Random mutations cannot explain evolution of humans
By Wolfgang G. Gasser
The
question at issue is not whether gradual transitions are conceivable (and
existent), but whether they can be explained by the assumption that they are
caused by random mutations.
Take the case of humans after their separation from chimps some million years
ago. An upper limit to the number of individuals having been born since then is
1016 (i.e. 109 newborns per year for 107 years).
1016 is an extremely small number when compared with the number of
possible mutations in the genetic code. Let us assume that the number of
relevant base pairs (i.e. without junk DNA) is 100'000'000 pairs per chromosome
set. This results in three hundred million possible point-replacement mutations
(because every base pair can be replaced by three alternatives).
The number of possible combinations of two such point mutations is already 1017,
i.e. higher than the number of all "humans" ever born since our
separation from chimps. The number of all possible single-step mutations is
even much higher than the number of point-replacement mutations.
So, evolutionary advantages depending on two or more single-step mutations
cannot have had a relevant impact (at least for human evolution). If we believe
in neo-Darwinism we must assume that every innovation is produced by a sequence
of single-step mutations, each of which alone responsible for a relevant
increase in fitness.
Let us assume that three factors must be affected for an increase in fitness to
emerge. So even if the probability of a beneficial mutation in a newborn were
as high as 10-5 for each factor, the probability that beneficial
mutations occur for all three factors is 10-15, i.e. extremely
improbable.
So neo-Darwinism requires essentially this
hypothesis:
Every evolutionary innovation can be produced by a sequence of single-step mutations, each of which alone responsible for a relevant increase in fitness.
Because this hypothesis is obviously wrong, neo-Darwinism is refuted.
If we take into account that many properties depending each on
more than one single genetic factor must evolve at the same time, it becomes
even more obvious that the neo-Darwinian explanation of evolution is simply
untenable.
The upright gait was only one of many traits which had to evolve in us
after our separation from chimps. For that to happen, the structures of bones,
of muscles and of tendons had to gradually change. Let us ignore that in fact
the bone structure (involved in the upright-gait evolution) alone consists of
several bones with each several traits.
So let us make the completely unrealistic [simplifying] assumption that one
'progressive' single-step mutation in the genetic factor of each (i.e. bone,
muscle and tendon) structure is enough to entail a relevant increase in
fitness.
Let us further assume that the probability of such progressive mutations in
newborns is each as high as 10-5. So we conclude that among 1015
newborns (i.e. a billion newborns of a million generations), only one
individual will carry all three necessary mutations.
Because a change in only one or two of the three involved structures cannot
lead to a relevant increase in fitness (rather the contrary), it becomes
obvious that the upright gait cannot have evolved in a neo-Darwinian way.
- - -
The above is a composition of extracts from posts to
talk.origins from November 2000
sol invictus in #13:
The human genome differs from the chimpanzee genome by only 35 million base pairs, of which about 5 million are thought to be active. Compare that to the total genome of around 3 billion base pairs.
This means: 5 million base pairs corresponding to 10 million bits or 1.25 megabyte are assumed to explain all the progress from chimp-like apes to humans, including human language and intelligence. See Missing genetic information refutes neo-Darwinism.
sol invictus :
So disregarding the inactive mutations, there needs to have been time for about 5∙106 beneficial point mutations to take place. That's all.
We agree on the facts, but the question is whether this change of 5 million base pairs (or a similar number) can explain human evolution from chimp-like apes.
sol invictus:
The rate of point mutations is roughly 100 per birth.
In my argument I assumed
"that the number of relevant base pairs (i.e. without junk DNA) is
100'000'000 pairs per chromosome set". Using a point-mutation rate of 10-6,
we get your roughly 100 relevant point-mutations per birth. 100'000'000 ∙
10-6 = 100.
Or do you mean roughly three relevant point-mutations in the around 108
relevant base pairs and a point-mutation rate of around 3∙10-8?
In any case, if mutations are purely random
then the probability of detrimental effects is substantially higher than of
useful effects. One cannot deny this fact. So on average, the
genetic disposition of the child with these 100 mutations is obviously worse than
without these mutations.
sol invictus:
After a few hundred generations, any beneficial mutation will spread throughout the genome.
