Prominent NAS member trashes neo-Darwinism

I wonder if Nei stayed close enough to the “evolutionary canons” to avoid being called a hack like Philip Skell. After all, Nei did not call evolutionary biology useless. But then again, I give it 24 hours before some PTer or P-Zed spews venom at Nei.

hmmm, maybe NAS should have a “Dissent from Darwin” petition going, too. Skell, Nei, anyone else?

Princess Bride: Classic! Love it! Question: who would play Prince Humperdink? (I vote for Dawkins)

TOO GOOD Barry!

[...] From Uncommon Descent As mentioned in the introduction, a majority of current evolutionists believe in neo-Darwinism. In one of the most popular textbooks on evolution, Futuyma (ref. 20, p. 10) states that evolutionary change is a population process in which one genotype replaces other ones, and for this process to occur, mutation is quite ineffective because of its low rate of occurrence, whereas even the slightest intensity of natural selection can bring about substantial change in a realistic amount of time. He also states ‘‘Natural selection can account for both slight and great differences among species, and adaptations are traits that have been shaped by natural selection.’’ Although this type of statement is quite common in the evolutionary literature, it is obvious that any advantageous genotype is produced by mutation including all kinds of genetic changes. Natural selection occurs as a consequence of mutational production of different genotypes, and therefore it is not the fundamental cause of evolution. [...]

Sal - can you give a reference for Lewontin’s comments in your point 3?

Folks - Nei is hardly going to deny evolutionary biology. This is more of a discussion about the relative strengths of the different forces. Nei is arguing that we should stress mutation and contingency more. As an evolutionary biologist, I find nothing disturbing: I think he’s only looking at evolution over a long time-scale, but this is a detail that is obvious from the context. And like any good (or, round here, evil?) evolutionary biologist, he does stress the blind nature of the evolutionary process: one of his conclusion is (p12241, middle column):

The prospective view of evolution suggests that evolution occurs without purpose by mutation and adaptation to new environmental
conditions, and therefore it is intrinsically unpredictable.

Bob

Bob - you bring up a good point. However, from a layman’s point of view, NDE seems to rest on the foundations of NS+RM. If NS is “not the fundamental cause of evolution”, as Nei states, then NDE can almost be equated with a game of Yahtzee. Also, if the fundamental cause of evolution is RM, what is left of NDE? I am not trying to be difficult, I would just like to know what the implications are (with views from both sides of the fence).

Also, does this mean that Dawkins will be pushed to the side since he sees NS as having such awesome creative powers?

Barry - excuse me for a second while I clean my monitor. LOL

Darwinists always try to dance around the fact that they are bound by random mutations for any creative process. That is to put it simply that a random mutation of some sort must occur first and foremost on the molecular level before natural selection has anything to select from on the macro level. I’ve seen all sorts of obfuscation from darwinists surrounding this one very simple point. The empirical evidence testifying against gross beneficial morphological changes from random molecular mutations is overwhelming. Yet darwinists must claim that evolution is constantly occurring so they must divorce it from the actual evidence we are finding on the molecular level.
I swear, who issued those guys science degrees?

“who issued those guys science degrees?”

Birds of a feather flock together

NS cannot account for molecules to man evolution, as the first organisms which existed on our planet (bacteria) where already fitter and better adapted to liveable environments than all the organisms which supposedly evolved from them.

How in other words can NS direct the evolution of higher organisms when it correlates to a reduction in fitness? At some point, for example, NS would have to select for longer gestation times, longer generation times, reduced population sizes, sexual reproduction etc, etc.

a relative lack of natural selection may be the prerequisite for major evolutionary advance

What is more important in causing phenotypic evolution? Mutations which have shown to be at least 99.9% of the time to be disadvantageous to an organisms survival, or natural selection which may or may not eliminate any of those those harmful mutations? What they are arguing over is what type of theoretical scenario has the best chance of theoretically being correct even though the odds of either theory actually being able to have relevance to speciation in known reality within known probabilities are so infinitesimally small as to make the whole debate nothing more then an ironic exercise in begging the question and circular reasoning. They want everyone to believe that the “scientific” choices which are available to explain life are evolution and nothing else. Evolution is accepted as true then they try and convince us that the real question on life is how evolution works, not if it can work. Their approach is in reality unscientific because they completely neglect actual known probabilities concerning mutations and their probabilistic effects on an organism. Therefore they are accepting as conclusive truth a theory which is based on an imagined power of RM and NS on speciation and then using that imagined power of RM and NS to try to prove that evolution is true.

