Does neo-Darwinian Theory Include the Origin of Life?
| March 11, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design |
Quite often when confronted with the problematic nature of explaining the arrival of the first life capable of supporting descent with modification an evolutionary theorist will say the theory has no bearing on how the first life came into existence – the theory only explains what happened after that.
Is this true?
Well, yes and no. Evolutionary theory doesn’t explain exactly how the first life was created and doesn’t demand any particular modus operandi. However, that’s not to say it doesn’t make any assumptions at all. It assumes that the first life was a simple cell and the mechanism(s) described by the theory made a simple common ancestor (or perhaps a few simple common ancestors) into the complex and diverse spectrum of life we observe today.
If you want to find out if NDE really cares about how life originated just try asserting that life originated as very complex forms that were programmed to diversify in a prescribed manner. Try saying the original form of life on the earth was like a stem cell in that it contained the unexpressed potential in it to diversify into many different forms with chance playing little if any role in the diversification process. Or better yet, for some real shrieking and howling rejection, try proposing that life originated as very complex perfect forms such as described in the Garden of Eden and the story of evolution is really a story of devolution from originally perfect, diverse forms.
In short not every modus operandi for the origin of life is acceptable – only those which don’t involve intelligent design in the origin of life. The problem is that if you admit intelligent design in the origin of life you open the door for it anywhere in the subsequent story of life. As Richard Lewontin said “We can’t let a divine foot in the door”. In actuality it’s the foot of any intelligent agent, divine or not, that isn’t allowed in the door.
It’s relatively easy to pin someone like Richard Dawkins into the uncomfortable position of either exposing his non-scientific presumptions about the origin of life or admitting that life on earth was possibly intelligently designed. All you have to do is get them to agree that intelligent life such as ourselves with the requisite skills in biochemistry to design a simple cell can evolve without intelligent agency. They are forced by their own beliefs to agree. Then you next ask if it’s possible that intelligent life evolved somewhere else in the universe first and that form subsequently designed the life we find on this planet. They must either agree that’s possible or explain why, scientifically, it isn’t possible. At that point they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. In order to maintain the illusion of being an objective scientist with no ideological presuppositions they must admit that life on earth could be the result of design. Dawkins chose to maintain the illusion by admitting that design is a possibility then tried to weasel out of it by saying that the designer is almost certainly an evolved intelligence. If he doesn’t say almost certainly then again he admits to holding a non-scientific presumption.
105 Responses to Does neo-Darwinian Theory Include the Origin of Life?
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Allen,
Thank you for the references on endosymbiosis- ie Dr Margulis’ experiments..
Charlie at 90
Good catch.
While Allen has nominally supported #3, I will now presume Allen has not seriously considered the implications of #3.
jerry at 89
“whether Dembski’s work is primarily concerned with OOL or evolution,”
Any evidence on your assertions?
e.g. See his papers on conservation of information in searching etc.
Publications Evolutionary Informatics Lab.
H’mm:
While I see Windows Vista is acting up again [I REALLY cannot recommend it!!!], I must comment on the below extract from 89:
I am not so sure that WD’s work is primarily about OOL and only by extension macro-evolution:
I therefore conclude that the work of Dembski is relevant to both cases, as I discuss in my always linked.
Further to this, the key observation is that once it was recognised that a code-bearing molecule of enormous storage capacity and functionality lies at the heart of the cell, we have opened a series of bridges to all the science of information, thermodynamics and chemistry, inter alia. Thus, there are now serious, empirically anchored challenges to the concepts advanced through the Darwinian syntheses of the 1830′s – 50′s and also the 1930′s, based on the rise of information science since the 1940′s. And NDT is not doing so well in addressing these challenges.
Dr MacNeill has more or less tried to cordon off the OOL problem [though there is enough evidence form other quarters to show that NDT is part of an integrated paradigm of proposed materialistic evolutions form hydrogen to humans]. Indeed, conformity to this cascade has become in effect an unacknowledged criterion for definition of what is “scientific,” in many quarters: things are “scientific” only if they conform to this grand story of of origins.
