In “Darwin”s Black Box” (DBB), ID”s arch-biochemist Behe glibly labeled evolutionary hypotheses for the origin of “irreducibly complex” systems as “hops into the box of Calvin and Hobbes” (for those who don”t know what the heck this refers to, go here to learn about Calvin and Hobbes, and here for info on their box, or even better go spend some time here, and come back tomorrow). This overconfidence has come back to haunt him as more and more evidence accumulated in support of the evolutionary origin of his various IC systems, from the flagellum to the complement and clotting cascades.
The topic where the idea of unevolvability of IC systems has probably taken the most beating is the vertebrate adaptive immune system, where not only evidence for evolution has accumulated at a steady pace, but even more embarrassingly for Behe, it has developed exactly along the lines predicted by those “Calvin and Hobbes jumps” he originally dismissed. A recent paper in the journal PLoS Biology [1] is the latest turn in the death spiral of irreducible complexity of the immune system, and I think provides a good opportunity to take a look at how science works, as opposed to ID navel-gazing.
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I’m reading. I’m absorbing. I’m thinking.
This could take some time.…
For those of you keeping score, it’s evolution 12, ID q.
“But… but… it looks designed!”
Why do you people hate Christ so much?
“Those of you who are used to the ID approach on science, i.e. giving up on it… “ Brilliant!
Bill
Why don’t you take it to the Bathroom Wall. You aren’t going to say anything relevant to this post anyway. It’s going to be “Blah blah blah Nelson’s Law blah blah random chance accidental fortuitous occurrences can’t make an immune system blah blah…”
What, did they miss both extra points? Might be time for a new kicker.
Great writeup.
My favorite example of Behe citing a failure of science as evidence of design, only to be refuted later, is whales. It’s something just about anyone can wrap their brain around: Behe strongly suggested that the absence of whale transitional fossils was evidence of design, but the year after he co-wrote that chapter of the book, three transitional forms were published.
BCH
It’s good to get Calvin and Hobbes signed up for the cause. It’s far funnier than that YEC cartoon B.C.
Speaking of that guy, a character in BC last week called a snake “Dust-breath”.
Like PZ or someone said, they’ve fired all the acrobats and jugglers, and it’s just clowns, clowns, clowns, all the time.
When (if?) Behe addresses some of these issues, one could predict it will be just like another Calvin & Hobbes feature, “Calvin Ball”.
This was a game that appeared in the strip where the rules of the game were arbitrarily adjusted to favor Calvin should he become disadvantaged.
So not to worry! If the old ideas get straightened out, he can just bend some new ones.
This is one of the great advantages of publishing in books where inconvenient delays from peer reviewers don’t happen.
Yeah. Ben’s “Q to 12” joke came from a C&H Calvinball strip. To be more realistic, we should say something like Evolution 12,312,321; Creationism (including ID) -463 (for the harm to knowledge and critical thought they have induced within the public.)
These mechanisms seem to reflect the several mechanisms science has “evolved” to eventually distinguish “self” from “non-self” (or should that be “sense”). Unfortunately, politics, for “evolutionary” reasons of its own no doubt, seems to lack similar machines. Perhaps because it has evolved in a very different environment: one where sense, facts, and joy have long been selected against whenever possible.
The one thing ID Creationists have discovered is the rules of Calvinball. They are very good at changing the rules, though even with whatever new rules they promulgate, they still only seem to score own-goals.
I think the above statement itself is proof of non-design. Because, if identifying “self” is indeed a finite, small problem, then the easy design is to do “if self do nothing otherwise take some action”. That is, e.g., why we issue identity cards.
Nobody cares what you think, Charlie. Please shut up and go away.
Well, you actually have to think that every “self” cell still displays a whole lot of different potential “targets” on its surface, and those targets also vary from cell type to cell type, so there is no single “self” either. (Still, that diversity pales in comparison of the potential diversity of potential pathogens hell-bent to escape your defense mechanisms.)
To avoid that problem, immune system cells generally go through an “education” phase in which, if their receptors recognize anything, it is assumed it is “self”, and the cell gets eliminated, or disabled. After that phase, anything that causes a response is fair game. If you make a mistake, or the education program fails, you can get an autoimmune disease. Immunity is a dangerous game.