Long live Margulis — one of the few who actually has a real mechanism for speciation — the generation of new symbioses.

See my reviews here:

http://baraminology.blogspot.c.....lanet.html
http://baraminology.blogspot.c.....rs-to.html
http://baraminology.blogspot.c.....ation.html
http://baraminology.blogspot.c.....-devo.html

Selection coefficients are rated from 0 to 1, with 1 being the maximum possible for a trait.

I’ve no idea where you got this from. There’s nothing to stop a selection coefficient being >1.

In general, if an organism has 10,000 possible selectable traits, can the AVERAGE selection co-efficient be greater than 1/10,000? The more traits an organism has, the more selection is diluted per trait. Is that a valid interpretation?

No, I don’t see any reason for a limit on the average selection coefficient.

I think you’ve mis-understood selection coefficients. Or you’re asking about something other than selection coefficients (i.e. the s in the population genetics equations of Haldane et al.).

I’ll comment more on the Nei paper later: I’m still reading it.

Bob

Just a question for whoever wants to answer. Can anyone explain to me how evolution based on neutral mutations and/or genetic drift is supposed to work? (I mean, withour NS, or with only a small contribution by it).

In other words, I don’t believe in the power of NS for two reasons:
1) Behe’s arguments have definitely demonstrated that NS cannot select complex new functions, because complex new functions are IC and cannot be selected in a step by step way (the only way open to NS).
2) Dembski’s work shows clearly that no really blind selection can improve the efficiency of a search. In other words, in all the examples of true selection, either natural or artificial, a new complex function can be selected only if the “selecting agent” has some specific information about what to select. Otherwise, no CSI can arise from random variation.

That’s a brief summary of why NS cannot explain biological information. But my point is, at least the theory of RM + NS is “trying” to explain something, even if it fails.

But neutral mutations? Genetic drift? These are, by admission of their proponents, completely random and blind phenomena. How are they supposed to explain CSI? How are they supposed to explain any complex function? Are the proponents of this kind of “evolution” completely unaware of the mathematical impossibilities of obtaining CSI by purely random methods? Have they never read any serious ID source? Or are they simply not interested in the question?

I am not implying that neutral mutations and/or genetic drift don’t exist, or that they are not frequently observable in nature. Of course hey are. My question is: how can they help in explaining biological functional complexity?

OK, Sal. Now I see where you’re coming from. A couple of comments:

1. (this is trivial) Usually the selection coefficient is calculated relative to the least fit allele. Hence my confusion.
2. Is there any evidence that there are 700 genes where there is an allele reducing viability like this? It sounds high to me, although that is just my intuition - I don’t have any evidence.

OK, I’d better get back to Nei before this thread is totally derailed.

Bob

gpuccio,

Just a comment. Natural Selection is over hyped as a force in evolution. All it can do is select among already existing alleles. It cannot create any new information, only select amongst the information structure already present. And over time actually decrease information by eliminating alleles. So in no case can NS, by definition, ever increase information. This is basic NDE 101.

Increasing information can only come from the origin of new alleles through some mechanism. So the real Achilles heel of gradualism is the origin of new alleles. Mutations are the gradualist’s only hope and as Behe just showed, this is a forlorn hope.

Where are they to go. Hype a meaningless process such as NS or pray for more meaningful mutations. The answer is “prayer.”

On Nei, he’s just adding to the debate over the relative strengths of different evolutionary forces. It’s actually a debate that my PhD supervisor was involved in (in a different context) about 15 years ago.

Nei wants to argue that mutation is important, and we should pay more attention to it. I’m not convinced by his arguments, partly because I don’t think he makes a strong case: there’s too much arm-waving, but also because it’s not clear what exactly he thinks we should be looking for.

At one level, he’s right that mutation is important: novelty has to arise through mutation. Hence, a lineage may become dominant simply because the key novelty arose by mutation in that lineage, and not another one (I think this is the message of his discussion about humans and chimps). But one could argue from the same data that selection is important, because that is what will fix most mutations that have a phenotypic effect.

So, it’s more a problem of which perspective you want to take. And a lot of that will depend on the sorts of problems you are looking at, and aspects such as the time scales you are looking over: he criticises Fisher, Wright and Haldane, but they were mainly thinking over shorter timescales, and not so much about the long-term evolution of novelty. I think we’ve moved on a lot since then, and the sorts of problems Nei raises are being studied much more now, and we’re getting quite a good understanding of the processes.

