One big change they note: the number of exo-planets discovered has
exploded, from 200 or so to several thousand. Gonzalez walks through
this and other exciting recent advances in astronomy, and the two
reflect on how these new discoveries bear upon the predictions and
arguments they advanced in their book. Also in the conversation,
Gonzalez speculates about what the James Webb Space Telescope may
uncover after it comes online.
When a stem cell divides, one daughter cell must maintain its
stemness (i.e., ability to differentiate into any cell type) while the
other specializes. Therein lies another truckload of requirements for
coordinated action that, if it goes awry, can spell disaster for an
animal or human. Watch this subject grow into a huge problem for
evolutionary theory.
Researchers at University of California at Riverside investigated what happens when stem cells divide and specialize. UCR’s reporter Iqbal Pittawala describes how “genome organization influences cell fate.”
Understanding the molecular mechanisms that specify and maintain the identities of more than 200 cell types of the human body is arguably one of the most fundamental problems in molecular and cellular biology, with critical implications for the treatment of human diseases. Central to the cell fate decision process are stem cells residing within each tissue of the body. [Emphasis added.]
The two daughter cells face a massive organization problem. Even
though they contain the same DNA code, they will take on separate roles
in the cell. This means that the accessibility of genes between the two
cells must radically differ.
Chromatin — a package of DNA wrapped around histone proteins — makes
some genes accessible for transcription but hides others from the
transcription factors (additional proteins) that switch on
transcription. Begin to get a sense of how difficult this will be. There
are tens of thousands of genes, and 200 cell types that utilize
specific genes but not others. What process determines how chromatin
will package the specialist daughter cell to make genes available if it
will be a nerve cell as opposed to a muscle cell or heart cell? And how
does the system keep the other daughter cell unaltered from the original
stem cell?
A Challenge for a Librarian
Biochemist Sihem Cheloufi at UCR, together with colleague Jernej
Murn, researched a protein complex involved in the process named
“chromatin assembly factor 1” or CAF-1. As you read their description,
think of the challenge a librarian faces with the card catalog for a
large library.
“To help CAF-1 secure correct chromatin organization during cell division, a host of transcription factors are attracted to open regions in a DNA sequence-specific manner to serve as bookmarks and recruit transcription machinery to
correct lineage-specific genes, ensuring their expression,” she said.
“We wondered about the extent to which CAF-1 is required to maintain
cell-specific chromatin organization during cell division.”
CAF-1 normally keeps genes tightly bound in chromatin so that they are inaccessible to transcription factors.
For a specific case, the biochemists looked at how blood stem cells
divide and specialize into neutrophils — a type of white blood cell that
acts as a first responder against an invasion by pathogens. They
noticed that the levels of CAF-1 are finely balanced to prevent access
by a particular transcription factor for that lineage named ELF1. (Note
in passing that each cell type has its own suite of lineage-specific
transcription factors.) Neutrophils artificially deprived of CAF-1 went
awry and forgot their identity.
“By looking at chromatin organization, we found a whole slew of genomic sites that are aberrantly open and attract ELF1 as a result of CAF-1 loss,” Murn said. “Our study further points to a key role of ELF1 in defining the fate of several blood cell lineages.”
Peeking into a Keyhole
Recalling the 200 cell types in the human body, how does CAF-1
organize chromatin for each type? How does it know what genes to make
accessible for a kidney cell, an astrocyte in the brain, or a liver
cell? The UCR work is peeking into a keyhole of a library with a big
operation inside. They don’t yet know how CAF-1 “preserves the chromatin
state at specific sites and whether this process works differently
across different cell types.” Think of our librarian just starting to
get a handle on the job of arranging books in one wing and then finding
200 more wings to manage. Maybe a different analogy will expose the
magnitude of this challenge.
“Like a city, the genome has its landscape with specific landmarks,” Cheloufi said. “It would be interesting to know how precisely CAF-1 and other molecules sustain the genome’s ‘skyline.’ Solving this problem could also help us understand how the fate of cells could be manipulated in a predictive manner. Given the fundamental role of CAF-1 in packaging the genome during DNA replication, we expect it to act as a general gatekeeper of cellular identity. This would in principle apply to all dividing cells across numerous tissues, such as cells of the intestine, skin, bone marrow, and even the brain.”
Surely there is much, much more involved than one protein complex
named CAF-1. Something needs to “know” how to keep one daughter cell’s
chromatin unchanged to maintain the stem cell pool, while reorganizing
the chromatin for the differentiating cell — assuming the system also
“knows” what cell type that daughter cell must become out of 200
possibilities. This implies a complex signaling system for triggering
the production of specific cell types, which must trigger the
appropriate suite of protein complexes to package the chromatin for
access by that cell type’s lineage-specific transcription factors.
Differentiation proceeds down a stepwise transition through progenitor
cell states until the specialized cell, such as a neutrophil, results.
How many evolutionists have thought about this challenge?
Quality-Control Terms from Engineering
The research paper is published open access. It is Franklin et al., “Regulation of chromatin accessibility by the histone chaperone CAF-1 sustains lineage fidelity,” in Nature Communications.
Perhaps the magnitude of the challenge caused the 21 authors to shy
away from referring to evolution in the paper. Instead, they refer to
“lineage integrity” or “lineage fidelity” a dozen times. Those are
quality-control terms from engineering and systems design.
