The book Darwin Devolves

[shunyadragon]

Yes, as in a mutation that breaks or degrades a gene, yet this provides survival value.


Yes, and Behe's argument is that mutations that help an organism survive are by and large, those that break or degrade genes. This would tend to limit what evolution can do.

Blessings,
Lee

Mutations are not defined as breaking or degrading genes.

[Tassman]

Sorry Dory but a mutation which increases survival potential is beneficial, not deleterious no matter what the effect is on the old genetic configuration.



Behe's latest cherry-picked dishonesty has already been refuted by the scientific community. Why do you keep falling for the DI's anti-science propaganda?

[Roy]

Behe's latest cherry-picked dishonesty has already been refuted by the scientific community.

Cherry-picking is right.

Here's one of Behe's responses to his critics. Note the table at the bottom:

The actual table was shown here:
cherry_table.jpg

Behe has stripped out all the lines that show non-damaging mutations and the columns that show that some of the lines he's included may not be damaging after all.
He has also skipped over the fact that "damaging" in this context merely means "affecting function", without any regard to whether the change is deleterious or beneficial.

Behe thus gives the impression that all mutations are damaging, when this is known not to be the case.

Why do you keep falling for the DI's anti-science propaganda?

Because he wants to.

[shunyadragon]

Cherry-picking is right.

Here's one of Behe's responses to his critics. Note the table at the bottom:

The actual table was shown here:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]35593[/ATTACH]

Behe has stripped out all the lines that show non-damaging mutations and the columns that show that some of the lines he's included may not be damaging after all.
He has also skipped over the fact that "damaging" in this context merely means "affecting function", without any regard to whether the change is deleterious or beneficial.

Behe thus gives the impression that all mutations are damaging, when this is known not to be the case.

I admire your efforts and time put into documenting this. I just looked at it shaking my head, and could not follow Alice down the rabbit hole.

Because he wants to.

I call it 'Blind' devotion to 'Intelligent Design' based on an unteniable religious agenda.

[TheLurch]

There's a couple of publications out today that seem very relevant to the thread. The first is on the origin of completely new genes from non-coding DNA. Using a variety of rice strains and their wild relatives, researchers estimate that this lineage adds genes at a rate of over 50 every million years.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-0822-5

Were the polar bear to have a similar rate of gene addition, it would have generated more than double the number of genes Behe lists as being potentially disabled by mutations since its split with brown bears a million years ago. So, that's an indication that Behe is cherry picking on an additional level, by only focusing on one mechanism of evolution.


The second paper's a re-evaluation of the Cambrian explosion. And, rather than viewing it as its own thing, it places it in a larger context, suggesting that it was one of a series of major radiations of different groups of animals. The first of this series date back to the Ediacaran, and other radiations took place after the Cambrian. The reason we focus on the one in the Cambrian is it involved the bilaterians, which is the group that includes us and most of the animals we care about.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-0821-6

So, rather than "OMG, those evolutionists can't explain this!", it's more of a "well, this happened before and it happened after, so this is nothing unusual."

[rogue06]

There's a couple of publications out today that seem very relevant to the thread. The first is on the origin of completely new genes from non-coding DNA. Using a variety of rice strains and their wild relatives, researchers estimate that this lineage adds genes at a rate of over 50 every million years.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-0822-5

Were the polar bear to have a similar rate of gene addition, it would have generated more than double the number of genes Behe lists as being potentially disabled by mutations since its split with brown bears a million years ago. So, that's an indication that Behe is cherry picking on an additional level, by only focusing on one mechanism of evolution.


The second paper's a re-evaluation of the Cambrian explosion. And, rather than viewing it as its own thing, it places it in a larger context, suggesting that it was one of a series of major radiations of different groups of animals. The first of this series date back to the Ediacaran, and other radiations took place after the Cambrian. The reason we focus on the one in the Cambrian is it involved the bilaterians, which is the group that includes us and most of the animals we care about.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-0821-6

So, rather than "OMG, those evolutionists can't explain this!", it's more of a "well, this happened before and it happened after, so this is nothing unusual."

The bolded part seems to be confirming of the idea that Behe focuses his attention on "Darwinian" evolution which appears to be for him to be concentrated solely on natural selection to the exclusion of other natural mechanisms^[1]. Of course nobody, even Darwin, thought that natural selection was the only mechanism involved. After all, he did write an entire book discussing sexual selection for instance.





1. IIRC Behe did at one time very briefly discuss other evolutionary mechanisms (such as genetic drift, horizontal gene transfer, Epigenetics and developmental evolution -- evo-devo) only to dismiss them as unimportant.

[lee_merrill]

Behe thus gives the impression that all mutations are damaging, when this is known not to be the case.

Well, in the book Behe acknowledges some beneficial / benign mutations in the polar bear, and says this in the article:

Source: Evolution News

Source

© Copyright Original Source

So Behe is not making an absolute claim that harming genes is the only way that unguided mutations can ever help an organism.
Blessings,
Lee

[lee_merrill]

IIRC Behe did at one time very briefly discuss other evolutionary mechanisms (such as genetic drift, horizontal gene transfer, Epigenetics and developmental evolution -- evo-devo) only to dismiss them as unimportant.

