The Theory of Evolution - perfect?

[thedoc]

The evolution of hemoglobin. It’s all there.

PauloL’s probability estimate is simply wrong, pathetically so. In addition to the fact that, as we have seen, low-probability events happen all the time even by dumb luck alone, natural selection is not dumb luck.

He seems to think that hemoglobin must have evolved all at once — from nothing to something. That’s not how it works. How many times has this been explained to him? Like anything else, it evolved incrementally over time, with successive modifying mutations that proved to be adaptive (were naturally selected for).

You might argue that even this process makes a hemoglobin outcome unlikely. But even if true, recall the lottery example. Any single person winning the lottery is exceedingly unlikely, but at the same time it is 100 percent guaranteed that someone will win.

But since evolution is a rigged lottery, the chances of hemoglobin “winning” the lottery are magnified exponentially by the need of organisms to cope with the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere.

The basic point, however, is that no matter how superficially “unlikely” it might seem for some structure or other to evolve, given the fact the organisms are constantly reproducing with variation, it is guaranteed that something will evolve — just as it is guaranteed that someone will win the lottery.

Creationists will often point to some system on an organism and claim that it couldn't have evolved, because removing any part of it will make it useless. But they fail to admit that even without all the parts, a system is useful for some other function and was gradually used through a series of different functions to it's present function.

[davidm]

The evolution of hemoglobin. It’s all there.

PauloL’s probability estimate is simply wrong, pathetically so. In addition to the fact that, as we have seen, low-probability events happen all the time even by dumb luck alone, natural selection is not dumb luck.

He seems to think that hemoglobin must have evolved all at once — from nothing to something. That’s not how it works. How many times has this been explained to him? Like anything else, it evolved incrementally over time, with successive modifying mutations that proved to be adaptive (were naturally selected for).

You might argue that even this process makes a hemoglobin outcome unlikely. But even if true, recall the lottery example. Any single person winning the lottery is exceedingly unlikely, but at the same time it is 100 percent guaranteed that someone will win.

But since evolution is a rigged lottery, the chances of hemoglobin “winning” the lottery are magnified exponentially by the need of organisms to cope with the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere.

The basic point, however, is that no matter how superficially “unlikely” it might seem for some structure or other to evolve, given the fact the organisms are constantly reproducing with variation, it is guaranteed that something will evolve — just as it is guaranteed that someone will win the lottery.

Creationists will often point to some system on an organism and claim that it couldn't have evolved, because removing any part of it will make it useless. But they fail to admit that even without all the parts, a system is useful for some other function and was gradually used through a series of different functions to it's present function.

His argument, insofar as I can parse it, seems to be an appeal to irreducible complexity al la Behe. Yet he claims he rejects intelligent design! Go figure

[thedoc]

The evolution of hemoglobin. It’s all there.

PauloL’s probability estimate is simply wrong, pathetically so. In addition to the fact that, as we have seen, low-probability events happen all the time even by dumb luck alone, natural selection is not dumb luck.

He seems to think that hemoglobin must have evolved all at once — from nothing to something. That’s not how it works. How many times has this been explained to him? Like anything else, it evolved incrementally over time, with successive modifying mutations that proved to be adaptive (were naturally selected for).

You might argue that even this process makes a hemoglobin outcome unlikely. But even if true, recall the lottery example. Any single person winning the lottery is exceedingly unlikely, but at the same time it is 100 percent guaranteed that someone will win.

But since evolution is a rigged lottery, the chances of hemoglobin “winning” the lottery are magnified exponentially by the need of organisms to cope with the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere.

The basic point, however, is that no matter how superficially “unlikely” it might seem for some structure or other to evolve, given the fact the organisms are constantly reproducing with variation, it is guaranteed that something will evolve — just as it is guaranteed that someone will win the lottery.

Creationists will often point to some system on an organism and claim that it couldn't have evolved, because removing any part of it will make it useless. But they fail to admit that even without all the parts, a system is useful for some other function and was gradually used through a series of different functions to it's present function.

His argument, insofar as I can parse it, seems to be an appeal to irreducible complexity al la Behe. Yet he claims he rejects intelligent design! Go figure

It has been pointed out by others that Intelligent design is just creationism relabeled and minus some of the more legal objections of having it taught in science class. Some presentations of Eugenie Scott, former director of the NCSE, talk about the progression of the ideas of intelligent design and proponents efforts to get the materials into the science classroom.

[PauloL]

Well, Evolutionauts got too desperate because of hemoglobin.

[davidm]

Well, Evolutionauts got too desperate because of hemoglobin.

Yeah, what an intelligent response. Yawn.

Why don't you take your creationist trolling somewhere else? You are just a vapid bore.

[PauloL]

Davidm, forget about your article. There are many such articles in press. It simply overlooks probability constrains. It doesn't even address them, so how can your article refute Asimov's calculations?

