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

The “Best”
Arguments Against
ID
Sean D. Pitman, M.D.
November 2006
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)
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 – which they
would hail as evidence of alien intelligence
– If such a signal were ever found, would any scientist be
bored by such a hypothesis?
• 2+2=4 is boring; 2+2=5 is much more interesting!
ID is Religion, Not Science
• Religion talks about non-physical nontestable non-falsifiable “truths”
– Any examples? – of a non-falsifiable truth?
– Love?
– Joy?
– Beauty?
– 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 still work)
– Like a man 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
The Subsystem
TTSS “Toxin Injector”
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 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)
• 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
Questions?
DNA Replication
DNA Transcription
DNA Translation