I do not deny the fact that such "beneficial" mutations have spread in the human genome. But I'm sure that this spread cannot be explained by random mutation and selection.
sol invictus:
So if it has been 5∙106 years = 2∙105 generations since humans and chimps diverged, 2∙105 ∙ 100 ∙ N mutations have occurred, where N is the population size (taken to be constant for simplicity). You took N = 109, which is obviously too high - let's take it to be 107. Then we have a total of 2∙1014 mutations total in the human genome since the time we diverged from chimps.
Very interesting calculation: 2∙1014 (relevant)
mutations in a genome of 108 or 3∙109 base pairs.
This means: many thousand mutations per base pair.
Only in the process of answering your post, I realized that in the same way as
post #12, your post could only aim at obfuscation because it has
almost nothing to do with my argument.
Dancing David in #25:
Progress? Progress? What kind of idea is that is biology? ... The proto chimp/human was most likely as adapted to its environment as we are.
It is difficult to discuss with persons who, if necessary, deny the obvious in order to defend their dogmatic beliefs. Do you also deny a progress in telecommunication over the last decades? And if you do not deny such a progress, why should an increase in complexity of human communication skills not qualify for being considered real progress?
I understand your logic: If there is no progress, then no genetic information corresponding to biological innovations must be explained by random errors and subsequent selection, and trivial probability arguments showing the impossibility of an information increase by such a mechanism can be dismissed.
Even if we take into account that random mutations include also duplications, inversions, transpositions, recombination, etc., single-step mutations (affecting only two bit = 0.25 byte) are the most frequent form of genetic change. And it at least contradicts common sense to explain the emergence of human language and intelligence primarily by a sequence of such 0.25 byte (!) changes, each of which must imply such a strong increase in fitness that it spreads to the whole population. Not to forget that the majority of such random 0.25 byte changes have negative effects.
Dancing David:
You don't need mutations, variation in the expression of traits is sufficient!
I'm actually astonished! So you agree with the title of the thread: If random mutations are not needed in the evolution of humans, then it is obvious that random mutations cannot explain human evolution.
Your claim however entails that all the genetic information concerning humans was already somehow present in the population of our proto-chimp/human ancestors. This does not resolve the problem of the emergence of the information needed for humans, it only shifts the problem further into the past.
Wolfgang in #23:
This means: 5 million base pairs corresponding to 10 million bits or 1.25 megabyte are assumed to explain all the progress from chimp-like apes to humans, including human language and intelligence. See Missing genetic information refutes neo-Darwinism.
Dr Adequate in #34:
The
article seems to rest on asserting as "fact" that "the information
of the genetic make-up of a human is a far cry from what is needed in order to
transform a fertilized egg only into a human body, let alone into a person with
intelligence and consciousness."
But you provide no proof for this, it is mere assertion, and one, I might add,
that no geneticist in the world agrees with.
A further example of the missing genetic information (quote from Wikipedia):
"The human brain has a huge number of synapses. Each of the 1011 (one hundred billion) neurons has on average 7,000 synaptic connections to other neurons. It has been estimated that the brain of a three-year-old child has about 1015 synapses (1 quadrillion). This number declines with age, stabilizing by adulthood."
I
hope you agree that if the vast majority of this huge number of synaptic
connections were built up randomly, a normal human behavior could not emerge.
On the one hand we have a relevant genetic information of 107 or 108
byte for the total ontogenetic development, and on the other hand only in the
brain an architecture involving 1015 synaptic connections. This
results in less than 10-7 or 10-8 byte genetic information
per synapse.
So whereas the genetic information of a human only constitutes a small fraction
of the storage capacity of one single DVD disc of 4.7 Gigabyte, around a
million DVD discs are needed in order to store all the synaptic connections of
a three-year-old child.
Dr Adequate:
I know, of course, that you are not a geneticist, because of this incredible blunder:
"If it is true that out of these 20,000 genes 'we probably make at least 10 times that number of different proteins', then the genetic information per protein reduces to less than 100 bytes."
