Transcript All I Need is Time!” – The Mantra of the Modern Theory of

The “Best”
Arguments Against
Intelligent Design
(ID) Theory
Sean D. Pitman, M.D.
May 2007
www.DetectingDesign.com
• ID answers everything; therefore nothing
– ID is “utterly boring”
– How did this happen? “Goddidit!”
• ID is thinly disguised creationism (religion)
• ID uses “God of the Gaps” arguments
• ID proposes no testable falsifiable predictions
that have not already been falsified
– Irreducible complexity (Behe)
– Specified complexity (Dembski)
• No intelligent God would have done it that way
Everything and Nothing
• Does the ToE explain everything;
Therefore nothing?
– Wasn’t everything evolved by a mindless
Nature?
• How can scientists, like forensic
scientists and SETI scientists propose
intelligence behind certain phenomena
when mindless nature could have
done the same thing?
ID is Utterly Boring
• “The most basic problem [with ID] is that it’s
utterly boring. Everything that’s complicated or
interesting about biology has a very simple
explanation: ID did it”.
– William Provine, science historian at Cornell University
• SETI scientists are looking for particular types of
radio signals coming from space as evidence of
alien intelligence
– If such a signal were ever found, would any
scientist be bored by such a hypothesis?
• Computers also have a very simple explanation:
“Humans did it!” Does that make investigation
into how they work “simplistic” or “boring”?
• 2+2=4 is boring; 2+2=5 is much more interesting!
ID is Religion, Not Science
• Religion talks about non-physical non-testable
non-falsifiable “truths”
– Any examples? – of non-falsifiable truths?
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Love?
Joy?
Beauty?
Taste?
Desire?
Mathematics?
God?
ID uses “God of the Gaps”
Arguments
• So do all scientific hypotheses
• No hypothesis is 100% provable
• Absolute certainty removes the usefulness of
the scientific method
• There is always the potential for falsification
with additional information that reduces the
“gap” in knowledge
• Given current knowledge, which potential
hypothesis most likely explains how the gap
was, is, or will be crossed?
“ID Has Been Falsified”
(i.e., it was a valid scientific theory)
• Irreducibly complex systems do not exist
• Random mutations combined with
natural selection easily produce
Dembski’s complex specified
information (CSI)
http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm
No IC systems?
• The logic of their argument [IDists] is you have
these multipart systems, and that the parts
within them are useless on their own. The
instant that I or anybody else finds a subset of
parts that has a function, that argument is
destroyed.”- Kenneth Miller, biologist, Brown University
– Like a car without a motor (lights and radio still work)
– Like a fish without eyes (everything else still works)
http://www.livescience.com/othernews/050923_ID_science.html
“All of the systems that Behe claims
to be irreducibly complex really aren’t.
A subset of bacterial flagellum proteins,
for example, are used by other bacteria
to inject toxins into other cells . . .”
– Ker Than, staff science writer, LiveScience
http://www.livescience.com/othernews/050923_ID_science.html
The Flagellum
Michael Behe and the Flagellum
The Counter Argument?
Kenneth Miller, Biologist, Brown University
Lecture at Case Western University
Dover Trial (Pennsylvania): Judged ruled that ID
is a religion, not science (pres by: Kenneth Miller)
Which Came First?
TTSS
Flagellum
TTSS Sub-System
• Uses about 10 of the 50 or so structural
proteins used to form the flagellum
• Supposedly evolved hundreds of millions of
years after the flagellar motility system
• Flagellum found in many kinds of bacteria
• TTSS system restricted to a few pathogenic
gram-negative bacteria that attack plants and
animals – which are thought to have came
along billions of years after flagellar motility
•
•
Little similarity (homology) to anything within
less complex motility systems – only
homologous to a flagellum subset
Several scientists have recently promoted
the idea that TTSS evolved from the fully
formed flagellar motility system; not the
other way round.
–
Nguyen, L., Paulsen, I. T., Tchieu, J., Hueck, C.
J. and Saier, M. H., Jr., 2000. Phylogenetic
analyses of the constituents of Type III protein
secretion systems. J Mol Microbiol Biotechnol. 2
(2), 125-144.
The Real “Gap” Problem
• cat to hat to bat to bid to did to dig to dog
– 19,683 possible combinations
– Defined vs. non-defined: about 1 in 18
– For two-character sequences: about 1 in 7
• What about 7-character sequences?
– Ratio of about 1 in 250,000
• A linear increase in minimum distance develops
between what is and what might be beneficial
with each increase in minimum structural
threshold requirements – i.e., the “Gap
Problem”
Sequence Space
Random Walk
Specified Complexity
“The second major argument for intelligent
design comes from William Dembski, a
mathematician and philosopher . . . [who] argues that
nature is rife with examples of non-random patterns
of information that he calls “complex specified
information” or CSI for short.
To qualify as CSI, the information must be both
complex and specified. The letter “A”, for example, is
specific, but not complex. A string of random letters,
such as “slfkiwer”, on the other hand, is complex but
not necessarily specific. A Shakespearean sonnet,
however, is both complex and specific.” – Ker Than
http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm
http://www.livescience.com/othernews/050923_ID_science.html
Dembski’s Hypothesis
Falsified?
“If Dembski were right, then a new
gene with new information conferring a
brand new function on an organism
could never come into existence without
a designer because a new function
requires complex specified information.”
- Kenneth Miller
http://www.livescience.com/othernews/050923_ID_science.html
http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm
Specific Examples?
• Nylonase – Kinoshita et al., 1975
– Nylon not invented until 1935
• Lactase – Barry Hall, 1983
– Lactase deletion experiments with E. coli
• Aha! Dembski’s hypothesis falsified!
– If truly falsified, it would mean that it was a
valid scientific hypothesis – by the way . . .
Limited Evolutionary Potential
• Antibiotics
– Resistance evolves very rapidly via blocks or
disruptions to a previously established system
• Functions based on small single proteins
– Lactase, nylonase, etc (no more than 3-4 hundred
amino acid residues at minimum)
– Occasionally evolve (Barry Hall’s lactase deficient E.
coli and Kinoshita’s nylonase eating bacteria)
– Demonstrate interesting limitations (rest of the story)
• No novel functions with threshold specificity
requirements greater than 1,000 specifically
arranged amino acid residues have ever been
shown to evolve – not one example in literature
Erich Bornberg-Bauer, How Are Model Protein
Structures Distributed in Sequence Space?
Biophysical Journal, Volume 73, November
1997, 2393-2403
God Just Wouldn’t Have Done
It That Way
In his 1986 book,
“The Blind
Watchmaker,” the
famous evolutionary
biologist Richard
Dawkins posses a
interesting design
flaw argument for the
human eye:
“Any engineer would naturally assume that the
photocells would point towards the light, with
their wires leading backwards towards the
brain. He would laugh at any suggestion that
the photocells might point away, from the light,
with their wires departing on the side nearest
the light. Yet this is exactly what happens in all
vertebrate retinas. Each photocell is, in effect,
wired in backwards, with its wire sticking out on
the side nearest the light. The wire has to travel
over the surface of the retina to a point where it
dives through a hole in the retina (the so-called
‘blind spot’) to join the optic nerve. This means
that the light, instead of being granted an
unrestricted passage to the photocells, has to
pass through a forest of connecting wires,
presumably suffering at least some attenuation
and distortion (actually, probably not much but,
still, it is the principle of the thing that would
offend any tidy-minded engineer).
Just a Few Miracles:
The Inner Life of the Cell
DNA Replication
DNA Transcription
DNA Translation
Any Questions?
Questions?
Flagellar Motor: Scanning Electron Micrograph