Telling "random mutation PLUS natural selection is NOT a chance event" says nothing about hemoglobin production. You could even say "Theorems of natural selection explain hemoglobin", another empty set of words.

Your sophisticated lottery that runs 7 billion tickets every second:

I offer you a winner every second since Big Bang, more than 13 billion years ago. Great, but you sum up only 4.23x10E17 winners so far since Big Bang.

And even if you count losers, i.e. 6.999.999.999 losers per second, you still only count

2.96x10E27 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) LOSERS!

As you see, you are still too far from 10E190 (single hemoglobin chain), much much farther from 4x10E619 (full hemoglobin molecule) and you're even farther than that for explaining how natural selection originated hemoglobin.[/quote]

[davidm]

Davidm, forget about your article. There are many such articles in press. It simply overlooks probability constrains. It doesn't even address it, so how can your article refute Asimov's calculations?

Telling "random mutation PLUS natural selection is NOT a chance event" says nothing about hemoglobin production. You could even say "Theorems of natural selection explain hemoglobin", another empty set of words.

Your sophisticated lottery that runs 7 billion tickets every second:

I offer you a winner every second since Big Bang, more than 13 billion years ago. Great, but you sum up only 4.23x10E17 winners so far since Big Bang.

And even if you count losers, i.e. 6.999.999.999 losers per second, you still only count

2.96x10E27 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

As you see, you are still too far from 10E190 (single hemoglobin chain), much much farther from 4x10E619 (full hemoglobin molecule) and even farther than that for explaining how natural selection originated hemoglobin.

Your numbers mean nothing. As explained, evolution is incremental and successive over time. Hemoglobin evolution is explained in the paper I linked. The bottom line is you still don't even understand what evolution is or how it works. You also don't understand the main point: the lottery example shows you get results by dumb luck alone. But evolution is not dumb luck. However, since you're a creationist troll there's no point in going on.

[Belinda]

Maybe if Paulol were an animal breeder he might understand artificial selection, and that might be a step towards his understanding natural selection.

[PauloL]

I didn't say your article doesn't explain hemoglobin evolution. It does, just like many such articles in press.

That article addresses the soft question.

But it doesn't address the hard question, how on Earth could 141 or 146 amino-acids line up so as to give rise to hemoglobin given the absolutely low probabilities.

The calculation are correct, have been made by Asimov, are easy to confirm, and you haven't so far refuted them.

All you can say are such intellectual sayings as evolution is incremental and successive over time.

And creating ingenious every-second 7-billion ticket lotteries... Read it again:

Davidm, forget about your article. There are many such articles in press. It simply overlooks probability constrains. It doesn't even address them, so how can your article refute Asimov's calculations?

Telling "random mutation PLUS natural selection is NOT a chance event" says nothing about hemoglobin production. You could even say "Theorems of natural selection explain hemoglobin", another empty set of words.

Your sophisticated lottery that runs 7 billion tickets every second:

I offer you a winner every second since Big Bang, more than 13 billion years ago. Great, but you sum up only 4.23x10E17 winners so far since Big Bang.

And even if you count losers, i.e. 6.999.999.999 losers per second, you still only count

2.96x10E27 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) LOSERS!

As you see, you are still too far from 10E190 (single hemoglobin chain), much much farther from 4x10E619 (full hemoglobin molecule) and you're even farther than that for explaining how natural selection originated hemoglobin.

[davidm]

THE ASIMOV NUMBER ONLY APPLIES TO A PURELY RANDOM PROCESS AND NOT TO NATURAL SELECTION!!!! GOT IT NOW????

[davidm]

The Blind Watchmaker, Chapter 3, Accumulating Small Change

By Richard Dawkins

To generate a biological molecule like haemoglobin, the red pigment in blood, by simple sieving would be equivalent to taking all the amino-acid building blocks of haemoglobin, jumbling them up at random, and hoping that the haemoglobin molecule would reconstitute itself by sheer luck. The amount of luck that would be required for this feat is unthinkable, and has been used as a telling mind-boggier by Isaac Asimov and others.

A haemoglobin molecule consists of four chains of amino acids twisted together. Let us think about just one of these four chains. It consists of 146 amino acids. There are 20 different kinds of amino acids commonly found in living things. The number of possible ways of arranging 20 kinds of thing in chains 146 links long is an inconceivably large number, which Asimov calls the 'haemoglobin number'. It is easy to calculate, but impossible to visualize the answer. The first link in the 146-long chain could be any one of the 20 possible amino acids. The second link could also be any one of the 20, so the number of possible 2-link chains is 20 x 10, or 400. The number of possible 3-link chains is 20 x 20 x 20, or 8,000. The number of possible 146-link chains is 20 times itself 146 times. This is a staggeringly large number. A million is a 1 with 6 noughts after it. A billion 11,000 million) is a 1 with 9 noughts after it. The number we seek, the 'haemoglobin number', is (near enough) a 1 with 190 noughts after it! This is the chance against happening to hit upon haemoglobin by luck. And a haemoglobin molecule has only a minute fraction of the complexity of a living body. Simple sieving, on its own, is obviously nowhere near capable of generating the amount of order in a living thing. Sieving is an essential ingredient in the generation of living order, but it is very far from being the whole story. Something else is needed. To explain the point, I shall need to make a distinction between 'single-step' selection and 'cumulative' selection. The simple sieves we have been considering so far in this chapter are all examples of single-step selection. Living organization is the product of cumulative selection.