Cell fate commitment is
driven by dynamic changes in chromatin architecture and activity of
lineage-specific transcription factors (TFs). The chromatin
assembly factor-1 (CAF-1) is a histone chaperone that regulates
chromatin architecture by facilitating nucleosome assembly during DNA
replication. Accumulating evidence supports a substantial role of CAF-1 in cell fate maintenance, but the mechanisms by which CAF-1 restricts lineage choice remain poorly understood.
Here, we investigate how CAF-1 influences chromatin dynamics and TF
activity during lineage differentiation. We show that CAF-1 suppression
triggers rapid differentiation of myeloid stem and progenitor cells into
a mixed lineage state. We find that CAF-1 sustains lineage fidelity by controlling chromatin accessibility at specific loci, and limiting the binding of ELF1 TF at newly-accessible diverging regulatory elements. Together, our findings decipher key traits of chromatin accessibility that sustain lineage integrity and point to a powerful strategy for dissecting transcriptional circuits central to cell fate commitment.
Expecting random mutations to somehow emerge then be “selected” by some blind, aimless, uncaring “agentless act” (as Neil Thomas has
put it) to construct this complex system seems beyond rational
consideration. Intelligent design scientists, though, could make
testable predictions to guide further research. Knowing how comparable
systems are made by intelligent engineers — that is, systems involving
coordinated reorganization of information for multiple applications —
they could expect to find new types of sensors, feedback circuits,
quality-control checkpoints, or other functional modules at work. These
might consist of proteins, protein complexes, small RNAs, sugars, ions,
or combinations of them capable of storing or conveying information.
(Note: even if automated, these are not “agentless acts.” The agency is
one step removed from mind to program, but a mind with foresight was
necessary for its origin.)
For example, an ID research team might look for a comparable system
in industry that faces the same kind of challenge. They could identify
the minimum number of job descriptions required to make the system work,
then look for molecules performing those roles in the cellular
analogue. Even if the match is imperfect, the ID approach can advance
science, because what the researchers learn can feed back into
biomimetic design, leading to improved applications in industry.
Poor Darwin. With his crude awareness of cells dividing that looked
like bubbles separating, he had no idea what he would be in for in the
21st century.
John West had a great conversation on the Pints with Jack podcast about his book The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society.
Dr. West reminds listeners of an insight of Lewis’s that doesn’t get
the attention it deserves, perhaps because it comes in the Epilogue of
the last book Lewis completed, the fascinating The Discarded Image.
It’s not his Lewis’s most widely read work. The subject matter is not
what everyone associates with him — not fantasy, or science fiction, or
apologetics, but an account of the Medieval mental picture of the world.
Neither Fiction Nor Fact
In the Epilogue, he turns his focus on the “Models” that we all bring
to bear in understanding our world. Medieval Europeans had one. We have
another. These Models, which are neither fictional nor fully objective
or factual either, dictate a certain understanding of nature, among
other things. In Lewis’s view, “nature gives most of her evidence in
answer to the questions we ask her.” Ask different questions and you
will get different answers.
From The Magician’s Twin:
Lewis recalled that when he was
young he “believed that ‘Darwin discovered evolution’ and that the far
more general, radical, and even cosmic developmentalism… was a
superstructure raised on the biological theorem. This view has been
sufficiently disproved.” What really happened according to Lewis was
that the “[t]he demand for a developing world — a demand obviously in
harmony both with the revolutionary and the romantic temper” had
developed first, and when it was “full grown” the scientists went “to
work and discover[ed] the evidence on which our belief in that sort of
universe would now be held to rest.”
Lewis’s view has momentous
implications for how we view the reigning paradigms in science at any
given time — including Darwinian evolution. “We can no longer dismiss
the change of Models [in science] as a simple progress from error to
truth,” argued Lewis. “No Model is a catalogue of ultimate realities,
and none is a mere fantasy… But… each reflects the prevalent psychology
of an age almost as much as it reflects the state of that age’s
knowledge” Lewis added that he did “not at all mean that these news
phenomena are illusory… But nature gives most of her evidence in answer
to the questions we ask her.”
Recognizing what West calls the “human fallibility of science” is
even more important today than it was in 2012 when he edited his book,
or in 1964 when Lewis wrote his. The spirt or psychology of the day
gives us the science we wished for. This makes it highly fallible, and
potentially dangerous. The notion that science is our guide to morality,
policy, and beyond is called scientism. The idea is ripe with
possibilities of totalitarianism. But it’s what Americans and other
Westerners seem to want.
I hate to burst your bubble who ever you might be, but just because you went to some antiJW propaganda mill and got your skull pumped full of lying propaganda it does not mean that you know me. I am the world's number one expert on what I believe and why I believe it. If you want to know what I actually believe and why just ask me. I have no problem with people disagreeing with my beliefs.
John15:20KJV"Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than
his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if
they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also."
I am not vain enough to compare myself to Jesus, so I fully expect that the reasoning and logic that impresses me will not impress everyone. But it really gets my goat when people pretend to know what I believe better than I do.
On a classic episode of ID the Future, biophysicist Cornelius
Hunter explains how mitochondria, the powerhouses of eukaryotic cells,
pose a powerful and growing problem for evolution. For years
evolutionists thought some early cells must somehow have brought other
cells inside of them, and those other cells then mysteriously evolved
into mitochondria. But recent research undermines that notion. Why do
many evolutionists then still cling to the idea? Dr. Hunter’s answer
explains how a lot of evolutionary thinking persists in the face of
mounting contrary evidence. Download the podcast or listen to it here.