So, the bottom line: this is nothing to get excited about, unless you’re interested in the details of the subject: it’s part of the process of assimilating the new empirical process.

Bob

Bob,

As you say NS can never create novelty. The process only selects, not creates. All novelty must come from some mechanism as yet undetermined and NS just chooses from what is presented and then eventually eliminates possibilities.

So why should anyone really study NS for anything other than the obvious or the trivial? It is only a study of what is potentially in a genome. Sort of like intellectual dog breeding.

I’ll probly mess this up but here goes:

gpuccio asks:
Can anyone explain to me how evolution based on neutral mutations and/or genetic drift is supposed to work?

Neutral mutations- those which do not convey an advantage or disadvantage- are then free to accumulate.

This accumulation will then lead to DNA sequences that will then do something good or bad for the organism.

That is when NS takes over. The good is kept and the bad dies with its owner.

Budda-bing, budda-boom, a novel function is created.

“Budda-bing, budda-boom” is technical evolutionary jargon…

I genuinely would love to know how NS can direct the evolution of higher organisms, all of which process a reduced level of fitness – compared to their first primitive ancestor. For example, at some point NS must select these traits:

1. Reduced reproductive fecundity (i.e. reduced numbers of offspring)

2. Reduced population size (from tillions to, for example, pandas)

3. Reduced resistance to poisons, temperature and environmental changes/conditions

4. Increased generation times (bacteria can reproduce every 20 minutes)

5. Increased gestation times (i.e. elephants 22 months)

6. A reduction in livable environments (bacteria live virtually everywhere)

7. Sexual reproduction (a 50% hit in fitness alone)

If NS really did direct the process of evolution then it must, at some point, have selected traits which lead to one or more of these effects.

How therefore does NS select in the direction of higher complexity, when it appears that higher complexity necessitates a reduction in fitness?

In regards to NS without constructive mutations, then clearly all it can do is take generalizations and produce specializations, which eventually go extinct though lack of, you guessed it – generalization.

The panda is a fine example. Becoming more specialized for its peculiar lifestyle it has totally lost generalization – if the bamboo (which consists of well over 90% of its diet) goes extinct, it goes extinct.

So basically what I’m saying is that even if we grant Darwinists NS and RM the likelihood is that NS would only direct RM in producing traits which further increase fitness. So its doubtful NS would ever go beyond simple, fast reproducing organisms such as bacteria.

Of course the Darwinists would contend that this argument is flawed because, you guessed it – higher organisms with reduced fitness do exist. Spot the circular nature of that response, which I’ve had many times.

On a side point, NS, let’s remember, can only select a trait once it adds some selective value, which means functionality. So if it’s one chance in 10^130 to get a specific protein molecule by RM, it will still be one chance in 10^130 even when NS is factored in. All NS can do is potentially fixate the trait into the population once it has arisen, and even that’s not a given.

Acquiesce,

You raise valid points concerning Darwinism. I have wondered myself, for example, how anything other than bacteria (super-replicators) can be expected from RM/NS, since going from uni-cellularity to multi-cellularity results in a fitness hit, as does moving to sexual reproduction (even when factoring in possible benefits from recombination…the short-term 50% hit is way too high to overcome with a subtle, long-term benefit).

On a side-note, your last comment makes reference to a specific protein (1 in 10^130 chance) and NS. The reason NS is brought in is because if any sub-set of that protein has function/selection value, it will spread and allow cumulative selection to help get the final product. It is easier to get the protein in many small steps, if each step is indeed selectable, than getting it all at once.

PS Has anyone read Jon Saboe’s The Days of Peleg advertised on the side-bar? I’m reading it right now and it is a verrrry good, fun read. I had the opportunity to build with Jon as well, a very nice guy.

Acquiesce,

I’ve been pondering the same issue, only from a different perspective.

As a video game designer, I am familiar with various path-finding algorithms. Some algorithms, such as Dijkstra’s, do a comprehensive search of the space in order to discover the shortest path from one spot to another. An algorithm like A* differs from Dijkstra’s in that it has a heuristic that helps direct the search. For instance, a simple heuristic will give preference to nodes that are closer to the goal point (as the crow flies, so to speak, even though there could be intervening barriers).

So, I’ve tended the think of NS as a kind of heuristic, helping narrow the search space, or helping direct the search toward a specific direction.

But then I stumble on the realization that the NS heuristic only moves toward life.