My statement is correct, at least according to my interpretation. If DNA corresponding to 1000 bytes is used to code for 10 proteins, then the (non-redundant) genetic information (coding for independent degrees of freedom) reduces to 100 bytes per protein.
Dancing David in #32:
1. There are multiple mechanisms by which variation between individuals may occur in a population, that is all natural selection needs.
However,
all these mechanisms leading to variation represent changes and therefore are
considered mutations. Whereas variation is a property of a population or
species at a given point in time, mutation is a change over time in
individuals. The concept mutation normally covers all such changes.
If you start with one bacterium in a culture solution, we have (in the normal
case) no variation. Replication cycles then lead to variation. By the way, pandualist evolution
leads to this prediction: If the original bacterium has an artificially induced
silent mutation in a given gene, then mutations from the artificial form to the
wild form are substantially higher than other mutations. See also.
Dancing David:
2. I showed you a mathematical demonstration, albeit simplified, where it is shown how natural selection might increase a trait in a population.
I'm sorry, what you have shown in #25 seems to me not a mathematical demonstration but a simple obfuscation by bluffing. Please present the argument in a reasonable way or provide a link with a reasonable presentation.
Dancing David:
3. You have not demonstrated in the least why genetic miscopies would always be detrimental.
I
said that "the probability of detrimental effects is substantially higher
than of useful effects". Yet demonstrating the simplest and most obvious
is sometimes the most difficult.
Think about randomly changing a few bits or
bytes of a computer program. Think about random changes in a production
process. Think about replacing, doubling, removing randomly characters, words
and sentences in a text. Think about the easiness to destroy the function of
proteins by artificially induced mutations and the difficulty to increase
fitness of proteins by such mutations. Think about the easiness to induce
by artificial mutations defects (e.g. blindness in fruit flies) and the
difficulty to induce positive effects.
Some mutations are essentially switches from one known allele to another known allele, or from one known strain (e.g. normal bacterial strain) to another known strain (e.g. resistant).
Dancing David:
4. You show mistaken logic by saying that since there are other mechanisms through which variation can occur, mutations cannot lead to variation that natural selection can act upon.
My logic seems confused to you only because of your strange distinction between changes called mutations and changes not called mutations. The normal interpretation of your statement
"You don't need mutations, variation in the expression of traits is sufficient!"
in the context of this discussion is equivalent to
No further genetic changes were needed in the evolution of humans from proto-chimp/humans, the already existing variation in the proto-chimp/human population was sufficient.
zosima in #58:
A superficial reading through this thread might give the impression that my argument is nonsensical and full of logical errors, at least when relying on the authority of orthodox posters. Here once again the concrete application of my argument:
The upright gait was only one of many traits which had to evolve
in us after our separation from chimps. For that to happen, the structures of
bones, of muscles and of tendons had to gradually change. Let us ignore that in
fact the bone structure (involved in the upright-gait evolution) alone consists
of several bones with each several traits.
So let us make the completely unrealistic assumption that one 'progressive'
single-step mutation in the genetic factor of each (i.e. bone, muscle and
tendon) structure is enough to entail a relevant increase in fitness.
Let us further assume that the probability of such progressive mutations in
newborns is each as high as 10-5. So we conclude that among 1015
newborns (i.e. a billion newborns of a million generations), only one
individual will carry all three necessary mutations.
Because a change in only one or two of the three involved structures cannot
lead to a relevant increase in fitness (rather the contrary), it becomes
obvious that the upright gait cannot have evolved in a neo-Darwinian way.
Assuming that the probability of such progressive mutations in newborns is each as high as 10-5 and using my upper limit of a billion newborns per year, Zosima 'refutes' my argument in this way:
109∙10-5=104. We can
expect one beneficial mutation to occur in as many as 10000 individuals per
generation.
So after the first year of our thought experiment we have:
10000 individuals with mutation A
10000 individuals with mutation B
10000 individuals with mutation C
Actually this means:
The
assumption that a mutation having a probability of 10-5 per birth
(and normally affecting 0.25 byte of the DNA) changes all the many components
of the proto-chimp/human body in such a coordinated and effective way that a substantial
increase in fitness is the result, is so mind-bogglingly absurd that only blind
dogmatism can explain such a belief.
