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1 Curt  Sun, Sep 16, 2012 6:33:52am

Incredible article. I personally enjoyed this paragraph, which explains how we often think we have "figured things out," only to find layer upon layer of complexity, causing more insightful research, rather than the be all and end all answers. Mere observation of the track record of science most strongly supports this. Much like modeling the climate, what works int he lab beguiles us in the field, even tho we get a little better grip on the process each time we move forward.

The human body is not a mere implication of clean logical code in abstract conceptual space, but rather a play of complexly shaped and intricately interacting physical substances and forces. Yet the four genetic letters, in the researcher’s mind, became curiously detached from their material matrix. In many scientific discussions it hardly would have mattered whether the letters of the “Book of Life” represented nucleotide bases or completely different molecular combinations. All that counted were certain logical correspondences between code and protein together with a few bits of regulatory logic, all buttressed by the massive weight of an unsupported assumption: somehow, by neatly executing an immaculate, computer-like DNA logic, the organism would fulfill its destiny as a living creature. The details could be worked out later.

2 Ziggy Standard  Sun, Sep 16, 2012 8:34:20am
Here, then, is what the advocates of evolutionary mindlessness and meaninglessness would have us overlook. We must overlook, first of all, the fact that organisms are masterful participants in, and revisers of, their own genomes, taking a leading position in the most intricate, subtle, and intentional genomic “dance” one could possibly imagine. And then we must overlook the way the organism responds intelligently, and in accord with its own purposes, to whatever it encounters in its environment, including the environment of its own body, and including what we may prefer to view as “accidents.” Then, too, we are asked to ignore not only the living, reproducing creatures whose intensely directed lives provide the only basis we have ever known for the dynamic processes of evolution, but also all the meaning of the larger environment in which these creatures participate — an environment compounded of all the infinitely complex ecological interactions that play out in significant balances, imbalances, competition, cooperation, symbioses, and all the rest, yielding the marvelously varied and interwoven living communities we find in savannah and rainforest, desert and meadow, stream and ocean, mountain and valley. And then, finally, we must be sure to pay no heed to the fact that the fitness, against which we have assumed our notion of randomness could be defined, is one of the most obscure, ill-formed concepts in all of science.

Overlooking all this, we are supposed to see — somewhere — blind, mindless, random, purposeless automatisms at the ultimate explanatory root of all genetic variation leading to evolutionary change.

The situation calls to mind a widely circulated cartoon by Sidney Harris, which shows two scientists in front of a blackboard on which a body of theory has been traced out with the usual tangle of symbols, arrows, equations, and so on. But there’s a gap in the reasoning at one point, filled by the words, “Then a miracle occurs.” And the one scientist is saying to the other, “I think you should be more explicit here in step two.”

In the case of evolution, I picture Dennett and Dawkins filling the blackboard with their vivid descriptions of living, highly regulated, coordinated, integrated, and intensely meaningful biological processes, and then inserting a small, mysterious gap in the middle, along with the words, “Here something random occurs.”

This “something random” looks every bit as wishful as the appeal to a miracle. It is the central miracle in a gospel of meaninglessness, a “Randomness of the gaps,” demanding an extraordinarily blind faith. At the very least, we have a right to ask, “Can you be a little more explicit here?” A faith that fills the ever-shrinking gaps in our knowledge of the organism with a potent meaninglessness capable of transforming everything else into an illusion is a faith that could benefit from some minimal grounding. Otherwise, we can hardly avoid suspecting that the importance of randomness in the minds of the faithful is due to its being the only presumed scrap of a weapon in a compulsive struggle to deny all the obvious meaning of our lives.

This article is one of a series of three articles of unmitigated vacuous intelligent-design friendly woo. The above quote is from "Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness". Who is responsible for featuring this obscurantist drivel? Does anyone actually read it first?

(I thought you knew better than this, researchok)

3 Locker  Sun, Sep 16, 2012 9:24:34am

Saw a great program a few years ago on Epigenetics on a NOVA program called Ghost in Your Genes.

[Link: www.pbs.org...]

Full transcript is here:

[Link: www.pbs.org...]

NARRATOR: Imagine sharing life with a person who seems to be you. Created from the same fertilized egg, you share exactly the same genes. So profound is their influence, everything about you appears the same: the spaces between your teeth, the way you laugh, your body language. You are, in a word, identical. Or are you?

SUSAN: As infants, they were very much alike. Their physical similarities are obvious. And all their physical milestones happened at the same time. But functioning today, for Jenna and Bridget...they're completely different.