In a recent article at Evolution News (Bechly 2022)
I introduced a new argument against Darwinian evolution and a challenge
to Darwinists. Here is the argument in a nutshell: Among the 350,000
described fossil species, we can identify numerous abrupt origins of new
body plans within a 5–10 million years window of time. Among an
estimated 8.7 million recent species we find no such body plan disparity
in any pairs of species that diverged in a similar time frame according
to molecular clock studies. This contradicts expectations from a
Darwinian perspective.
The simple challenge to Darwinists is to find a single pair of recent
species that have diverged within about 5 million years ago and that
exhibit a disparity in body plan similar to major transitions in the
history of life (e.g., compared to Pakicetus and Basilosaurus). Apparently, I rattled the Darwinist cage, because it took only a few days for a fevered response at the Peaceful Science forum. They claimed to have met the challenge and also invited me to join the discussion at the forum.
Therefore, let me first briefly explain why I declined this invitation and will never participate at Peaceful Science, which in my view deserves to be rebranded as Unpeaceful Science (Clemmons & Luskin 2021).
This forum is dominated mainly by the very same group of hardcore
anti-ID activists (such as Joe Felsenstein, John Harshman, Arthur Hunt,
Puck Mendelssohn, and “Rumraket”) who are notorious for their vitriolic
attacks against intelligent design proponents at other Darwinist forums
like Panda’s Thumb. You just have to skim through the comments
in some of the threads to realize that there is not the slightest
interest in a mutually respectful, fair, and unbiased discussion of
arguments and evidence. Sorry not to be sorry that I have zero tolerance
for such behavior and will never waste my time in a forum that exhibits
such a low level of intellectual integrity.
Two Blatant Examples
Also, the recent two threads at Peaceful Science about my article abound with uncharitable comments and misrepresentations of the arguments. Here are just two blatant examples:
At the very beginning of the initial posting of the thread at Peaceful Science there
is a gross misrepresentation of my argument by commenter Art Hunt.
Contrary to his statement, my argument was emphatically not that
“should a pair of species diverge and go off on their evolving ways,
one would expect to see (inevitably, invariably?) dramatic differences
in such species pairs as time passes.” How anybody could read my article
and come to this conclusion is beyond me. By the way: In my argument I
also do not claim that all recent species pairs that diverged only a few
million years ago necessarily must look so similar that they appear
indistinguishable to laypeople, even though this is often the case. The
crucial point is rather to find different body plans in species that
diverged only a few million years ago, which is common in the fossil
record but virtually absent among recent species.
Another commenter, named Roy, claimed in the second thread at Peaceful Science that I exaggerated the sudden origin of trilobites within 13 million years and misrepresented the paper by Daley et al. (2018). He triumphantly says:
I’ve checked the reference given for his claim of “the origin of trilobites from worm-like ancestors in less than 13 million years”. Not only does it not mention worm-like anything, but it actually says
“The first arthropod traces (Rusophycus )
appear at approximately 537 Ma, shortly after the start of the Cambrian
at approximately 540 Ma. Crown group euarthropods (trilobites) appear
at 521 Ma…”
That’s 16my between trilobites and Rusophycus, trace fossils which are definitely not worm-like because they show signs of being made by legs.
Bechly, like most ID and YEC advocates, must be counting on no-one checking his references.
Well, what I do count on is an average reading comprehension. Of course, Rusophycus traces
show evidence of legs! That’s the whole point. Contrary to most trace
fossils, which are paleontological problematica and cannot be attributed
to a specific organism as trace maker, every undergraduate paleontology
student learns that Rusophycus traces are the resting traces
of trilobites and trilobite-like arthropods. So, by these traces we have
evidence for crown group arthropods like trilobites for 537 million
years ago. The same paper by Daley et al. (2018) also
explicitly acknowledged that 560–550 million years ago there as yet
existed no bilaterian animals (and certainly no arthropods). That is
because of the clear evidence from so-called BST-localities, which are
Ediacaran localities of the Burgess Shale Type that could have preserved
even small and soft-bodied animal ancestors. The current mainstream
view is that at best, coelenterates (jellies) and enigmatic worm-like
animals existed at this Ediacaran time. Even if this were true (I
challenged such claims for Ediacaran animals in several article series
at Evolution News), it would mean that the arthropod body plan
with exoskeleton, articulated legs, mouth parts, compound eyes, central
nervous system, and gut system evolved within 13 million years from such
assumed jelly- or worm-like ancestors. The 13 million years represent
the time span from the Ediacaran BST-localities 550 million years ago to
the oldest Rusophycus traces 537 million years ago. Commenter Roy did not understand either my argument or the Daley article (also see Bechly 2018). Unfortunately, such an instance of the Dunning-Kruger effect is all too commonly found among the most vocal critics of intelligent design on the Internet.
Meanwhile, a very active atheist commenter and anti-ID activist,
writing under the pseudonym Rumraket, suggested that dog breeds qualify
because they look so different (just think of a Pug and an Irish Setter)
and originated within a few thousand years. However, there are of
course two major problems with this preposterous claim:
The differences in size, shape, and fur of dog breeds
are not at all differences in body plan but just simple variations
within the same species based on phenotypic plasticity. No organisms
with a different body plan would be able to interbreed and produce
fertile offspring.
The rapid changes in appearance are based on
human breeding, which is a teleologically guided process and thus an
example of intelligent design. No comparable variations exist in any
wild canine species.