Off-topic:
It looks like someone on PT is infected with a virus that sends empty emails. I’m posting here because it (whoever/whatever it was) used the identity of Andrea Bottaro to do so - which doesn’t necessarily mean Andrea is the infected one. As the only Andrea post I recall seeing, it’s the obvious place to alert her (or anyone else viewing the site) to the possibility or perhaps find out if it was intentional but bizarre.
The main thing is not to elicit a danger signal to the cell of some sort. Even a cell that has failed ‘education’ isn’t going to be dangerous until it distinctly recognises something that is able to turn it on and make do ‘stuff’ (so to speak).
I’m surprised though that those in the ID movement even keep on with the immune system, because it’s well understood that evolution and selection are important in every aspect of it. I thought they would keep to more obscure things than systems that a large amount of scientists are studying. After all, if you pick some random pathway that not many people are working on, it’s a lot simpler to make ridiculous claims that ‘nobody’ can prove it evolved. I would have thought the immune system would have been suicide to choose as a model system to begin with; they would just get disproven faster.
SEF: Sorry to hear that. However, unless for some reason I know you, and your e-mail address is in one of my accounts’ address books, it is unlikely that this is a random virus on any of my computers. It would seem like some sort of purposeful malicious attack. Perhaps you can e-mail me the e-mail address that’s spoofing my name?
Joseph: yes, I read Behe’s book in ‘97 (or perhaps ‘98, now I can’t remember), and already the immune system chapter was a total farce. I had no idea what ID was then. I remember distinctly reading through the first few chapters, especially the flagellum’s, and thinking “maybe the guy has a point”. Then I reached the immune system description, and I thought “wait a minute - if he can write such b.s. about the immune system, what did he get wrong on the rest?” So I did some more digging, and here I am. The immune system and the complement and clotting cascades were a poor choice on his part, because their origin is relatively recent, and we have a good chance of finding precursors at various stages in living organisms. Notice that ID advocates rarely if ever talk about these systems any more.
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I haven’t read “DBB” and apparently it was time better spent on other books anyway. I’m just wondering–is there even a single one of Behe’s ‘examples of irreducible complexity’ introduced in his book which is still standing today, or have they all been de-bunked? So far I’ve heard about immune responses, clotting mechanisms, bacterial flagellums (er, flagelli?) and for some reason, mousetraps, all of which turned out to be not-quite-IC after all. So what’s left, if anything?
Rt
I wonder if Behe is going to pretend this delightful article by Dr. Bottaro doesn’t exist. Panda’s Thumb has enough visibility I don’t believe for a moment it has not been brought to his attention.
I believe the ID stance is that they’re all still standing until every step in their evolution is explained, not just in terms of a plausible pathway, but in terms of the actual pathway. (There’s a Dembski quote somewhere I could use to back up this assertion, but at the moment, I don’t feel like wasting any more time on him. )
* by the way: one flagellum, two or more flagella
Dr. Behe has posted a compelling response to “The Revenge of Calvin and Hobbes” at http://www.idthefuture.com/index.ph[…]b=1&pb=1
Forrest M. Mims III www.forrestmims.org
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Lets compare and contrast:
Behe wants from Darwinists “a mutation-by-mutation account of critical steps (which will likely be very, very many), at the amino acid level.”
What mechanism does Behe provide? I believe its called ‘poof.’
Great.
Since reportedly Behe has repeated in his allegedly “compelling” response the discredited canard about his “successful muzzling” of Russell Doolittle, what credibility can that “compelling” response have? He should have responded to Ian Musgrave’s essay where his distortion of his encounter with Doolittle was documented, as well as to many other essays showing the fallacies in his position to which he never responded. I believe Forrest Mims is an ID advocate (or at least a sympathizer) rather than an unbiased observer, hence his characterization of Behe’s response as “compelling.” The guys seem to be watching PT though. Good for them.
For everyone’s interest, r.e. Doolittle and Behe.
http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archi[…]/000884.html
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(Reposted to correct a formatting problem and insert a few more lines of sarcasm)
Sorry, Mims: Behe is a fork-tongued idiot.
Let’s ignore for a moment the undeniable fact that molecular biologists and evolutionary biologists have been compiling data relevant to Behe’s “demand” long before Behe’s “demand” was ever articulated. And those biologists will continue to compile evidence long after Behe and his Cohorts in Crank are forgotten (how many scientists can name a “famous creationist apologist” today?) And in the meantime Behe and his Cohorts in Crank will contribute absolutely zilcho meaningful discoveries relevant to the evolution of blood clotting.