But the same basic challenge holds for macro-level, body-plan originating evolution.
And WD’s work applies to both.
GEM of TKI
“Has [Lynn Margulis] observed free-living bacteria engulfing other free-living bacteria, with the engulfed bacteria continuing to live inside of the first one?”
Allen Macneill:
Yes, thousands of times. You can, too; the most common example is a bacterium called Bdellavibrio, which penetrates the cells of other bacteria and lives inside them as a semi-parasite.
It drills/ bores inside and eats the host from the inside out. Once it starts replicating it’s all over for the host. Not a very good symbiotic relationship developer.
Allen:
However, a much more spectacular example is an Australian protozoan named Myxotricha paradoxa. This protozoan lives in the guts of wood-eating termites.
Protozoan. I was unaware that a protozoan was now classified as a “free-living bacteria”.
Is that what you teach?
Allen Macneill:
On superficial examination, they appear to be very large ciliated protozoa. However, on closer examination they can be seen to consist of several hundred symbiotic bacteria of at least three distinct types (”species”, although this concept does not apply to bacteria). Lynn often shows videos of Mixotricha to illustrate her concept of serial endosymbiosis (as she did in her lecture last month for Cornell’s Darwin Day celebration).
There is a better example with a melee bug. That is a bacteria living inside of a melee bug has another bacteria inside of it.
So what I get from this is if we have suitable hosts- termites, protozoans and melee bugs- then we can observe a form of endosymbiosis, therefor endosymbiosis for the origins of organelles in eukaryotes is confirmed.
Sounds fishy to me.
DLH @ 88. Excellent summary.
I just can’t fathom how a profession devoted to the study of a given subject would resist exploring an area of such great relevance and import as offering the potential for shedding further enlightenment. One would think that biologists would be interested to know how the first living entity acquired those astounding attributes that so sets it apart from the rest of the inanimate world.
The nature of OOL research demands a multidisciplinary approach requiring the joint effort of chemists/physicists/biologists alike because of the thin veil existing between the living and non-living at the moment of the existential differentiation and separation. Isn’t the long-standing, insurmountable mystery of OOL enough to compel scientists of all stripe to work together in finding a solution? Like others have said in this thread, it is but a copout when an evolutionist says that OOL is not a subject of study for biology. As if geochemists working autonomously are in a more enviously advantageous position for settling the matter.
Washing one’s hands and leaving the responsibility to others is counterproductive and against the soul of science, when active cooperation proves to be the more efficacious alternative. Isn’t curiosity the father of discovery? Taking such a stance speaks volumes about the possible ramifications that may be had and gives us a glimpse of a possible backlash that evolutionists may be fearing. And talk about science stoppers. At least, finding out what was it that generated the first living thing could prove helpful in determining whether all life forms actually came from a single common ancestor or multiple sources.
JPCollado @ 56:
“…gravity is a known law of nature confirmed by repeatable testing and precise calculations, similar to quantum electrodynamics which is accurate to 13 unyielding decimal places.”
Allen_MacNeill @ 75:
“Yes, but neither Newton nor Einstein proposed any explanation of why the gravitational force exists, only that it does. Furthermore, the most important physicist in the development of quantum electrodynamics, Richard Feinman (formerly of Cornell, BTW) himself admitted that he couldn’t explain why the theory works, only that it does.”
C’mon, Mr. MacNeill.
I wasn’t the one who introduced the concept of gravity to begin with. As a matter of fact, your response in post # 75 is further substantiation of what I was trying to elucidate in # 56 (specifically, points 1 and 3). Incredibly, now you are agreeing with me that using gravity as a starting point for explaining the origin of the universe is quite misplaced. And that was one of my lines of argument – that the analogy is just simply flawed on the grounds that it is not an adequate platform for analyzing or exploring the relevant questions as should be.
Also, the question was not why gravity exists, but how it has come to exist. Weren’t we discussing the origin of things in the first place?