Commenter Roy suggested that otters and ferrets should meet the challenge because they diverged “just over 10mya.” According to TimeTree.org, otters (genus Lutra) and ferrets (genus Mustela)
diverged an estimated 17.5 million years ago. And of course, they do
not even remotely exhibit anything like different body plans. Commenter
Matthew Dickau in the same thread predicts that I will likely reject the
examples as not different enough. Yup, that is exactly what I do,
because they aren’t. Actually, they are still very similar even though
they had more than triple the time available that separates pakicetids
and earliest pelagicetid whales. The fact that none of the biologists
at Peaceful Science, who definitely should know better than “30-year veteran Roy,” objected to this ludicrous example is very telling indeed.
A More Serious Response
But enough of this. Let’s move on to a more interesting claim that
the challenge has been met. Has it? Spoiler alert: no, it hasn’t!
This more serious contender was suggested by botanist Arthur G. Hunt,
a professor of plant and soil sciences at the University of Kentucky
and one of the most active commenters at Peaceful Science. He mentions the fascinating case of a group of plants called the Hawaiian Silversword Alliance. They comprise 33 species in the three genera Argyroxiphium, Dubautia, and Wilkesia, which are endemic to the Hawaiian Islands (Carr 1985).
They form a monophyletic group (clade) within the sunflower family
Asteraceae, and are believed to have colonized Hawaii about 5 million
years ago with a single pioneer species of tarweed from California that
then quickly radiated into differently adapted species (Baldwin et al. 1990; Baldwin & Sanderson 1998; Barrier et al. 2001; Landis 2018). These species exhibit a surprising diversity of phenotypes and, especially in the genus Dubautia,
we even find very different growth forms such as cushion plants, mat
plants, rosette plants, subshrubs, shrubs, trees, and lianas or vines (Baldwin & Robichaux 1995; Baldwin 1997; Baldwin & Sanderson 1998). Therefore, they are considered one of the most important examples of adaptive radiation in the plant kingdom (Purugganan & Robichaux 2005; Blonder et al. 2016).
Professor Hunt’s claim is simple and seductive: the Hawaiian Sword
Alliance allegedly developed very different body plans within 5 million
years and thus perfectly meets my challenge. Does it? Not really, and
here is why.
A minor quibble concerns the dating of the radiation, which proved to
be tricky in the absence of a fossil record. The current estimates rest
on multiple assumptions concerning the phylogenetic relationship,
paleoclimate, and paleogeography (Landis et al. 2018),
which introduces considerable uncertainty. The fact that other
radiations on Hawaii are much older than the estimate for Silverswords (Baldwin & Sanderson 1998),
should at least raise some doubts concerning the reliability of this
estimate. After all, the Kure Atoll, the oldest island of the
archipelago was already formed 29 million years ago. Nevertheless, this
issue is of minor importance, and we can grant the current consensus
dating of 5.1-5.2 million years (Baldwin & Sanderson 1998; Landis et al. 2018) for the sake of the argument.
A more important point is the fact that the differences among the
species of Hawaiian Silverswords are all related to different growth
forms and allometric shifts of already existing structures. Even though
the differences appear superficially striking, they do not involve any
novel body plans (i.e., no new proteins, new tissues, or new organs).
Therefore, the radiation of Hawaiian Silverswords is not comparable
to major body plan transitions such as from “worm” to trilobite, from
terrestrial quadruped to marine whale, or from hair-like dino-fuzz to
pennaceous feathers, etc. If the different growth forms of Hawaiian
Silverswords really represented different body plans, they would not
have been classified in the same family and subfamily as their
continental tarweed relatives, and, in the case of Dubautia,
even within the same genus, at least not prior to the cladistic
revolution in the 1970s when typological thinking still prevailed in
biological systematics.
The second crucial issue is phenotypic plasticity: On the University of Hawaii Botany website about the Hawaiian Silversword Alliance you will find photos of very different pincussion-like and shrub/tree-like growth forms within the same species, Dubautia waialealae. A very similar variability is found in Dubautia laxa,
for which “it is unclear if the recognized subspecies represent unique
evolutionary entities or if the ecological and morphological diversity
within this group is a product of recurrent local adaptation or
phenotypic plasticity” (McGlaughlin & Friar 2011).
This fact alone totally debunks the claim. If such different growth
forms were really comparable to body plan differences bigger than in any
mammals, as Art Hunt claims, this would be as if we were to find a
quadruped with a normal tail and a marine animal with flippers and fluke
as variations within the same species. Of course, such different growth
forms are not comparable to different body plans but just represent phenotypic plasticity that is a common phenomenon in the plant kingdom.
It is of course also true that many of the different phenotypes of
Hawaiian Silverswords do correlate with taxonomic differences in genus
and species (Carr 1985; Blonder et al. 2016: 221). However, the very fact that there are species like Dubautia waialealae with
very different growth forms shows that the same can be reasonably
assumed for the ancestral species prior to the radiation. Such an
ancestral species could have colonized the Hawaiian Islands as early as
29 million years ago when the oldest island (Kure) originated but
certainly much earlier than 5.2 million years (Baldwin & Sanderson 1998).
During the later radiation such ancestral phenotypic plasticity could
become partly stabilized and fixed in different species. This scenario
is strongly supported by the finding that the Hawaiian Silverswords seem
to have originated from a polyploid hybrid (Baldwin & Sanderson 1998; Barrier et al. 1999, 2001; Purugganan & Robichaux 2005), which is known to increase phenotypic plasticity in plants (Weber & D’Antonio 2000; Ainouche & Jenczewski 2010; Te Beest et al. 2012; Cara et al. 2013).