Jenna is enthusiastic, productive. Jenna's going to college. She talks about it all the time now. Bridget is essentially non-verbal. She doesn't have purposeful conversational speech. And there's very unusual behavior. For example, she likes to spit on monitors and then rubs it in. I don't know why, but that's what she does.

How? How could these guys be identical and so, on such a different level, functioning-wise?

NARRATOR: So if genes don't tell the whole story of who we are, then what does?

Scientists suspect the answer lies in a vast chemical network within our cells that controls our genes, turning them on and off.

ANDREW P. FEINBERG (Johns Hopkins University): It's a little bit like the dark matter of the universe. I mean, we know it's there, we know it's terribly important, but we don't really know all that much about how that symphony gets played out.

MARK MEHLER (Albert Einstein College of Medicine): We're in the midst of probably the biggest revolution in biology that is going to forever transform the way we understand genetics, environment, the way the two interact, what causes disease. It's another level of biology, which, for the first time, really, is up to the task of explaining the biological complexity of life.

NARRATOR: Ghost in Your Genes, up next on NOVA.

4 researchok  Sun, Sep 16, 2012 9:33:40am

re: #2 Aye Pod

Fair criticism, but the piece was in the New Atlantis- hardly a fringe publication.

I did read the article and like you was somewhat surprised by some of it, but overalll, I thought some good points were raised- that we and our DNA are just as likely to continue to adapt (evolve).

Maybe I read and misunderstood but I thought he was highlighting the intelligence of evolution and adaptability (do not mistake that for ID)- that our evolutionary trail has an evolutionary and biological reason/focus (again, I'm not into ID).For example, the need for compassion, cooperation, tribalism, etc are are examples of evolutionary adaptability.

Again, I'm no expert on this but that is how I understood the piece.

5 researchok  Sun, Sep 16, 2012 9:36:15am

re: #3 Locker

Thanks, this is what I was clumsily referring to in my response to Jimmah.

6 Aligarr  Sun, Sep 16, 2012 1:36:41pm

This was a very interesting article .I too was surprised , as I hadn't noticed the website , however it does bring up plausible questions . I believe that the arguments for and against ID will remain in the realm of the philosophical . What blew me away was the complexity of the mechanisms that drive the genome , and each layer pealed back reveals only exponentially more layers .If in fact Talbot is correctly explaining the present state of the science , then it begins to pose questions that the expanation for life is so utterly complex that it will never be understood but merely described and further investigation will eventually lead to the conclusion that the microcosm just like the macrocosm is unscrutable .Thus neither side randomness nor ID will be abe to win the argument .The lack of information for either will leave the two defenseless in debate .

7 Ziggy Standard  Sun, Sep 16, 2012 3:10:31pm

Sorry guys, but it will take more than this codswallop to reanimate the corpse of vitalism.

8 Aligarr  Sun, Sep 16, 2012 3:35:15pm

you know what they say chum ....." Suasi-tch his own "

9 Ziggy Standard  Sun, Sep 16, 2012 5:26:03pm

re: #6 Aligarr

I believe that the arguments for and against ID will remain in the realm of the philosophical .

Bollocks. There isn't a shred of evidence to support ID; where specific claims have been made by 'cdesign proponentsists', they have been completely busted.

10 freetoken  Sun, Sep 16, 2012 5:29:22pm

re: #6 Aligarr

..... What blew me away was the complexity of the mechanisms that drive the genome ,...

It's chemistry.

11 Aligarr  Tue, Sep 18, 2012 5:15:00pm

Personally , I'm non-religious , and couldn't care less which way the debate will go , however , no one has made a case for randomness . I believe in evolution as the mechanism that got us here , but I do not discount ID as a "dirty word " .Just as in the the origin of the Universe the questions "How " and " Why " become the same . Science can break down the elements to muons, bosons ,etc and with physics describe their interactions down to Quantum theory , and calculate backwards in time to around The Bang+whatever minute segment of time after but the singularity's very existence ? - nothing .So too with life we can go back to amino acids but to explain why or how a living organism that reproduces and evolves to higher and higher complex life forms , one is faced with reaching a point where there is simply no information .And at that point one guess is no better or worse than another .

12 Aligarr  Wed, Sep 19, 2012 9:33:03am

freetoken ...yes chemistry indeed .But chemistry plus what ? Chemistry is bound by physical laws , yet those laws seem to be irrelevant with the differentiation of cell functions , or unknown . Based on what is known and what is unknown, I remain an agnostic .At present there is not enough evidence for ID , nor Randomness .


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