b. July 15, 1928
d. December 30, 2012
“Thus, we regard as rather regrettable the conventional concatenation of Darwin’s name with evolution, because there are other modalities that must be entertained and which we regard as mandatory during the course of evolutionary time.”
“I have concerns about scientists thinking that they’re God when it comes to biology.”
“A future biology cannot be built within the conceptual superstructures of the past. The old superstructure has to be replaced by a new one before the holistic problems of biology can emerge as biology’s new mainstream.”
“I do not like people saying that atheism is based on science, because it’s not. It’s an alien invasion of science.”
- Carl Woese
Suzan Mazur: Why do you think NAI chose to give you and your team $ 8M, since you are known as a challenger of Darwinian dogma? Is NASA finally acknowledging the Darwin approach is wrong?
Carl Woese: I would hope so because that’s very clear from our NASA Astrobiology Institute grant application.
Suzan Mazur: You’ve described the “disconnect between Darwinists, who had taken over evolution, and microbiologists, who had no use for Darwinian natural selection.” Do you have anything to say about the recent decision of Huffington Post to block publication of microbiologist James Shapiro’s response to Darwinist Jerry Coyne following Coyne’s attack on Shapiro’s thinking about a reduced role for natural selection in evolution?
Carl Woese: I think that’s immoral. Science must be free to examine what it sees. If you’re going to say everyone must follow the Darwinian line, that’s not free science.
Carl Woese, evolution skeptic.
That would start out with diffusion. Not all multicellular life forms have circulatory systems. Lichens for example do not.
That would be the eventual result long after the ORIGIN of multicellular life. You don’t need a circulatory system for a very small multicellular organism because the rate of diffusion is sufficient at small distances.
There are multicellular organisms without central nervous systems, which can’t move. Like many fungi, plants and sponges.
You seem to think multi-cellular life means ANIMALS. Plants don’t have muscles or central nervous systems, they’re still multicellular life forms.
Who cares? The fact that multicellularity evolved does not hinge on whether the circulatory system could evolve in homo sapiens. That’s completely irrelevant. The question is if it could evolve in the species in which it is postulated to have happened.
How about them? Point them out. Which sequences in particular?
Single-celled organisms living in colonies, differentiate depending on their physical location in the colony. Differentiation is just a change in gene expression patterns. E coli can change expression patterns due to environmental cues. This is not only not a problem for multicellularity, it is not a problem at all.
Why not? I would agree to some extend, but what exactly do you take to be a multicellular organism and why is THAT the correct definition?
Not to get multicellular life, no you don’t.
Mutations and HGT filtered by Natural selection and genetic drift.
No. I don’t think it requires any design at all.
You avoided the question.
What was the mechanism the Designer used to physically manipulate matter?
Do you understand life was on the planet evolving for 3 billion years before the Cambrian Era?
Apoptosis – odd but true – occurs in single celled organisms, eg Plasmodium
‘Oxygen transport’ proteins, including haemoglobin, occur in all manner of single celled organisms.
Single celled organisms can ‘differentiate’.
The actin and myosin found in muscles are also found in single celled organisms.
And so on. Obviously they can’t build ‘true’ multicellular structures – they need to at least start clumping together to do that. But they don’t have to do the whole thing at once.
Alan Fox,
Explain how any of the following can be evolved by a step by step process.
Heart
lungs
blood vessels
brain
muscles
shell structure
nervous system
cellular communication
cellular differentiation
apoptosis
All these systems rely on each other. To use Behe’s buzz word, it is irreducibly complex. If I first evolve a heart what good is it?
Do have any evidence of a transitional form between a yeast like cell and a Cambrian animal?
If not, what is the basis of the assumption that you had 3 billion years to design all the above if I were to stipulate that 3 billion years was enough time to explore the search space which is a half a billion orders of magnitude larger?
Have we seen octopuses solve problems with their brains removed? Anyway, their brains help.
It is something to see jellyfish with eyes and no brain as such. Cephalopod brains differ substantially from vertebrate brains, but are considered to be brains.
Glen Davidson
the absence of organisms from evolutionary theory ought to engender at least some mild curiosity.