The following is correct:
The probability that any one of these individuals has any two mutations is unlikely and the probability that any one individual has all three is infinitesimally small at this point.
But its continuation is nothing more than wishful thinking:
But, since each of these mutations increases fitness independently, we can assume that these individuals will do better than the others. Increasing their numbers in the next generation. So let's say the number of individuals inheriting each one of the 3 mutations doubles each generation.
Wolfgang in #37:
So whereas the genetic information of a human only constitutes a small fraction of the storage capacity of one single DVD disc of 4.7 Gigabyte, around a million DVD discs are needed in order to store all the synaptic connections of a three-year-old child.
Reality Check in #42:
Congratulations Wolfgang - you have just proved that learning is impossible since all of the synapse connections in the brain are hard-coded in DNA!
What
I have shown is this: If all the synaptic connections of a three-year-old child
were hard-coded (ignoring details such as location in the brain, length of
axons, synaptic plasticity, etc.), in the order of 1016 byte =
10,000,000 Gigabyte would be needed. Yet the whole active DNA of a human is
less than 108 byte = 0.1 Gigabyte. And this information is assumed
to be responsible also for many thousand enzyme species, differentiation into
more than two hundred cell types, the highly complex anatomy of the human body
at all levels, human learning capacity, instinctive behavior and even talents.
Or take the brain of a newborn instead of a three-year-old. The complexity of
this brain is the main precondition for learning after birth.
Reality Check:
As any biologist can tell you, neural development starts from a mostly random network of synaptic connections. Connections are then reinforced by learning.
An extract from your link (emphasis mine):
"Some
landmarks of embryonic neural development include the birth and differentiation
of neurons from stem cell precursors, the migration of immature neurons from
their birthplaces in the embryo to their final positions, outgrowth of axons
from neurons and guidance of the motile growth cone through the embryo towards
postsynaptic partners, the generation of synapses between these axons and their
postsynaptic partners, and finally the lifelong changes in synapses which are
thought to underlie learning and memory.
Typically, these neurodevelopmental processes can be broadly divided into two
classes: activity-independent mechanisms and activity-dependent mechanisms. Activity-independent
mechanisms are generally believed to occur as hardwired processes determined by
genetic programs played out within individual neurons. These include
differentiation, migration and axon guidance to their initial target areas.
These processes are thought of as being independent of neural activity and
sensory experience. Once axons reach their target areas, activity-dependent
mechanisms come into play. Neural activity and sensory experience will mediate
formation of new synapses, as well as synaptic plasticity, which will be
responsible for refinement of the nascent neural circuits."
Wikipedia on Axon guidance:
"Axon guidance (also called axon pathfinding) is a subfield of neural development concerning the process by which neurons send out axons to reach the correct targets. Axons often follow very precise paths in the nervous system, and how they manage to find their way so accurately remains a major puzzle."
One thing is sure: the information cannot come from the DNA, simply because the DNA does not contain enough information. If you try to understand the following quote from Psychons and their Evolution, you can resolve this major puzzle yourself.
The maturation of a protein from the corresponding amino acid chain can happen in the following way:
In important (evolutionarily older) sequences of the chain, amino acids become active, that is they get animated by psychons. Because of environment continuity these psychons are the ones which have built up the same protein (or the same sequence of different proteins) innumerable times. These psychons build up protein parts which can be animated as a whole by other psychons which then build up the complete protein.
So it also becomes comprehensible that RNA sequences (introns) are able to cut out themselves or that order is maintained during DNA recombination.
- - -
Use as few hypotheses as possible, but not fewer!
Dr Adequate in #85:
Typical crank reasoning. "If I can't explain it, then I can explain it, psychons do it by magic".
Typical
dogmatic reasoning: "Despite contradictions and lacking explanations, our
beliefs are nevertheless correct."
Substantial scientific progress is only possible if we take seriously the
problems of our current theories and explanations, and if we are able to play
with other hypotheses. As a result of biological evolution, uncommon hypotheses
seem to be in contradiction with reality. However we should not forget
that what seems to us as reality, is also a construction of our souls and brains.