If we take a look at Dawkins’ Mount Improbable, we see an analogy that purports to show how gradualism solves the problems that Darwinian evolution faces in taking life from bacteria to man. Setting aside CSI for the moment, I’m not sure I really see how gradualism is such a great solution. I keep wondering why Dawkins assumes life will climb Mount Improbable in the first place, as opposed to rolling down the gradual slope.

Surely the Darwinist would say that it is NS that propels life up Mount Improbable. But isn’t the mountain one of complexity? I can see how NS can function as a heuristic guiding toward life, but how does it function as a heuristic guiding toward complexity? It seems to me that at any point up on that gradual slope of Mount Improbable, you have life to the left, to the right, and down the slope behind you. So why must NS lead straight ahead, up the slope? What heuristic is it that pushes toward the complex life that is man vs. toward the simple life that is bacteria?

And if you don’t have NS as a heuristic guiding toward complex man, aren’t you left with a comprehensive search of the problem space?

I would really like to understand the Darwinists perspective on this. Anyone?

An arm must be a bad arm first before becoming a good wing. NS does not have the foresight to overcome such problems.

Indeed. And it doesn’t seem to me that appealing to flying squirrels is much help in this regard, since at some point on the continuum between arm and wing, it seems likely that you will have something that doesn’t function very well as either. And the something would be selected against by NS.

So, it seems to me that there are two sides to the NS problem for Darwinists. (1) NS as a heuristic cannot seem to account for how a baboon is more fit than bacteria, and (2) NS would likely cull the vast majority of those changes that might have proved helpful in moving toward a novel function, but not yet providing it.

An arm must be a bad arm first before becoming a good wing. NS does not have the foresight to overcome such problems.

Sal, Sal, Sal.

A bad arm riding the NS wave of good legs, good sight and good everything else, will survive because the deficiancy it raises is outweighed by the over-performance of other innovations.

To Acquiesce:

Please read Wobbling Stability

To Phinehas:

There isn’t any direction.

Natural selection is the simple result of variation, differential reproduction, and heredity—it is mindless and mechanistic. It has no goals; it’s not striving to produce “progress” or a balanced ecosystem.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/.....ndom.shtml

There isn’t any direction.

Right. And there isn’t any heuristic that would seem to bias evolution toward a baboon instead of toward bacteria. So, how is NS useful in the process again?

And yet Dawkins’ Mount Improbable seemed to assume that evolution would climb toward the peak.

Still, with no direction and no heuristic, that seems to leave us with a comprehensive search of the problem space, in which case, man is just an incredibly lucky guess.

What am I missing?

What are you missing?

Magical mystery mutations!

But anyway:

From the “Contemporary Discourse in the Field Of Biology” series I am reading Biological Evolution: An Anthology of Current Thought, edited by Katy Human (perhaps related to Mike Gene ).

The old, discredited equation of evolution with progress has been largely superseded by the almost whimsical notion that evolution requires mistakes to bring about specieswide adaptation. Natural selection requires variation, and variation requires mutations- those accidental deletions or additions of material deep within the DNA of our cells. In an increasingly slick, fast-paced, automated, impersonal world, one in which we are constantly being reminded of the narrow margin for error, it is refreshing to be reminded that mistakes are a powerful and necessary creative force. A few important but subtle “mistakes,” in evolutionary terms, may save the human race. -page 10 ending the intro

Can evolution make things less complicated?:

Instead, the data suggest that eukaryote cells with all their bells and whistles are probably as ancient as bacteria and archaea, and may have even appeared first, with bacteria and archaea appearing later as stripped-down versions of eukaryotes, according to David Penny, a molecular biologist at Massey University in New Zealand.
Penny, who worked on the research with Chuck Kurland of Sweden’s Lund University and Massey University’s L.J. Collins, acknowledged that the results might come as a surprise.
“We do think there is a tendency to look at evolution as progressive,” he said. “We prefer to think of evolution as backwards, sideways, and occasionally forward.”

All novelty must come from some mechanism as yet undetermined…

Mutation.

Acquiesce - you’re evidently not aware of the idea of a trade-off. Just to give one example, a reduction in the number of offspring can lead to a higher fitness if the offspring are more likely to survive. Another example: specialisation (e.g. on one food source) can be advantageous if it means you can exploit it better, and that you don’t loose out too much in trying to eat everything.

Incidentally, point 6 is silly: it’s not the same bacteria that live everywhere. You don’t find viable populations of E. coli on the skin of humans, for example.

Bob

Bob [42] Acquiesce - you’re evidently not aware of the idea of a trade-off. Just to give one example, a reduction in the number of offspring can lead to a higher fitness if the offspring are more likely to survive.