My judgment that these plants do not have very different body plans,
in spite of their often strikingly different growth forms, is also
supported by the fact that they still frequently hybridize without
sterility (Carr & Kyhos 1981, 1986; Carr 1985, 1995; Baldwin et al. 1990; Baldwin 2006).
I can only repeat myself: organisms with different body plans cannot
successfully interbreed. It is a common Darwinian dogma that new body
plans correlate with significant genetic changes in early development
(John & Miklos 1988: 309; Van Valen 1988; Thomson 1992: 111; Arthur 1997: 14+21; Kalinka & Tomancak 2012; Willmore 2012; Meyer 2013), which arguably would prevent any hybridization.
An Avian Example
Since we are talking about Hawaiian island radiations, it may also be
worth mentioning the avian example of the honeycreepers, which is yet
another example for such radiations of “closely related species [that]
are characterized by levels of phenotypic diversity otherwise associated
with higher taxa” (Baldwin et al. 1990). The Hawaiian honeycreepers are
a group of passerine birds endemic to the Hawaii, of which many are
already extinct or critically endangered. They are believed to be most
closely related to the Asian rosefinches of the genus Carpodacus and to have colonized the Hawaiian Islands 5.7–7.2 million years ago (Lerner et al. 2011).
These beautiful birds have very different plumage and very different
beak shapes, from short and thick finch-like beaks to long, thin, and
curved beaks. Might these birds meet the challenge? Again, the answers
must be no, because changes in color pattern and beak shape are not at
all body plan differences. It has been experimentally demonstrated in
the famous Galápagos finches (Abzhanov et al. 2004, 2006; Lawson & Petren 2017)
that very simple genetic switches are responsible for modification of
beak shape. Mainly two simple genes, BMP4 and Calmodulin, control all
three dimensions of the bird’s beak. The same certainly also applies to
the very different beaks of the Hawaiian honeycreepers, as well as to
their different colors.
Similar arguments could be made about the radiation of cichlid fish
in the East African Lake Malawi, which “constitute the most extensive
recent vertebrate adaptive radiation” (Malinsky et al. 2018).
Within about 4 million years, this radiation produced quite
different-looking animals in terms of size, shape, color, and behavior (Schedel et al. 2019), but again no new body plans. These popular ornamental fish are still very similar genetically and often hybridize (Kuraku & Meyer 2008).
Even Young Earth Creationists do not deny that neo-Darwinian mechanisms
may quickly change such simple traits and explain fast speciation, and
neither do I.
To be clear: The rejection of these examples is neither moving the
goalposts nor committing the “no true Scotsman” fallacy. They simply do
not meet the condition of different body plans. It should not be too
difficult to realize that quantitative modifications and variations in
size, shape, color, behavior, or growth form are not the same thing as
the de novo origin of totally new organ systems such as the
counter-current heat exchange system in whales or the origin of all the
organs necessary to make an arthropod from a worm-like ancestor. If
Darwinists should find something significantly better than Silverswords
or dog breeds, I will happily be the first to recognize a successful
response. But of course, even if such a single example were to
be found, it would not be sufficient to remove the general problem of a
clear pattern of big changes in short time being ubiquitous in the
fossil record but not in the present fauna. This pattern is undeniable
and requires an explanation. Anyway, my challenge still stands and has
not yet been met. Try again and try harder, and next time also try not
to misrepresent the argument!
References
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On a new episode of ID the Future, intelligent design pioneer
William Dembski tells the story of his rocky journey into and out of
higher education, the reasons for his sabbatical from the ID movement,
his recent success as an entrepreneur, and his return to ID work. Along
the way Dembski bats down a mistaken rumor about his sabbatical. The
occasion for his conversation with host Casey Luskin is the recent
anthology Dembski and Luskin contributed to and helped edit, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions about Life and the Cosmos. Download the podcast or listen to it here.
On a new episode of ID the Future, Human Nature author
and polymath David Berlinski and radio host Michael Medved discuss
everything from human depravity, the burning of Notre Dame, and the
Russian invasion of Ukraine to the Big Bang and a quixotic century-old
pact to ban war. Download the podcast or listen to it here.
Berlinski argues that the case for the death of God and the case for
the impending demise of human depravity have been greatly exaggerated.
Taking issue with Steven Pinker, Berlinski insists that there is little
if any evidence that human evil is being steadily rolled back by the
spread of secular values. Further, the idea that science has disproven
God flies in the face of trends running in the opposite direction,
perhaps most dramatically in the triumph of the Big Bang theory over an
eternal universe model. Berlinski, who himself is not religious, insists
that optimistic Whig history is bankrupt and that anyone imagining that
human depravity and the God hypothesis are things of the past are
themselves living in the past.
I was recently informed of a video posted on the YouTube channel Creation Myths titled “Creation Myth: ‘Information’ Requires ‘Intelligence’.”
The video specifically references a clip of Stephen Meyer detailing the
design implications of the Cambrian Explosion. Meyer states that the
information required for the sudden appearance of radically new animals
could only have originated from a mind.
The critic responds to this claim by arguing that experiments have
demonstrated that information can be created by natural processes, and
he cites two research studies to support this assertion. His argument
ultimately fails since it is founded on a misunderstanding of the
evidence for design associated with biological information. This error
is so common that it deserves special attention.
The Research Studies
The first cited article is a 2017 study by Neme et al. that
purportedly demonstrated the creation of new information with ease. The
researchers inserted randomly generated sequences of 150 base pairs
into the DNA of E. coli. They reported that 25 percent of
random sequences enhance cells’ growth rate. The experiment purportedly
yielded new information without intelligent direction.