Let me reiterate what I wrote in # 56:
“3) scientists have also proposed to explain the origin of the universe by way of multiple theoretical models, not the least of which is the Big Bang, the grand-daddy of them all (which, again, has nothing to do with gravity and atoms as starting points.”
Here now I am amazed to see that you are destroying the analogy that you introduced as a way of countering my original argument (at post # 21), viz. ”if a theory is to be hailed as the cornerstone of a particular field of study it should at least fruitfully address the origin of the very thing that it purports to explain.”
All of this just to save face and protect a helpless and indaquate theory.
Allen MacNeill @ 77:
You mention cosmology (the science that studies the origin of the universe) yet fail to see how well this ties to my main argument @ #21 & #56, i.e., that physical scientists – in contrast to biologists – have indeed proposed to “speculate” on the origin of the very thing that they purport to explain.
Alan MacNeill @ 67:
“what I asserted — that Darwin never speculated about the origin of life in written works that he published during his lifetime — is an accurate depiction of the state of affairs as far as I know.”
Mr. MacNeill, do you suppose this has something to do with Darwin’s stealthy methods of escaping from a problem, like for instance, his similar avoidance in trying to explain how an eye could have developed or, more specifically, how an optical nerve would become sensitive to light?
jerry @ 89:
“At which point they will say what real difference does it make. And they will be right since they do not make a big deal of it.”
The more important question is, why aren’t they making a big deal of it to begin with? Is it because they don’t want to concede that darwinian processes are powerless at that juncture where life and non-life meet and incapable of creating the wonders that are so often heaped upon it? The continued insistence for not providing the real reason is very revealing.
These guys are just following the same tactics Darwin used in his Origin of Species. Darwin, the shrewd rhetorician that he was, saw the pitfalls that a discussion of OOL would entail, and smartly opted to leave the matter untouched. In similar stealthy fashion, Darwin also did not want to discuss how “organs of extreme perfection and complication,” such as the eye, could have developed via natural selection (which, btw, is something rightfully belonging in the realm of developmental biology), preferring instead to conjure up his fanciful imagination in sliding the problem away and dumping it along with OOL as matters that were of no concern to his theory.
How convenient.
Allen et al. See further discussion at:
DLH at 128
Allan at 23, 67
See also Letter 3154 — Darwin, C. R. to Herschel, J. F. W., 23 May [1861]] Darwin wrote:
Darwin’s acknowledging that “all has been intelligently designed” while refusing to see evidence in individual organism’s appears to continue on to today.
Allen_MacNeill,
You have repeatedly maintained that the abiogenesis issue is “pure metaphysical speculation, nothing more, and nothing less”. If you really believe that, would you favor the termination of spending government scientific research funds on OOL projects?
If you support continued funding of OOL projects with the government’s scientific research dollars, even though “all valid theories must have empirical support” and it is not “likely that such evidence will eventually be forthcoming”, then, applying a consistent standard, what other kinds of metaphysical projects could be funded with government science research dollars?
If you actually consider OOL research to be legitimately scientific research, do you then consider abiogenesis to be falsifiable? If so, how? If not, how is an unfalsifiable position that is currently without the support of any empirical evidence a “scientific” position?
If it is not a “scientific” position, would it be appropriate to remove any and all claims that life originated spontaneously from non-life from science textbooks? If not, what other metaphysical speculations should be permissible in science textbooks?
[Regarding Huxley's principle, I will post my response in the "Complex speciation of humans and chimpanzees" thread.]
Eric [and Allen et al]:
The funding issue is indeed an interesting and telling angle, but does not capture the full issue.
For, if OOL is a metaphysical speculation project, it is a scientifically linked philosophical issue. That is, it is in the Lakatosian worldview-tinged “core” that ties together the “belt” of theories, models, concepts and data that are the more visible components of the evolutionary materialist “research programme.”
That means that the whole research programme, embracing inter alia, OOL and macro-evolution, properly, should be looked at in light of the broader phil methodology [which includes addressing scientific methods as a significant subset], i.e comparative difficulties across factual adequacy, coherence and explanatory power.