D.M. Walsh
Ooh! Ooh! I just did a random Google on a couple of molecules involved in neurotransmission and cell-cell signalling: serotonin and acetylcholine. Guess what … ?
That would be the evolutionary thing to do.
How about we simplify the argument regarding design, and define “design” as foreknowledge of the results of change.
That doesn’t cover the waterfront, but it seems to be a necessary component. Cut and try is analogous to evolution. Design, as discussed by ID proponents, implies knowing how something will work before you build it.
I’m interested to know why you say that. Am I wrong in thinking that DNA repair enzymes could have evolved subsequently to DNA as a replication system.
colewd,
Hi ho Silver, awaaaaay …. [skiddle-ump, skiddle-ump, skiddle-ump, skiddle-ump … ]
Alan Fox,
It’s found in every taxon. Common descent from LUCA is the most parsimonious explanation.
Thanks for the correction. I see my memory has failed me again.
Thanks. I’m confusing my LUCA with my FUCA, I guess!
Allan Miller,
Can you even come up with a story on how the DNA sequences got modified to go from a yeast like cell to a Cambrian animal? With the mechanisms Rumraket proposed?
Just so that I am clear:
A mechanism is a a process, technique, or system for achieving a result-
Design is to create, fashion, execute, or construct according to plan.
A plan is a process, technique, or system for achieving a result.
Therefore design is a mechanism.
Dictionaries are wonderful things
Common design is more parsimonious as it doesn’t require the fact that there isn’t any known mechanism that could cause the effect of UCD
Moved couple of comments to guano. Please make complaints about moderation in the appropriate thread (or PM an admin).
colewd,
Not me, no. But noting that the DNA sequences for generating many of the molecules involved are present in unicellular organisms is enough to refute your insistence that the entirety of the DNA sequence of a multicellular organism had to start from scratch.
Well, Alan, what do you have? Saying NS didit isn’t much of an argument, is it?
But anyway it was in an excahnge of emails- most likely when we were discussing the EF ;)- I will look for it when I get home
Have you tried Googling the evolutionary origin of those? There are hundreds of entries on each.
Funny thing is, when I tried Googling “How did the Intelligent Designer POOF them into existence” I get zero explanations.
Why is that?
You missed out to. What is the subject of the verb when you claim there is a process of design going on in biology. I identify the subject as the environment. What about you?
What was the mechanism the Designer used to physically manipulate matter to get the desired results?
There isn’t any evidence for your claim, Alan. So tat would be a problem. Design, as commonly understood, requires an intentional agency
Ah, I remember Douglas Axe and discussion at ARN when Axe told me he had never employed Dembski’s filter, contrary to your claim. I’ll look forward to seeing what Axe says about tryptophan.
And AGAIN- ID is not anti-evolution so asking for an evolutionary origin is equivication. What is required is a blind watchmaker origin of those sequences/ proteins/ systems. And that is not in any peer-reviewed article.
Good grief people, learn what is being debated. All you are doing is proving that you don’t care about facts and reality.
Censorship!
An excuse that referred to nothing when first uttered, and that has become thinner and and more tattered ever since.
But who needs evidence when you can pick at evolution without curiosity or learning? When your “answer” is the only one that is acceptable, you just see the science with its evidence as the enemy and try to vanquish it.
Glen Davidson
LoL! The EF requires one to eliminate necessity and chance before considering the design inference. Axe eliminated necessity and design before considering the design inference.
My claim seems to have been confirmed. Axe somehow thinks the EF requires some sort of formality, which it doesn’t.
OK what is the evidence that natural selection can produce the diversity of life? Who needs evidence- clearly not evolutionists
The last universal common ancestor had a DNA-based genome.
Edit1: There is more doubt on this than I remember, though the distribution of ribonucleotide reductases in both bacteria and archaea seem to argue for it, the divergent DNA replication machineries seem to argue against it.
No. Though I do think that, even before DNA evolved, at a time when RNA was the primary genetic material, even then the organisms had repair mechanisms that would fix both copying mistakes that creep in during replication, but also things like accidental double-strand breaks and the like.