Actually, I’m fully aware of it, that’s why I specifically made the point that not only are bacteria the fittest organisms on our planet, but are the fittest organisms in whatever environment they live in. So your point that a reduction in the number of offspring can lead to higher fitness seems strange.

Maybe you name me an organism, other than bacteria, which are fitter than bacteria in any particular environment? In other words, what offspring are more likely to survive than those of bacteria? This is precisely the point I’m making.

Bob [42] Incidentally, point 6 is silly: it’s not the same bacteria that live everywhere. You don’t find viable populations of E. coli on the skin of humans, for example.

That’s why I just said bacteria. Whats the point your making here? Bears are quite diverse, the polar, the grizzely, the panda – they’re not the same bear. But they’re still a bear, and you wouldn’t find them living near sea vents with temperatures around 600F.

Bob [42] specialisation (e.g. on one food source) can be advantageous if it means you can exploit it better, and that you don’t loose out too much in trying to eat everything.

Now, I didn’t say it wasn’t advantageous. I said that increasing specialzation, such as predominance to a certain food source, in the case of the panda, shows how NS takes generalizations, produces specializations. which lead ultimately to extinction through lack of generalization. I think that’s common sense.

Atom [33] It is easier to get the protein in many small steps, if each step is indeed selectable, than getting it all at once.

Well that’s highly debateable after all we know proteins have an invariant core, rubisco (a protein used in photosynthesis) comprises 476 aminos, 105 of these are totally invariant. In edition 110 other animos can only be substituted by one alternative, and nearly 189 others by one of three alternatives.

So for NS to produce this protein it must have a substantial amount of the sequence correct, which means it cannot proceed in ‘many small steps’. But the point I was making was merely an attack on NS. NS doesn’t make the arrival of a new trait any more likely, all it does is potentially fixate it into the population.

joseph:

“Neutral mutations- those which do not convey an advantage or disadvantage- are then free to accumulate.”

I understand that’s the general idea. But the problem is, “any” neutral mutation is free to accumulate, or alternatively be lost. So, we are left with the whole configuration space, with the total of possibilities. At risk of being repetitive, Dembski’s UPB is of “only” 500 nucleotides, or roughly 100 aminoacids. And believe me, Dembski’s UPB is really, really a generous limit. Behe’s arguments, which deal with true mutations in real life, show that even a coordinated mutation of a few aminoacids is beyond any reasonable chance, if there is no step by step selection. And now neutralist are claiming that the whole genome, or most of it, derives from the accumulation of neutral mutations, totally random, without practically any relevant selection… I must miss something in their reasoning.

Acquiesce:

I agree with what you say. I have suggested myself, in a previous post somewhere in UD, that really evolution seems to implement more the need to “express” higher functions than the need for survival. There is no doubt that increasing complexity is, everywhere, a cause of incresing weakness. That is particularly true of information and of software. The more the complexity, the more the problems, errors, bugs, etc. But, indeed, complexity can perform “new” functions. That’s its real value. On the same line, it seems that evolution is constantly trying to express higher complexity, and an astonishing level of diversification, creativity and beauty, “in spite” of the inherent challenges to survival and fitness. While I remain convinced that the highest fitness belongs to stones, there is no doubt that bacteria are more fit than any other living being. And just try to compare mosquitos and rats with chimps and human beings…
The whole idea that biological complexity arises from the need for survival is totally wrong. Biological complexity is an astonishing, utterly unlikely design through which some intelligent and artistic force is trying to express something new, some new interesting quality or function, some further creative adventure.

Regarding NS, it is obvious that it can act only to select a new relevant function after it has appeared. That’s why its role is so limited, because complex functions are not deconstructable in step by step subfunctions. In other words, practically any significant new function, new protein, new network, is in essence IC.
But there is more. Even if NS has a role, it cannot really be “heuristic” in any way. NS is, by definition, blind. That’s why it is, in reality, practically random. All the examples made by darwinists (see Methinks it’s a weasel and similar) are examples of intelligent selection, where a very definite knowledge of the aim to be obtained is already present in the “selector”. That’s why they can work.

