Home » The Design of Life » Design of Life: Molecular clock – right twice a day?

Design of Life: Molecular clock – right twice a day?

December 27, 2007 Posted by O'Leary under The Design of Life
34 Comments

2006 and 2007 have been years in which a number of key science papers addressed things we know – that ain’t so. One story is the serious challenges to the long contested “molecular clock” theory.

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In the science literature, many adjustments are offered to make the fossil record and molecular data match. Of course, some adjustment is certainly inevitable, but after a while a question arises. One can live with a clock that is routinely ten minutes slow. But if it is variably slow, slower at some times than others, there may come a point when one asks, why consult a clock anyway? Or, more to the point, should this device properly be called a clock?

Read the rest here.

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34 Responses to Design of Life: Molecular clock – right twice a day?

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  1. 31
    xcdesignproponentsistsDecember 31, 2007 at 1:54 am

    bFast:

    No, a copyright notice to show that the design was designed — the signature of the designer. I see the pattern in the Cytochrome C as the equivelant of the patterns that are being sent to outer-space (prime numbers, etc.) to indicate that the signal is from an intelligent, rather than random source.

    So evidently you are not only able to posit the existence of a Designer, but you have somehow have sufficient evidence to make inferences about his/her/its character. Apparently, he/she/it likes leaving messages in genomes that would have gone unnoticed for millions of years of human existence.

  2. 32
    Frost122585December 31, 2007 at 12:39 pm

    One Brow,

    “One could argue that mountains serve the very useful function of altering the weather patterns of the world. Does that suddenly make them designed?”

    As with almost anyhting in life there are cases that fall into the grey area. The point is that as design theorists we infer design only when the sample and evidence reaches the point when we can say for sure that there is specificity. Now the parameters change depending on what kind of a situation and sample we are dealing with. Take SETI (search for extraterestrial intelligence) they will infer design or aline life if they get a highly improbable arrangement of radio pulses or waves that ARE IN A SPECIFIED PATTERN. How do they define such a pattern – well they look at what we know about what Darwin called THE PRESENTLY ACTING CAUSE of intelligence- look at computer programs and high tech machinery. We see such machinery in the cell and see super highly improbability and we go AHA! Design. Its really quite simple i cant see where you confusion comes in. This also goes along way to explaining your question of “what are the ends? Well, if we see SC and it is with in a living organism we can deduce that its there to help the thing live. I mean is this really that mysterious? Why are cars an example of intelligently designed ends to means? Beause they (like most technology) help to facilitate the extension of the human life. They did’t get there by accident either- we can presently see the intelligence acting in their construction.

    As I have said before, I’m perfectly open to the concept of intelligently designed things where it can be demonstrated, including the genetic code.

    It sure doesn’t seem like it.

  3. 33
    bFastJanuary 2, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    Atavism:

    bFast,

    Ah, what you’re talking about is an “ultramteric” or highly clock like tree. And it’s much easier to answer questions because what you say Denton says is not true. You can go and get the some cytC sequences from NCBI (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez) and check it out yourself. (the differences from a completely clock-like tree are due to some of the things you talk about and because the molecular clock is probalistic, much like an atomic clock, so has a certain degree of slop. So, no, no copyright notice there.

    I find it personally frustrating when the links provided call for a financial investment on my part. Now, Denton certainly renders a very small part of the cytochrome C molecular tree, but his data does show some amount of “slop”. His data does how, however, an absolute inability to estimate a branch’s generation time (time from birth to offspring) by studying the cytochrome C tree. Everything that I have read about the molecular clock says that its rate is directly subject to generation time. As such, the cytochrome C molecule should be useful as a tool for estimating that time. Rather, the portion of the cytochrome C that Denton rendered, though it shows “slop”, does not show generation time.

    Two possibilities exist, as far as I can see. One is that Denton has been dishonestly selective about the branches of the tree that he rendered, and the other is that the cytochrome C gene does not provide an indication of generations. If the latter is the case, then the molecular clock, as currently understood by science, does not explain the cytochrome C.

    I add to this the recent discovery of 250 mya bacteria. Bacteria 250 million years ago should render significant differences from modern bacteria in genes where the molecular clock ticks. My understanding is that it does not. My understanding is that the lack of motion of the molecular clocks has caused the scientific community to seriously question whether the found bacteria is really 250 million years old — even though new finds have been discovered about 5 times, and significant care has been taken to assure that the found bacteria would not be contaminated by modern bacteria.

  4. 34
    PatrickJanuary 3, 2008 at 9:45 am

    This article seems on topic:

    http://www.arn.org/blogs/index....._evolution

    “The older molecular dates would predict an abundance of long branches, and a long delay of diversification within each long branch after a branch’s origin. However, studies using morphological data of both fossil and extant taxa demonstrate that there are few or no such lineages with a long evolutionary lag time. This discrepancy is so systemic and widespread that it cannot be explained by the difference between minimum age constraint (represented by actual fossils) and the timing of origin that can be hypothetically estimated by molecules in marsupial and placental evolution.”

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