Phillip Johnson rightly called out Gould for this self-serving circular attempt to prop up evolution, with Johnson’s careful analysis revealing that Gould’s “fact” of evolution turned out to mean nothing more than the theory.

Unsatisfied with circular evolutionary arguments and lazy reasoning, Behe decided to pose his question to the real-world data. What does the actual evidence show about what evolution can do? Behe approached the problem from a number of angles, the most well-known being his analysis of the appearance of chloroquine resistance in the unicellular malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum.

Lots and Lots of Cells

In brief, Behe noted that the anti-malarial drug chloroquine had been far more successful against the parasite than many other drugs, with resistance to chloroquine arising only in one out of approximately 10^20 parasite cells, as estimated by immunologist Nicholas White, a well-known expert in malaria research. It’s hard for us to grasp such a number, but for comparison’s sake, astronomers estimate there are only between 10^11 and 10^12 stars in our Milky Way galaxy.

Although the molecular details of chloroquine resistance remained fuzzy at the time of Behe’s 2007 book, The Edge of Evolution, based on the malaria data then available Behe suggested that chloroquine resistance might well require two coordinated mutations. A single point mutation (as had been seen with some other drugs) or a series of individually beneficial mutations should have arisen much more frequently than White’s 10^20 estimate. The data, Behe noted, simply did not fit with such approaches, so a more parsimonious explanation was that two coordinated mutations were required.

Evolutionists, predictably, were upset. Jerry Coyne and Sean Carroll asserted that Behe had to be wrong, just on the principle of the thing. In essence, they argued that oh, yes, chloroquine resistance can too come about by a series of single beneficial step-by-step point mutations. That such a claim flatly contradicted the data was beside the point.

Not lost on careful observers was the irony that Behe had proposed that Plasmodium could in fact acquire two coordinated mutations via evolutionary means. Yet intent on maintaining the lore of “one small step at a time for evolution,” Coyne and Carroll eschewed Behe’s offer of two coordinated mutations. In a creative albeit bizarre kind of reverse-gamble, they wagered, “We’ll see your two mutations and raise it to one!”

Over the next several years, arguments went back and forth, and more ink was spilled by the debaters than by a clumsy apprentice at the print shop. Yet despite the nitpicking of definitions, the fights over math, and the repeated accusations that Behe must not understand how evolution really works, those of us who watched the battle of wits from the sidelines noticed that Behe’s basic question remained awkwardly unanswered by his critics: How much can evolution really accomplish?

Moran and the Luck of the Draw

One of the more engaged critics of Behe’s argument was Dr. Larry Moran, professor of biochemistry at the University of Toronto. Moran seems to be on board with the broader evolutionary narrative, but does not consider himself to be a Darwinist. Not long before Behe published The Edge of Evolution, Moran posted a detailed description of his views on his Sandwalk blog titled “Evolution by Accident.” Moran laid out the case for a non-Darwinian view of evolution, building on Jacques Monod’s argument that “pure chance…is at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution,” as well as Gould’s famous replay-the-tape-of-life analogy.

For the most part, I agree with Moran’s assessment of the randomness of evolution, my primary quibble being that Moran doesn’t go far enough in recognizing the role of chance in the evolutionary narrative, specifically in the case of so-called selective events. Upon careful analysis, Darwin’s selection mechanism also collapses to a largely chance-based affair, and so the effort to distance oneself from the shadow of Darwin by embracing random evolution is, to a large extent, a distinction without a difference. Yet that is a nuance and a discussion for another time, should I ever have the honor of the proverbial drink at the pub with Moran.

The key point for readers here is that armed with his chance-centered view of evolution, Moran dove into the debate with Behe over chloroquine resistance. The backs and forths between Moran and Behe (and by their supporters and detractors) throughout the summer of 2014 were too numerous to detail here. Then, following several years of relative peace (at least on this particular front), the battle began anew.

In part to silence the spurious accusation that he doesn’t respond to his critics, in November 2020 Behe published A Mousetrap for Darwin, a collection of his numerous rebuttals to critiques of his three prior books. Included in Mousetrap are several responses to Moran. Moran quickly penned a hurried response on his Sandwalk blog arguing, in essence, that Behe was both wrong about how chloroquine resistance came about and had misinterpreted the mechanisms of evolution.

Behe’s Misunderstanding or Misunderstanding Behe?

Significantly, Moran acknowledges the main thrust of Behe’s argument, noting that:

Behe has correctly indentified [sic] an extremely improbably evolution event; namely, the development of chloroquine resistance in the malaria parasite. This is an event that is close to the edge of evolution, meaning that more complex events of this type are beyond the edge of evolution and cannot occur naturally. [Emphasis added.]