A very good example of “intelligent” selection is the mechanism by which antibody affinity is increased after an immune response. That’s an almost perfect model of how an intelligent mechanism can determine evolution through random mutation. A random mutation process (an intense and intentional random mutation process) is aimed at a target which is already near to the desired result in the configuration space (the low affinity antibody of the primary immune response, which is selected from a natural repertoire through its affinity with the antigen). The variations in affinity are then accurately tested against the available information (the antigen itself), and only the clones with higher affinity are selected, while the others are inhibited. That’s really intelligent selection. Even if the organism does not know which DNA/aminoacids sequence is the best to react with the antigen, it can use a random search and carefully select the results aaccording to a specific complementary information (the antigen). The procedure is higly purposeful, and it can succeed only because it has already most of the necessary information (the antigen itself).
If the organism did not know the antigen, or if it had to test the efficacy of all the new anibodies “in the wild”, that is by darwinian mechanisms, waiting to see if any new variant of the antibody gives some survival advantage, no higher antibody spcificity could be found in million of years. Instead, the organism checks each result with a known target, by an informational algorithm performed by specific cells (probably the antigen presenting cells in network with other T cells, of the helper and suppressor kind), and useful results are reached in a short time, exactly like in the “methinks it’s a weasel” example. Intelligent selection can perform miracles: it only has to know in advance what it has to find.

Bob,

You said to my comment

“All novelty must come from some mechanism as yet undetermined”

“Mutation.”

Any examples? Behe just shot down mutations; they do nothing but trivial stuff.

Whay can you offer other than faith and a few simple examples?

gpuccio,

You said

“and now neutralist are claiming that the whole genome, or most of it, derives from the accumulation of neutral mutations, totally random, without practically any relevant selection… I must miss something in their reasoning.”

They never have any reasoning only conjecture and “just so stories”. Evolutionary biology is the only science without empirical backing. Whenever you ask for reasoning you get speculation. Whenever you ask for evidence you get silence or in its place rhetoric or sophistry or irrelevant answers. It is always fun to watch them ignore, evade or distract. That is all they can do other than their ad hominem comments.

The real interesting question is what psychological make up leads to such an approach. For once it would be refreshing for them to admit that they don’t have anything but just beleive it will be forthcoming. My guess is to admit the obvious is like surrendering to an enemy.

gpuccio:
But the problem is, “any” neutral mutation is free to accumulate, or alternatively be lost.

Even the most beneficial mutation has the chance of being lost.

NS acts each and every day on each and every organism.

Those which aren’t lost are then free to accumulate.

(I am just giving you their version, not that I believe it)

At risk of being repetitive, Dembski’s UPB is of “only” 500 nucleotides, or roughly 100 aminoacids.

500/3=166.67 amino acids. Don’t want the anti-ID lurkers to think we have a problem doing division, do we?

Behe’s arguments, which deal with true mutations in real life, show that even a coordinated mutation of a few aminoacids is beyond any reasonable chance, if there is no step by step selection.

There isn’t any coordination. Just a bunch of lucky mistakes that happen to make something of themselves.

And that is why the premise is unscientific.

And now neutralist are claiming that the whole genome, or most of it, derives from the accumulation of neutral mutations, totally random, without practically any relevant selection… I must miss something in their reasoning.

Magical mystery mutations.

Magical because they do things that have never been directly observed. And mystery because they still elude us.

When I first started studying electricity and electronics back in the early 70s we used to call it “friggin’ magic”. That term can now be aplied to the theory of evolution.

Jerry:
For once it would be refreshing for them to admit that they don’t have anything but just beleive it will be forthcoming.

And what, exactly, is your problem with “science via promissory notes”?

Joseph:

500/3=166.67 amino acids. Don’t want the anti-ID lurkers to think we have a problem doing division, do we?

I apologize. You are obviously right. I was writing in a hurry, and from (misled) memory. The number 500 is in reality the number of bits, not of nucleotides. Dembski’s UPB is 1 to 10^150, and corresponds roughly to 500 bits of information, which is the same as about 115 aminoacids (20^115), that would be, as you correctly remarked, 345 coding nucleotides (indeed, 4^345 is more than 10^200, but that’s because of the redundancy of the genetic code).
Anyway, 115 aminoacids are really a very small quantity of biological information if their possible random computation would exhaust all the resources of the whole universe!

Again, I apologize. And, please keep it secret and just don’t tell darwinists, but sometimes I do have problems doing division…

gpuccio:
The number 500 is in reality the number of bits, not of nucleotides.

From reading Spetner, Wm Dembski and Stephen Meyer, I was under the impression that one nucleotide = 1 bit.

Lookslike I will have to re-read them…

Salvador,

Is Dawkins really saying this. The implications are that all the varieties for the various species are already in the genome (wings and all) and just has to be teased out by natural selection given the right environmental/ecological conditions.

Does this mean that Dawkins believes in a form of front loading?