The second cited article is a 2018 study by Yona et al. that explored the difficulty of randomly generating a 100-base-pair DNA sequence in E. coli that would bind to an RNA polymerase. The study demonstrated that 10 percent of random sequences adjacent to the genes in a lac operon would
bind to the polymerase in such a way as to initiate transcription. This
study also purportedly demonstrates that information can be created by a
random process.
The Misunderstanding
Upon close inspection, both studies fail to challenge the design argument that is based on biological information. Neme et al. misinterpreted their results, as Weisman and Eddy explain in their critical review of the study. Douglas Axe summarizes the experimenters’ error as follows:
They merely showed that if you
burden bacteria by forcing them to churn out RNA and protein from random
inserts, it’s fairly easy to find sequence-dependent effects on growth —
not because anything clever has been invented, but because the burden
of making so much junk varies slightly with the kind of junk. That means
any junk that slows the process of making more junk by gumming up the
works a bit would provide a selective benefit. Such sequences are “good”
only in this highly artificial context, much as shoving a stick into an
electric fan is “good” if you need to stop the blades in a hurry.
In short, the sequences performed no new function, so no new information was created.
The Yona et al. experiment did show that a DNA sequence can
be randomly generated that can perform simple functions, such as binding
to a polymerase. Yet this achievement is not relevant to Stephen
Meyer’s full argument. Meyer is not claiming that random processes
cannot generate small quantities of information. He is arguing that
random processes cannot generate the quantity of information required
for anything comparable to creating a new protein with a novel
structure. Axe and others have decisively demonstrated that the
information associated with even modest proteins is typically greater
than what could be produced by any undirected process (here, here, here).
The Challenge for Evolution
The central challenge for evolutionary theory is creating sufficient
information to produce something truly novel that functions at a level
that would benefit an organism. In the case of the lac operon,
the specificity required for it to function is not the difficulty of an
RNA polymerase binding to the promoter region. The specificity and thus
the information reside in the sequences that encode the repressor that
acts as an on/off switch and the genes that encode the proteins that
break down lactose. The minimal required information for the operon to
function is vastly greater than that associated with the region that
binds to a polymerase. The amount is almost certainly beyond what any
undirected process could produce.
German paleontologist Günter Bechly is co-author (with Stephen Meyer) of
the chapter titled “The Fossil Record and Universal Common Ancestry” in
the book Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique. On a classic episode of ID the Future with host Sarah Chaffee, he moves on from the Cambrian explosion (see here)
to discuss “life’s second ‘big bang.’” He then touches on other
biological explosions, including the Avalon explosion, the Triassic
explosion, the origin of flowering plants, and the origin of placental
mammals. “There’s no reasonable way,” Bechly concludes, “to get from
bacteria to mammals via evolutionary processes.” Download the podcast or listen to it here.
In the many years of vehement debate between proponents of unguided
evolution and intelligent design, it sometimes may look like all has
already been said and there are no new arguments on either side.
However, this is not the case at all. Intelligent design theory has
greatly developed since its early beginnings and many new arguments have
been added in support of the design inference. Here, I want to
introduce another new argument and formulate a challenge to my Darwinist
colleagues. This challenge is by no means rhetorical and could be
easily met with simple research in publicly available data bases. Here
it is.
As I have laid out in various publications (e.g., Bechly & Meyer 2017) and lectures,
the fossil record demonstrates that the history of life was not a
series of gradual transformations by an accumulation of small changes
over long periods of time. Instead of conforming to this gradualist
prediction of Darwin’s theory of evolution, the fossil record
consistently documents a series of saltational transitions with abrupt
appearances of new body plans within very short windows of time. This
implies a fatal problem for Darwinism called the waiting time problem,
because population genetic calculations and simulations show that the
windows of time established by the fossil record are orders of magnitude
too short to accommodate the required genetic changes for these body
plan transformations.
Some examples of abrupt body plan transitions are the origin of
photosynthesis; the origin of eukaryotes; the origin of the Ediacaran
biota (Avalon Explosion) and Cambrian animal phyla (Cambrian Explosion)
such as the origin of trilobites from worm-like ancestors in less than
13 million years (Daley et al. 2018, Bechly 2018);
the origin of efficient eyes in arthropods, cephalopods, and
vertebrates; the terrestrialization of plants (embryophytes), arthropods
(tracheae), and vertebrates (tetrapod limbs); the origin of wings in
insects, pterosaurs, bats, and birds (including the origin of pennaceous
feathers from filamentous precursors); the origin of secondarily marine
vertebrates such as ichthyosaurs, mosasaurs, manatees, and whales; the
origin of echolocation in bats and whales; the origin of complex new
reproductive systems (angiosperm flowers, dragonfly secondary copulatory
apparatus, holometabolic insect metamorphosis, amniote egg, and
eutherian placenta); the origin of distinct new body plans in
vertebrates (e.g., snakes, turtles, bats, and whales); and even the
origin of our own genus Homo and of a globular braincase correlated with the “Creative Explosion” of symbolic thinking within Homo sapiens.
The Lifespan of a Single Species
An additional fact that underscores the waiting time problem in cases like whale origins (see this Long Story Short 2020 video) is the average longevity of larger mammal species and especially artiodactyls at only 4.1-4.39 million years (Prothero 2014).
