There are more things in heaven and earth, Paul, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
| November 21, 2006 | Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design |
It’s funny how Paul Myers, Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott, et al say that evolution isn’t about religion yet you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one of their rants on religion. But that’s not the point of this article.
I have a problem with these people in that they arbitrarily limit what science can potentially explain. The so called supernatural remains supernatural only as long as there’s no metric by which to measure it. Once a metric is discovered the supernatural becomes the natural.
Paul quotes someone on the virgin birth of Christ saying that it defies everything science has revealed in regard to mammalian reproduction. This is utter dreck. Even (especially!) Myers should know that meiosis is a two stage process wherein the first stage results in the production of two perfectly viable diploid cells. The second stage of meiosis then splits these two cells into four haploid gametes. Interrupting the process at the completion of the first stage results in parthenogenesis. Indeed, there are number of organisms in nature that have lost the second stage of meiosis and now reproduce parthenogenetically. See here for more detail. Moreover, it has also been scientifically established that an XX genome can produce phenotypical male offspring. Morever, while all observed XX males in humans are sterile, pathenogenetic populations can still reproduce sexually if sexual reproduction still exists in the species (Da Vinci Code fans will be happy to know this). While it was widely believed that mammals had completely lost the ability for parthenogenetic reproduction, in 2004 researchers in Tokyo managed to create viable parthenogenetic mice. So Paul, science now reveals that the virgin birth of a human male is quite possible. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. What I want to know now is whether ignorance or dishonesty explains why you’d quote someone who claims the virgin birth of Christ defies everything we know about mammalian reproduction. Neither explanation becomes you of course and it gives me immeasurable delight to put you in the proverbial position of choosing between a rock and a hard place. 
The next thing I’d like to debunk in Paul’s latest diatribe is his assertion that matter and energy is all that exists in the universe and science can explain it all without reverting to anything else.
The latest findings in cosmology are that the universe is composed of 5% visible matter, 20% dark matter, and 75% dark energy. The theory of gravity applied to the visible matter and energy in our solar system and local region of the galaxy predicts with exquisite precision the motion of visible bodies. However, when applied to larger structures such as our galaxy and our local galactic cluster the predictions break down. In order to explain those motions there must be 5 times the amount of visible matter existing in some form of normal matter that is not visible. That’s not very incredible and many hypothesis based on known physics are on the table to characterize the dark matter component. See here for more detail. What’s more bizarre is that recently it was discovered that in the universe writ large (relative motions of galactic clusters) it is revealed that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. This was not predicted by the theory of gravity and the amount of matter and energy inferred from the motion of local galaxies. In point of fact there must be something completely unknown going on in the universe. 75% of the “stuff” which makes up the universe is an unknown coined dark energy that diffuses the universe.
So you see, Paul, matter and energy that we know about are only a small fraction of what makes the universe go ’round, so to speak. Who’s to say at this point in time that this huge amount of unknown “stuff” is incapable of organization that produces intelligence? Could God be lurking in the dark energy of the universe? Can science investigate the nature of dark energy? You bet it can. The jury is still out, Paul. You don’t know half what you think you know about the nature of nature nor of what you presume to be the bounds of science’s capacity to investigate it. Hence the subject line of this article.
Update: It has been suggested in the commentary from Professor of Biology Allen MacNeil of Cornell that I don’t know what I’m talking about regarding meiosis in that there is no stage wherein 2 diploid cells are present. I present to you The Phases of Meiosis from Biology 032 at Brown University.
Meiosis begins with Interphase I. During this phase there is a duplication genetic material, DNA replication. Cells go from being 2N, 2C (N= chromosome content, C = DNA content) to 2N, 4C.
further down
In Cytokinesis I, the cells finally split, with one copy of each chromosome in each one. Each of the two resulting cells is now 2N, 2C.
Now I don’t know exactly where the good Professor MacNeil learned his elementary cell biology but where I did a 2n,2c cell is a diploid cell with the normal diploid chromosome count (2n) and the normal amount of DNA (2c). But I’d like thank the professor for keeping on my toes. For a moment there I’d thought I’d had a senior moment and forgotten basic things I learned 30 years ago.
Update 2: The preponderance of literature calls the intermediate cells 1N,2C. This appears to be just semantics. The cells contain 1n unique chromosomes but 2n total chromosomes. I can’t find a definition of “diploid” anywhere that says two identical paired chromosomes only counts as one chromosome. The situation is 23 paired chromosomes that are 100% homozygous. It’s still diploid except perhaps to a pedant.