The essential difference between single-step selection and cumulative selection is this. In single-step selection the entities selected or sorted, pebbles or whatever they are, are sorted once and for all. In cumulative selection, on the other hand, they 'reproduce'; or in some other way the results of one sieving process are fed into a subsequent sieving, which is fed into . . ., and so on. The entities are subjected to selection or sorting over many 'generations' in succession. The end-product of one generation of selection is the starting point for the next generation of selection, and so on for many generations. It is natural to borrow such words as 'reproduce' and 'generation', which have associations with living things, because living things are the main examples we know of things that participate in cumulative selection. They may in practice be the only things that do. But for the moment I don't want to beg that question by saying so outright.

DO YOU GET IT NOW YOU CREATIONIST TROLL??? THE ASIMOV NUMBER IS ABOUT A RANDOM PROCESS ONLY AND NOT NATURAL SELECTION, WHICH, AS HAS BEEN REPEATEDLY EXPLAINED TO YOU, IS NOT RANDOM!!!!!

You're welcome!

[PauloL]

You really seem desperate, just like Dawkins.

Nice words again. Pity they are insulting reader's intelligence.

Single-step selection plus cumulative selection do it all.

Single-step sorts out entities that are reproduced by cumulative selection, this again and again until you have a 141 amino-acid hemoglobin chain.

So, hemoglobin chain once had 30 amino-acids before gaining another one, it's 31th for cumulative selection.

Both 30-amino-acid and 31-amino-acid are operative then. Cool, anyway you cut hemoglobin chain, it will be operative to the point of reproduction by cumulative selection.

This had to be proved empirically of course, but let's concede it's true.

Then any sequence of amino-acids from hemoglobin chain starting in amino-acid one are operative, which isn't 100% probable.

Let's admit it's only 99% probable (highly unlikely, but I offer it to you), then the probability of getting our 141 amino-acid chain is now 0.01x10E190 or 10E188.

It didn't help much. Whatever way you compose a hemoglobin chain your probability is 10E190.

For the same reason that your chance to win your lottery is one in 7 billion, however you choose the number.

Or did single-step selection start with 140 amino-acids and just added one? Seems quite easier this way.

Just one more thing, Columbo would say: Would that work if by bad dumb luck the sequence started in the 2nd amino-acid, Sir?

[davidm]

You really seem desperate, just like Dawkins.

Nice words again. Pity they are insulting reader's intelligence.

Single-step selection plus cumulative selection do it all.

Single-step sorts out entities that are reproduced by cumulative selection, this again and again until you have a 141 amino-acid hemoglobin chain.

So, hemoglobin chain once had 30 amino-acids before gaining another one, it's 31th for cumulative selection.

Both 30-amino-acid and 31-amino-acid are operative then. Cool, anyway you cut hemoglobin chain, it will be operative to the point of reproduction by cumulative selection.

This had to be proved empirically of course, but let's concede it's true.

Then any sequence of amino-acids from hemoglobin chain starting in amino-acid one are operative, which isn't 100% probable.

Let's admit it's only 99% probable (highly unlikely, but I offer it to you), then the probability of getting our 141 amino-acid chain is now 0.01x10E190 or 10E188.

It didn't help much. Whatever way you compose a hemoglobin chain your probability is 10E190.

For the same reason that your chance to win your lottery is one in 7 billion, however you choose the number.

Or did single-step selection start with 140 amino-acids and just added one? Seems quite easier this way.

Earlier you whined that I was making a fool of you. It wasn't me. You did it all yourself, sonny.

And continue to do so.

But do keep it up. It's amusing.

[PauloL]

I suspected you couldn't refute, but now I'm sure.

Anyone reading this will witness that.

[PauloL]

There is no way to contour probabilities.

Your chance to win Powerball is 1 in 292.201.338 whatever way you choose the numbers.

The only way to contour that is by knowing in advance one or more numbers.

Otherwise your probability is 292.201.338 forever.

Single-step selection and cumulative selection. Amino-acid by amino-acid until the 141th...

Probability: 1 in 10E190!

Calculations done by Asimov and accepted by Dawkins as you can read.