Yes, and an entire chapter of Darwin Devolves is devoted to other-than-natural-selection scenarios. Let's read the book first and then analyze his arguments!

Source: Darwin Devolves

A very interesting question that might be asked, as an example, is how evo-devo manipulations might lead to the toothed gears in the legs of Issus coeleoptratus, discussed in Chapter 2. Exactly what master genes and which switches would change gradually to lead to that remarkable structure? Yet more than three decades after the discovery of master genes, no real progress has been made toward specifying in detail exactly how they could lead to an evolutionary explanation for some identifiable complex feature.

© Copyright Original Source

Blessings,
Lee

[lee_merrill]

The second paper's a re-evaluation of the Cambrian explosion. And, rather than viewing it as its own thing, it places it in a larger context, suggesting that it was one of a series of major radiations of different groups of animals. The first of this series date back to the Ediacaran, and other radiations took place after the Cambrian. The reason we focus on the one in the Cambrian is it involved the bilaterians, which is the group that includes us and most of the animals we care about.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-0821-6

So, rather than "OMG, those evolutionists can't explain this!", it's more of a "well, this happened before and it happened after, so this is nothing unusual."

Yet this all seems rather vague:

Source: Nature

We propose that the evolution of metazoans may have been facilitated by a series of dynamic and global changes in redox conditions and nutrient supply, which, potentially together with biotic feedbacks, enabled turnover events that sustained multiple phases of radiation.

Source

© Copyright Original Source

Yet they are not showing us a lineage of Ediacaran animals to Cambrian animals.

Blessings,
Lee

[Tassman]

Yet this all seems rather vague:

Source: Nature

We propose that the evolution of metazoans may have been facilitated by a series of dynamic and global changes in redox conditions and nutrient supply, which, potentially together with biotic feedbacks, enabled turnover events that sustained multiple phases of radiation.

Source

© Copyright Original Source

Yet they are not showing us a lineage of Ediacaran animals to Cambrian animals.

And "God did it" isn't vague?

[TheLurch]

Yet this all seems rather vague:

Source: Nature

We propose that the evolution of metazoans may have been facilitated by a series of dynamic and global changes in redox conditions and nutrient supply, which, potentially together with biotic feedbacks, enabled turnover events that sustained multiple phases of radiation.

Source

© Copyright Original Source

Yet they are not showing us a lineage of Ediacaran animals to Cambrian animals.

Blessings,
Lee

Let me take a wild guess: you've only read the abstract, and not the body of the paper.

I'll also guess that, based on your performances in other recent threads, even if we provided you a copy, you wouldn't read it.

[Roy]

I admire your efforts and time put into documenting this.

Wasn't me that found it - follow the links.

Actually, don't - I put the wrong link in. Try here.

[Roy]

Well, in the book Behe acknowledges some beneficial / benign mutations in the polar bear, and says this in the article:

Source: Evolution News

It has been my experience that one very common way for opponents to try to discredit an argument is to exaggerate it, to ignore distinctions an author makes, and/or to change carefully qualified claims into bizarre absolutes.

Source

© Copyright Original Source

So Behe is not making an absolute claim that harming genes is the only way that unguided mutations can ever help an organism.
Blessings,
Lee

The bolded section is exactly what Behe did here - exaggerating the number of "damaging" mutations. He is projecting his own tactics onto others.

He exaggerated here too:

Source: ibid, my emphasis

multiple mutations of the gene showed that they, too, were almost certainly damaging to its function.

© Copyright Original Source

Only one of the mutations of LYST was listed as not being benign by either analysis method. Most were evaluated as benign by both. And again, Behe is ignoring that "damaging" here means only that a change affects the chemical properties of the protein, it doesn't necessarily mean that the change is deleterious - it could have negligible effect on the protein's use, or even be beneficial.

You pointing out that he says some genes weren't damaged doesn't excuse his butchering of the data table.

[Roy]

Yes, and an entire chapter of Darwin Devolves is devoted to other-than-natural-selection scenarios. Let's read the book first and then analyze his arguments!

Source: Darwin Devolves

A very interesting question that might be asked, as an example, is how evo-devo manipulations might lead to the toothed gears in the legs of Issus coeleoptratus, discussed in Chapter 2. Exactly what master genes and which switches would change gradually to lead to that remarkable structure? Yet more than three decades after the discovery of master genes, no real progress has been made toward specifying in detail exactly how they could lead to an evolutionary explanation for some identifiable complex feature.

© Copyright Original Source

The obvious response is that no progress has even been attempted toward specifying in detail exactly how they could lead to an intelligent design explanation for some identifiable complex feature.

[lee_merrill]

And "God did it" isn't vague?

No, that's very specific, like saying Henry Ford designed the Model T.

Blessings,
Lee