Whales are thought to be nested in and derived from artiodactyl
ungulates. The fossil record shows that the transition from quadrupedal
whale ancestors similar to Raoellidae (such as Indohyus) and
Pakicetidae to fully marine pelagicete whales like Basilosauridae
happened in just 4.5 million years. This implies that the body plan
transition from a pig-like animal to a dolphin-like animal happened
within the lifespan of a single species. Of course, this does not
exclude the possibility of several successive speciation events within
this time period, but it is still a fact that illustrates the biological
abruptness of this major anatomical re-engineering.
Finally, there is also another related problem that has been hitherto
largely overlooked: The morphological similarity of modern species
pairs, which have diverged in a similar time frame, poses a severe
problem. That is because it implies that the macroevolutionary processes
that allegedly were at work and common during all periods of Earth
history and in all groups of organisms, apparently were totally absent
in the origins of all of the millions of living species. To explore this
issue, I surveyed TimeTree.org (Hedges & Kumar 2009, Hedges et al. 2006, 2015, Kumar et al. 2017),
which is a databank of 97,085 living species of different groups of
organisms, with molecular clock estimates of their time of divergence
based on 3,998 studies. When probing any pairs of species, even those
with longer divergence times than available for the development of the
body plan differences between pakicetids and basilosaurids, we find
without exception that their morphologies are hardly distinguishable for
laymen and they often still can hybridize.
So Much for the Theoretical Prelude
Now let’s look at some more-or-less random examples from TimeTree to see what I mean.
Firs (Abies spec.) and cedars (Cedrus spec.) belong
to the same subfamily of conifer trees but separated already 141
million years ago. That is more than 30 times the time available for the
origin of marine whales, but there is hardly any difference in body
plan. Of course, this might just be a case of evolutionary stasis as in
living fossils, but the next examples will make you think again.
The common house fly (Musca domestica) and the small house fly (Fannia scalaris)
diverged about 48 million years ago. For laymen they look basically
indistinguishable. Hmmm, that’s strange, but could still be a fluke.
My favorite animals are dragonflies and damselflies. The northern damselfly (Coenagrion hastulatum) and the azure damselfly (Coenagrion puella)
diverged 11.8 million years ago. Even as an expert on these insects, I
have to resort to a determination key to distinguish them. Can you?
Northern damselfly, Gilles San Martin, Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 2.0).Azure damselfly (Loz, Wikimedia / GFDL).
What about amphibians? The European common frog (Rana temporaria) and moor frog (Rana arvalis) diverged 21.4 million years ago. They look almost identical. Do we start to see a pattern?
“Reptiles” show the same pattern. The Galapagos land iguanas (Conolophus spec.) and marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus spec.)
diverged 18.2 million years ago. The marine iguanas can excrete salt
from a gland at their nostrils and have a more flattened tail, but
otherwise still look very much like their cousins.
Birds rank among the best studied groups in terms of speciation. The green warbler (Phylloscopus nitidus) and Bonelli’s warbler (P. bonelli) diverged 15.2 million years ago (but at least 4-7 million years according to Helbig et al. 1995). They look identical and may still be able to hybridize.
Here is another avian example to show this is a common pattern among recent bird species. The house sparrow (Passer domesticus) and tree sparrow (Passer montanus)
diverged 10.2 million years ago. They have some minor differences in
color pattern but indeed hybridize even in the wild. Still thinking
evolution can achieve miracles in a few million years? Where the heck is
the evidence?
Well, let’s move on to mammals. The common house mouse (Mus musculus) and house rat (Rattus rattus) diverged 20.9 million years ago (at least 12 million years according to Kimura et al. 2015). Apart from the size difference they look very much alike.
Did you ever taste beefalo steak? Beefalos are hybrids between European bison (Bison bonasus) and cattle (Bos taurus)
that diverged 4.88 million years ago, which is about the same time
frame as in the whale example. Some archaic breeds of cattle like the
Scots highland cattle look even more similar to the bison and the
aurochs.
Horse (Equus caballus) and ass (Equus asinus)
diverged 7.7 million years ago and can still hybridize as mules. Their
wild ancestors looked even more similar than most of their modern
domesticated breeds.
Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) and African elephants (Loxodonta africana) diverged 25.9 million years ago (at least 7.6 million years according to Rohland et al. 2007),
and they mainly differ in the tip of the trunk, ear size, and shape of
their withers. Even the two almost identical African species of the
savannah elephant (Loxodonta africana) and the forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) diverged 7.6 million years ago (at least 4 million years according to Rohland et al. 2007). Not really a new body plan.
The South American spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus) and Asian black bear (Ursus / Selenarctos thibetanus) diverged 16.5 million years ago. They look very similar and can hybridize in captivity (Mondolfi & Boede 1981).
River otter (Lutra lutra) and brown fur seal (Arctocephalus pusillus)
diverged about 40 million years ago. They indeed look quite different,
but still a far cry from the difference between pakicetids and
basilosaurids in a tenth of the time. This example is interesting
because some experts thought that otters represent the closest related
group to pinnipeds, or at least assumed stem pinnipeds like the Miocene Puijila darwini were
very similar to otters. Therefore, this case seems to be a pretty good
analogue to the early amphibious stem whales, which made a much bigger
transition in terms of body plan in just a few million years.
In modern phylogenetic reconstructions hippos are consistently
recovered as the sister group of whales. So, we might expect to find a
comparable evolutionary disparity within this group. However, even
though the river hippo (Hippopotamus amphibius) and pygmy hippo (Choeropsis liberiensis)
diverged 9.6. million years ago, they share the same body plan and only
differ somewhat in size and proportions. Still not convinced?
