Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Paul McBride’s natural selection: A perfect nested functional hierarchy?

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A friend at the Italian language ID blog, Progetto Cosmo, writes us to say, re the Adam and Eve (McBride vs. Gauger) controversy,

Paul McBride believes (contra Ann Gauger and others) that common descent is a perfect nested functional hierarchy (NFH) of species that only Darwinian evolution can have produced.

I have always said that NFHs cannot arise bottom-up by chance and necessity from molecules. In fact, the sub-functions at any level cannot serve their parent function, because it doesn’t yet exist. Only top-down design can create a NFH, by creating at any level first the parent, then its sub-functions.

However Paul McBride, instead of just talking about it, can prove his claim by a computer simulation. I woill ease his job: instead of beginning from molecules, he can start from the “first complete software simulator of bacterial cell” and program the RM+NS code. He can run the simulation and show us that his tree of NFH of species arises by evolution…

…There is a reason why, despite of the power of software and hardware tools available today, evolutionists haven’t succeed so far to provide the least computer simulation of a real and functioning NFH generated by C&N.

Thoughts?

Comments
All organisms are big NFHs. In fact just the standard top-down layering of apparatuses, organs, tissues and cells is a nested functional hierarchy. In whatever way you layout a common descent Darwinian phylogenetic tree you have a unique simple common ancestor at the top and many complex NFH species at the bottom. So the problem of proving Darwinian macroevolution is to show how those complex NFHs arise by the RM+NS bottom-up process. I too think that NFHs cannot be produced that way, due to the concept explained by E..niwrad
July 23, 2012
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Descent with modification does not predict a nested hierarchy of shared traits. Ya see with evolution traits can be lost or gained and traits can be blended, forming a Venn diagram, not a nested hierarchy. Also just about anything can be placed into a nested hierarchy- it all depends on the criteria used. And the fact is the theory of evolution is OK without a nested hierachy as we do not see a nested hierarchy with prokaryotes.Joe
July 23, 2012
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Explain to me this bafflegab:
…There is a reason why, despite of the power of software and hardware tools available today, evolutionists haven’t succeed so far to provide the least computer simulation of a real and functioning NFH generated by C&N.
Uh, we know EXPERIMENTALLY that RM+NS makes Unique Nested Hierarchies (UNH), not Nested Functional Hierachies (NFH). We know EXPERIMENTALLY by comparing the results of phylogenetic analyses against OBSERVED examples that RM+NS produces a UNH, and that phylogenetic methods reliably reconstruct their history. Science 31 January 1992: Vol. 255 no. 5044 pp. 589-592 Experimental phylogenetics: generation of a known phylogeny Science 29 April 1994: Vol. 264 no. 5159 pp. 671-677 Application and Accuracy of Molecular Phylogenies Science 25 October 1991: Vol. 254 no. 5031 pp. 554-558 Gene trees and the origins of inbred strains of mice.Diogenes
July 22, 2012
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Yeah, whoever said anything about nested "functional" hierarchy? Source please. All biologists talk about is a nested hierarchy of shared traits, many of which aren't functional in any major way (neutral mutations, flipping around of chromosome chunks, chromosomal fission and fusion, etc.).NickMatzke_UD
July 22, 2012
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Perhaps Eugenio could explain what a nested 'functional' hierarchy would look like in biology, I am not familiar with the phrase. What I referred to was a nested hierarchy caused by descent in diverging lineages derived from morphological or genetic characters, and I have never claimed anything about it being perfect (in fact I have discussed some of the ways that species trees and gene trees differ, showing the latter to be an imperfect representation of descent).paulmc
July 22, 2012
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