Thus, all live options should be on the table, including that we know from our experience a credible source of functionally specified, complex information such as we now find in the core of life: namely, intelligent agency.
So, obviously, the evolutionary materialism research programme has a major empirical adequacy problem, and that on a key point — where does the life-ball start rolling, how?
As you know, I have long since seriously argued in this blog and elsewhere that it also has a serious challenge with logical coherence, once it has to address the origin and credibility of mind.
Thirdly, as we see the rise of more and more empirical and logical challenges, the whole structure is taking on the looks of an ad hoc patchwork.
So, it is not at all surprising to see that there are moves to defend the system by imposing question begging definitions of science [cf my challenge to Mr Jack Krebs in the speciation thread] and/or smuggling in materialism through the back door [cf Denyse's current remark on imposing materialism in neuroscience over at DOL]. (Note also how studiously this issue was dodged by JK.)
Looks more and more like the Emperor is “nekkid” . . .
GEM of TKI
(Darwinian) Evolution starts with the first organisms, which were the first individual organisms not yet genomed nor celled. Here is a comment I posted earlier today in this forum on another thread:
Chirality In Life, The Earliest Surviving Darwinian Evolution Product
http://www.physforum.com/index.....ntry327715
A. From “…key to life before its origin on Earth?”
http://www.physorg.com/news123440279.html#tab
When scientists synthesize these molecules in the laboratory, half of a sample turns out to be “left-handed” and the other half “right-handed.” But the amino acids that are the building blocks of terrestrial proteins are all “left-handed,” while the sugars of DNA and RNA are “right-handed.” The mystery as to why this is the case, “parallels in many of its queries those that surround the origin of life…”
Thanks to the pristine nature of this meteorite, we were able to demonstrate that other extraterrestrial amino acids carry the left-handed excesses in meteorites and, above all, that these excesses appear to signify that their precursor molecules, the aldehydes, also carried such excesses,” Pizzarello said. “In other words, a molecular trait that defines life seems to have broader distribution as well as a long cosmic lineage.”
B. From “Allosteric, chiral-selective drug binding to DNA”
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/97/22/12032.pdf
(Allosteric: of, relating to, undergoing, or being a change in the shape and activity of a protein, as an enzyme, that results from combination with another substance at a point other than the chemically active site)
DNA is polymorphic and exists in a variety of distinct conformations. Duplex DNA can adopt a variety of sequence-dependent secondary structures that range from the canonical right-handed B form through the left-handed Z conformation. Multistranded triplex and tetraplex structures are now known to exist. All of these unique conformations may play important functional roles in gene expression.
C. Chirality in life still awaits elucidation
First, reasearch findings should be stated scientifically correctly. In A above NOT “a molecular trait that defines life seems to have broader distribution as well as a long cosmic lineage”, but YES “a molecular conformation dominant in Earth life may have broader distribution and additional cosmic presence.”
Next, re in A above “the mystery as to why this is the case”:
My conjecture about the probable reasons for the prevailing chirality:
Darwinian evolution started at life’s day one, with the genesis of the first organisms, the replicating oligomers, pre-archaea genes. It started under yet-unknown energetic conditions, by a serendipitous occurrence, with oligomeric (RNA?) conformations, in a soup containing all their essential molecular progenitors. These conformations happened to absorb the amounts of energy enabling their polymerization, to lengths precipitated as determined by the nature and conditions of the soup.
The sugars and the nitrogen-based compounds that, together with the phosphates, are the components of the genes-organisms, are chiral. There probably is an energetic advantage in homochirality and chiral homogeneity for the self-replication of biopolymers.
This serendipitous occurrence set up a matrix-field of energy with a potential extended between its source, the sun radiation and the precipitating organisms. This was the genesis of the ongoing formation and maintenance of Earth’s biosphere.
And since the biosphere had thus started it could only evolve in the directions of more favorable energy balances-life-packages and towards stabler conformations. Survival was the direction. After all, this was already the course of Earth life evolution.
But this is a conjecture. Chirality in life still awaits elucidation…
Dov Henis
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog.....8211;?cq=1