Now, let’s have a look at modern cetaceans. Maybe they are different? The common dolphin (Delphinus delphis) and the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus)
diverged 3.99 million years ago. This represents about the timeframe
available between pakicetids and basilosaurids and shows what blind
evolution at best can achieve with whales in this time: only very minor
differences!
Finally, what about great apes and humans. Chimp (Pan paniscus) and gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) diverged according to TimeTree 9.06 million years ago and humans (Homo sapiens)
from chimps 6.7 million years, which agrees with the hominin fossil
record. There are two possibilities: Either you follow those scientists
who consider the biological difference between humans and chimps as
marginal. Then this example would just confirm the pattern described
above. Or, you consider humans as very different from chimps, based on
their different bipedal locomotion and especially their mental capacity
and cultural achievements. In the latter case humans would represent the
only exception to the pattern that I could find, which would be a
remarkable confirmation of Judeo-Christian human exceptionalism.
These examples could be expanded endlessly but should be sufficient
to establish the point. There are clearly limits to what unguided
evolution can do within a few million years, and these limits are far
below the level of any major body plan transitions. Thus, we can safely
conclude that there are two indisputable facts that require an adequate
explanation:
1.) There are many examples of fossil species pairs with very
different body plans that diverged within a window of time of 5 (±5)
million years. This is even more remarkable if we consider that there
are only about 350,000 described fossil species (extrapolated based on
data in Teichert 1956, Valentine 1970, Raup 1976, and Alroy 2002), which represent only a tiny fraction of the estimated 5-50 billion species that have ever lived on Earth (Raup 1991).
2.) There exist no living species pairs with even remotely similar
differences in body plan that are dated to have diverged in a similar
time frame. This is even more remarkable if we consider that there are
an estimated 8.7 million living species (Mora et al. 2011, Strain 2011, Sweetlove 2011), of which more than 2 million are described (IISE 2012). Previous estimates of the total number of living species varied from 3-100 million species (May 1988, Tangley 1997, Chapman 2009), but if microbes are included, it could even be up to a trillion living species (Locey & Lennon 2016, Latty & Lee 2019).
Considering the fact that windows of time of only 5-10 million years
account for most of the abrupt appearances of new body plans in the
fossil record (Bechly & Meyer 2017, Bechly 2021),
the Bayesian likelihood of not finding a single example of similar
morphological disparity having originated on a similar time frame among
the millions of living species is basically close to zero. I consider
this simple argument as a final nail in the coffin of Darwinian unguided
evolution.
A Public Challenge
Having made my case, I here formally and publicly pose the challenge
again to prove me wrong. My dear Darwinist friends and colleagues,
please find in the vast database of 97,000 species at TimeTree.org just
a single example of any pair of different species that have diverged
about 5 million years ago (give or take a few million years) according
to a consensus of multiple molecular clock studies, and that exhibit a
morphological disparity in their body plans comparable to, say, Pakicetus and Basilosaurus. To be clear, of course no evolutionist ever claimed that Pakicetus was the actual ancestor of Basilosaurus.
It rather represented a side branch of the cetacean stem group. But
what evolutionists definitely do imply is that the stem species was
roughly similar in body plan to Raoellidae and Pakicetidae. Therefore,
this challenge is absolutely valid and reasonable.
An obvious possible objection by Darwinists might be that recent
species pairs do not represent ancestor-descendent lineages but just
cousin lineages that both diverged from a common ancestor. Yes, I get
it. However, this also applies for most fossil examples, and there is a
catch: While differences in ancestor-descendent lineages could only
accumulate in a single evolving lineage, recent lineages could both
evolve differences during the same time in each lineage and thus should
rather present more and not less morphological disparity. Therefore,
this point makes the problem even worse for Darwinists.
Maybe evolutionists will appeal to yet unknown non-Darwinian
processes. However, the great advantage of this new argument is that it
is totally independent of the nature of the transformation process. You
could simply consider that process as a black box. Therefore, it is
totally irrelevant if Darwinists invent some new possible mechanism. The
crucial point is not the process, but the resulting pattern of new body
plans consistently having come into being abruptly in the distant past,
but not in the more recent past.
No Conceivable Reason
There is no conceivable reason why a disparity like that between Pakicetus and Basilosaurus
should be limited to the fossil record, where it can be found in
numerous examples among all groups of organisms, while being totally
absent among the millions of recent species. So, let’s be generous and
not restrict the challenge to the TimeTree database. Just find
any pair of species among the millions of living species to meet the
challenge. Only one! Come on, if unguided evolution really can do its
magic, this should not be too difficult, should it? Well, I won’t hold
my breath, but if the challenge cannot be met, Darwinists should be
asked to explain why.
Here is my explanation. Darwinism is wrong, and this applies not only
to the neo-Darwinian process of random mutation and natural selection
but to any unguided evolutionary processes including those suggested by
proponents of the so-called Extended Synthesis (e.g., Shapiro et al. 2014, Laland et al. 2014, 2015, Garte 2016, Müller 2016, 2017).
There is no evolutionary reason why the creative power of this
process should have been active over all of Earth history but then
ceased to function within the past 10 million years. Intelligent design
proponents can easily explain this pattern: there was creative
intelligent intervention in the history of life, but this creative
activity deliberately ceased with the arrival of humans as the final
telos. Any further explanation would have to transgress the
methodological limits of the design inference, but Judeo-Christian
theists will certainly recognize an eerie correspondence with the
Biblical message, which says that God rested from his creative activity
after the creation of humans (Genesis 2:2-3).
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