This is a very important acknowledgement, and a reader of The Edge of Evolution might well say to Moran, “Welcome aboard!”

Instead, Moran’s main disagreement (coaxed along at various times by P. Z. Myers, Kenneth Miller, and company) seems to be that Behe has misunderstood how malaria resistance came about. Moran acknowledges that “none of us have a serious problem with this guesstimate [1 in 10^20 malaria-cell replications], but several of us have objected to the way Behe interprets it.”

Flashing back to 2007, we remember Behe had suggested that the simplest explanation for the extreme rarity of resistance to chloroquine was that at least two coordinated mutations were required. This was in stark contrast to the drug atovaquone, for example, which required but a single point mutation, and against which resistance arose faster than the average person could learn to pronounce “Plasmodium falciparum.”

Casey Luskin observed that much indignation was brought to bear by some of Behe’s critics for Behe’s use of the word “simultaneous,” but it was clear to any thoughtful reader of The Edge of Evolution that Behe had never claimed that the two mutations had to arise at the same moment in one fell swoop, such as in the exact same reproduction cycle. His point was simply that the two mutations needed to eventually be together at a particular point in time in a particular cell to confer the needed benefit, regardless of precisely when the mutations arose or which mutation came first. Unlike some of Behe’s critics, Moran, to his credit, granted Behe’s point about the mutations having to be together simultaneously to provide the needed benefit. Moran’s concern was more about the possible routes to chloroquine resistance.

What Guesses Were Reasonable?

It was not at all clear in 2007 — my understanding is that it is still not completely clear — exactly which mutational routes are available to Plasmodium in humans in the wild, nor all the other factors or nuances that might bear on the problem. Moran himself notes that “there are lots of complications and many unknown variables” and that we can “provide estimates” but “can’t give precise calculations.”

The best anyone could do while waiting for more definitive research in 2007 was to make an educated guess as to the exact pathway(s) to resistance. The question is, what guesses were reasonable in light of the malaria data?

Then in 2014, an important paper by Summers et al. shed additional light on the development of chloroquine resistance. Although limited to experiments involving frog oocytes in the lab, this research provided solid experimental evidence detailing the specific mutations involved. The researchers identified two initial routes to chloroquine resistance, with additional mutations leading to “the attainment of full transport activity.” Behe’s critics pounced on this as a possible chink in Behe’s argument, grasping onto the possibility that there might be various ways to achieve chloroquine resistance, including from combinations of more than two mutations.

Behe for his part correctly noted that, if anything, the new research supported his primary argument. Indeed, one of the key takeaways of Summers et al. is that chloroquine resistance is a multi-mutational event, with both of the identified routes to resistance requiring “a minimum of two mutations” to get started. Behe’s 2007 prediction that chloroquine resistance did not result from a series of individually beneficial mutations, but required a multi-mutational event, turned out to be correct. Yet critics still asserted that the key take-home lesson was elsewhere to be found.

In the second part of this response, we’ll examine the data and the implications of chloroquine resistance for the broader evolutionary story.

Pages

Search This Blog

Tuesday 15 March 2022

Paper Provides More Evidence that Mutations Aren’t Random

Mutation in Response to Need

“From the Hawk’s Sharp Eye to the Human Cardiovascular System”

A Vague Lamarckian Fashion

Monday 14 March 2022

Faith in God Is the Only Coherent Basis for Reason

That’s Radical Enough

Do Non-Scientists Have Freedom to Question Darwinism?

A Dissertation in Limbo

The Sternberg Case

Teachers at Risk

Notes

Our Looming Procreative Anarchy

Well Beyond Merely Radical

The Bottom Line

Saturday 12 March 2022

Zombie Science: Miller-Urey Experiment Is Back from the Dead, Barely

Now It’s Back

What Did the Team Accomplish?

Might? Maybe?

PR for Their Work

Ties that Bind: The Alt-Right’s Connections to Social Darwinist Madison Grant and Eugenics

Understanding the Alt-Right

Academic Language and a Harsh Message

Eugenics as a Worthy Practice

Confused Terms

Do Scientists Have Freedom to Question Darwinism?

A Fortunate Darwin Critic

Discrimination and Bullying

Blacklisted for Openness

Notes

Monday 28 February 2022

Origin of Life Is Not Reducible to Physics

How Can Nature Learn?

Special Pleading with Handwaving

A Cameo by Malthus

We’re Here, Aren’t We?

How Much Can Evolution Really Accomplish?

Lots and Lots of Cells

Moran and the Luck of the Draw

Behe’s Misunderstanding or Misunderstanding Behe?

What Guesses Were Reasonable?

Pageviews last month