Yes, let’s just put that trivial information aside to address another issue: just how idiotic is Behe’s “demand” (which will surely be ignored by biologists, just as the demands of many other cranks and pseudoscience peddlers are rightfully ignored every single day)?
Behe is like the Sasquatch apologist who says “I’ll believe that there is no such thing as Sasquatch when every square meter of United States wilderness is monitored simultaneously in real time such that no living thing is unaccounted for at ever given moment. And even when that is done and (hypothetically) if Sasquatch remains unrevealed, that doesn’t mean that Sasquatch doesn’t exist now or never existed.”
Or Behe is like the psychic apologist who claims that the controls necessary to document the experiment “interfere” with the “properties” of the “ether” necessary to effect the “results” that are obtained under non-experimental circumstances.
Imagine if Behe were a geologist disputing the origins of the Grand Canyon — if every grain of sand and water molecule moved during the course of its history can’t be accounted for, then why should anyone be convinced by scientists “claims” that “erosion” had anything to do with it? Scientists need to provide these “small details.”
The conclusion that Behe is a disgraceful hack is incontrovertible.
But I wonder why the loud-talkin’ “Dr.” Behe refuses to defend himself here? Instead, our cowardly friend posts his treacle on a Christian website which pretends to be about “science”!!! Laugh it up, “Dr.” Behe. Anytime you want to step up to the plate and answer a few straightforward questions about the grease you smear on genuine scientists, we’re waiting for you.
No honest person who has paid any attention at all to this debate could ever make such a disgusting claim about Professors Orr or Bottaro.
We might ask “Dr.” Behe: who made you the arbiter of what constitutes “required evidence”? What qualifies “Dr.” Behe or any of the other self-proclaimed “scientists” at the Discovery Institute to declare when evidence is or is not “convincing”?
The facts speak for themselves. Everyone who understands the facts and speaks honestly about those facts knows that Behe is a pathetic quack whose opinion about what is “convincing” is meaningless. That includes the vast majority of scientists in Behe’s alleged “area of expertise” and a whole lot of other people who recognize a fork-tongued preacher when they see one.
Um, “Dr.” Behe, perhaps you could tell us in detail how one would test your ancient and worthless claim that the “blood clotting cascade” is “irreducibly complex”? Or must we all wait for your mysterious alien beings to re-appear and do something else that you find “fantastic”?
Please “Dr.” Behe, stop hiding in the Discovery Institute closet. It’s so crowded in there, especially with Johnny Wells smelling so badly of rotten newspaper.
didn’t we already have the discussion about this obvious tactic? All behe is doing is the “reversal” tactic where he accuses everyone who disagrees with his stance of the very thing that he himself is most aptly accused of doing.
I see this as a very common tactic used by the DI and other fundies. It is unfortunately, all too successful in convincing idiots who don’t bother to see what the real issues are (most of the media included).
I remember playing this game when i was 4 or 5…
“I know you are, but what am I?”
Now if you are an adult, and still playing this game…
Re #33161, - does the blog software not handle nested quote tags? That reply didn’t display the way I wanted it to.
Henry
PLOS Biology has a news article up about the discovery of the RAG1 homologs:
“Uncovering the Ancient Source of Immune System Variety.” 3(6), June 2005. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030212 http://biology.plosjournals.org/per[…]pbio.0030212
I’d like to propose a new theory of Intelligent Design, called Intelligent Intelligent Designer Design. The idea is that the Intelligent Designer (whom we will assume to be a perfectly material alien, because we all know ID has nothing to do with religion) would have to be even more complex than the designed creatures in order to pull them out of a puff of smoke. After all, who envisioned all that baroque complexity.
This Intelligent Designer must have had some source for all this incredible complexity. One could posit that this designer evolved on its own, but we can give no mutation-by-mutation account. Therefore, Intelligent Intelligent Designer Design wins by default (see Behe.)
But the Intelligent Intelligent Designer Designer must be complex enough to envision the Intelligent Designer, which is pretty darn complex, so we need an Intelligent Intelligent Intelligent Designer Designer Designer…
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