There is some indications parts of the DNA replication and repair machinery could have evolved from ancestral stages that worked on RNA instead (the polymers really aren’t that different, there’s a case to be made that some enzymes could have cross-platform compatibility).
If I remember correctly, there is even an experiment where IIRC a polymerase of some sort was artificially evolved so it could copy mixed polymers containing both RNA and DNA nucleotides.
I’ll have to go dig up a reference for that because I might not remember this correctly.
Edit2: I did not remember this correctly. Artificial polymerases incorporating unnatural nucleotides have been evolved, but as far as I could gather nobody has bothered trying to select for a RNA/DNA heteropolymerase.
I did find something else, which is a reference that mentions the detectable homologies between some DNA and RNA polymerases. From Temporal order of evolution of DNA replication systems inferred by comparison of cellular and viral DNA polymerases:
However ID claims design can be detected without any knowledge of a mechanism which is design. That being the case design would be most sensibly defined as a pattern of elements of a thing
Mung,
The core of modern biology is the theory of evolution. It ranks among the most powerful, well-corroborated scientific theories ever devised.
D.M. Walsh
What were you discussing regarding the EF? Why nobody’s ever used it?
That is true. One has to determine design exists before one goes looking for the specific mechanism. Design is a mechanism in the general sense just as natural selection is a mechanism in the general sense.
Yes, that is what ID is about but when pressed for a mechanism design will do until the specifics are uncovered.
Please link to this alleged scientific theory of evolution. Or do you just take his word for it?
What a happy coincidence. That quote is literally a couple lines above the one Mung quoted, in the very same book.
I honestly can’t understand what motivates people to do things like that. Quote mining is among the most dishonest things one can do in an argument. And it’s so easy to spot that one wonders what’s the point unless you’re targeting an audience of drooling, blithering IDiots
Allan Miller,
What percentage do you think existed in single celled organisms? 5%? Do you think the sequences in single celled organisms can be directly useful in multicellular organisms? And yes, you crushed your own straw man argument 🙂
dazz,
Do you believe this?
Rumraket,
I agree with you. I don’t think organisms can survive without repairing their blueprint mechanism.
Yeah Allan. Stop quote-mining. You rob dazz of being able to read the whole paragraph and understanding the point, lol.
The distinctive properties that make up organisms play virtually no part in the explanation of evolutionary phenomena, or at least that version of evolutionary theory that has grown to such prominence throughout the twentieth century.
Walsh thinks the modern synthesis needs replacing. Just another evolution skeptic. Label him and ignore him.
colewd,
There isn’t any evidence for a RNA world, just a need. And even given a RNA world no one knows how to get from that to a DNA world. It’s one untestable claim after another.
Do you think that bothers our opponents?
Well, I was about to admit that perhaps yours wasn’t really a quote mine. It would help if you actually made an argument instead of posting one-liner quotes. I can see now the point was to question the gene-centric view of evolution, but isn’t that what evo-devo is about after all?
At any rate, once again, my bad
Wait, that’s nonsense
So yeah, Mung, if your point was that “Walsh thinks the modern synthesis needs replacing” and he’s “another evolution skeptic”, then yours was a quote mine and you’re full of it
More like 80-90%. At least. Multicellular life is known to be primarily due to rewiring of gene regulatory networks, rather than de novo protein coding evolution.
Too bad for you because they can. Direct experimental tests with organims having their DNA repair machinery deliberately inactivated or removed show they still survive and reproduce fine, they just have lower average fitness. Which pretty much demonstrates that life can exist without repair mechanisms, and why repair mechanisms would nevertheless evolve.
It’s their offspring that matter.
That doesn’t follow. Just how can blind and mindless processes produce a repair mechanism? To repair means you have to know there is something wrong. And if the cells know there is something that needs repairing then ID rules the day. Thank you.
That makes no sense. To say the modern synthesis needs replacing is different from saying you think life did not evolve and shares common descent.
If you want to call a person who believes life evolved and shares common descent, but that a population genetics version of evolution from the 1930’s is no longer the most accurate reflection of the evolutionary process, an “evolution skeptic” then… well, have fun with that. What’s the point?
I’ll just get out my meltdown detector
Tit for tat.