128 Responses to There are more things in heaven and earth, Paul, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
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Allen
If chromosomal reorganization can result in the expression of new species with significant taxonomic differences it overcomes a major objection to the front-loading hypothesis of ID. The objection is that unexpressed genomic information would be under no selection pressure and therefore would be obliterated by random mutation over geologic timespans. If position effect is the big kahuna in species diversity then the potential rearrangments of highly conserved regions is how the unexpressed forms are conserved. Not proof of a front-loaded genome certainly but another drop in the bucket of things that fit well with it.
Allen
By the way, I found a paper talking about successful meiosis with mismatched chromosomes. As a general rule fertility is at least reduced and often reduced to sterility from chomosome mismatches in meiosis.
http://www.nature.com/nature/j.....01418.html
Also I did a little checking on fertility in those with Down’s syndrome. Women with Downs are reported as 50% able to become pregnant but men with Downs are very near 100% sterile.
DaveScot:
Great similarity in junk dna (non-coding, unconserved) between chimps and humans is the most compelling evidence of common ancestry.
That is ONLY IF DNA is the sole “entity” which makes an organism what it is. However we know that isn’t so.
What hasn’t been explained is what caused the differences we see.
For example we don’t even know if selected mutations can allow for upright walking.
Allen MacNeil:
By itself, it would not be. However, when combined with the well-established observation that humans and chimps share over 98% of the same genetic information, and that essentialy the same genes are located in the same positions along the chromosomes, except for those that are located in human chromosome #2 (and its ape homolog, in which the the same genes are located in the same order, but in a separate chromosome), plus all of the phenotypic similarities, plus the fossil evidence (i.e. Dryapithecus, Ramapithecus, etc.), there is overwhelming evidence from multiple independent sources all pointing to the same inference: that humans and chimps shared a common ancestor that lived somewhere around 6 million years ago (or less, if some of the more recent fossil and genomic evidence is factored in).
Fossil evidence is in the eye of the beholder. And where are the fossils of the chimp or ape lineage?
And I don’t think that 98% similarity is real. But even if it were I know I could create two long senetences with 98% similarity and yet those sentences will have different meanings. The same can be done with computer codes.
And now that we know about alternate gene splicing, sequence may not mean as much as it once did.
And why is it that organs from other animals- not chimps- are better suited to be used in humans? That should count against the alleged common ancestry.
Also I doubt the designer has anything to do with deceit. I would again say that is in the eye of the beholder. IOW people who believe in Common Descent are fooling themselves by insisting they know what should be observed if Common Descent were indicative of reality. Yet in reality we don’t have a clue.
People who focus on the similarities between alleged divergent populations miss the point. It is the differences that must be explained:
Chimps & Humans- DNA does NOT explain the differences
So to sum up if something looks like common ancestry it is scientific evidence for that. However if something looks designed we still have to provide the designer and the process before that can be accepted as scientific evidence for ID.
I think we are making progress.
Joseph
What would it take to convince you that humans and chimps share a common ancestor?
I suspect you’re beyond reasoning with when it comes to these things.
DaveScot:
What would it take to convince you that humans and chimps share a common ancestor?
The same as it has always been- demonstrate that we know what makes an organism what it is beyond the following:
Denton tells us that although genes may influence every aspect of development they do not determine it. So if genes do not determine what makes an organism what it is, and DNA is also not “it” (because we do observe organisms with the same DNA take on varying identities), how can we objectively test the premise (that humans and chimps shared a common ancestor)?
It would be helpful if someone could start accounting for the differences. Similarities can be accounted for by any number of explanations.
Then there is still that obstacle of observed wobbling stability.
I also say that looking at a genome the way we do is like trying to understand a C++ program by looking at the ones and zeros on the data bus.
Joseph,
Keep fighting the good fight. Hope everyone had an excellent Thanksgiving. It appears this turned into a robust discussion.
I thought the latest findings of Neandertal were interesting. It appears they were merely humans all along?
The thing about history and picking apart bones is much is left to willful interpretation.
Genetic isolation and myriad other issues, disease, and environment can lead to skeletal features that appear in a wide variety.
I’m still waiting to find out about Frodo the Hobbit(Flores). The finding was supposed to be a slam dunk. Now, it appears nothing more than a diseased and isolated branch of humans. Go to North Korea today and see the result of lack of diet and disease on skeletal remains.
There is a long way still to go to prove with absolute certainty a chimp to man jump. And the other issues is how the mechanisms work within the cell and in communication. Design does not go away on mere assumptions of the past.
Ah, looky here! The London Zoo documents the first known virgin birth of a komodo dragon.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/s.....rgin_x.htm