A typical sign of dogmatism is ignoring logical inconsistencies. For instance:
On the one hand, the fact that computer-implemented algorithms cannot be
improved by randomly changing bits or bytes, is declared irrelevant because
"genes are not computer programs". On the other hand, the highly
complex architecture of the human brain at birth is explained by the assumption
that the necessary information is somehow generated by an algorithm. Do you
have any idea, how enzymes could implement such an algorithm?
And by the way, panpsychism (or better: pandualism) is a fully legitimate
hypothesis with a long tradition. I know that it is a long and difficult
process to substantially change one's own world view, e.g. from pure
materialism to the recognition of psychons. For me, this step was not so
difficult, because already in former lives I had considered panpsychism as a
reasonable scientific hypothesis. See also my posts #29, #51 and #270 from
"Reincarnation as a trivial scientific fact".
Some further arguments suggesting information in the form of psychons from the psychon theory:
Not even the assumption
that proteins are fully coded by the DNA is true. The genetic code includes
twenty amino acids. Apart from these amino acids many proteins contain other
amino acids and other components, which are not coded. The genetic code is not
universally valid as it was initially assumed. Several exceptions have been
found.
Genes of plants and animals regularly contain non-coding sequences. These
introns must be cut out from the RNA copies of the genes. The information indicating
which regions represent no code and must be removed is not coded. Some introns
even cut out themselves. In several cases, RNA nucleotides are changed, deleted
or inserted (RNA editing) before translation starts. In order to produce
correct proteins, ribosomes sometimes skip nucleotides instead of translating
them. Even from the translated sequences sometimes parts are cut out before
protein folding starts. All this is not coded!
After transcription, many amino acid sequences efficiently take on a stable
form. Biotechnologically produced, random sequences do not fold to a protein.
The common explanation is that proteins have been selected during evolution to
fold properly. Yet, if only a very small proportion of possible sequences take
on a stable form, only this small proportion can undergo selection of protein
function, and the probability that random mutations destroy stability is very
high. Furthermore, it is improbable that a protein, selected for a stable form,
also acts as a catalyst for complex functions. On the other hand, there are
related proteins of similar form and function, whose amino acid sequences have
drifted apart substantially. There are even cases where the completely
different amino acid sequences, corresponding to different reading frames of a
given RNA sequence (frameshift), result in correct proteins or parts of
proteins.
Wolfgang in #91:
On the one hand, the fact that computer-implemented algorithms cannot be improved by randomly changing bits or bytes, is declared irrelevant because "genes are not computer programs".
Drkitten in #92:
You haven't heard of "genetic algorithms"? I spent something like five years of my life doing exactly that --- randomly changing bits and bytes in computer-implemented algorithms and looking to see which of the random changes resulted in performance improvements.
The
by far most important principle of life is neither
mutation nor selection but the finalistic principle of reproduction.
Organisms must at first be able to create viable copies of themselves (see also).
In the case of humans, reproduction implies
the formation of far more than 1020 apriori rather improbable
chemical uphill bonds. There are uncountable possible errors in cell
replications. The assumption that the only errors worth a mention are correctly
bonded DNA changes and that a substantial proportion of these changes has even
positive effects is totally unjustified within reductionist materialism.
In the case of genetic algorithms
we have in principle on the one hand data sequences and on the other
hand algorithms creating new data sequences using already existing data
sequences. Whether we call such data sequences genotypes, phenotypes,
individuals or something else is irrelevant. Relevant to this discussion
however is that such data sequences are passive entities manipulated and copied
by a computer program, which cannot improve itself by randomly changing its own
bits or bytes (see also).
So, genetic algorithms do not resemble very much real life. They are much
closer to handwritten chain letters which
also "are capable of evolution" if humans do the real work of
creating new individuals. Also computer simulations such as Tierra are rather
based on the chain-letter principle than on the principle of biological
evolution.
Substitute "known" for "assumed", and that's about right.
So your credo is:
It is known that the active genetic information of less than 0.1 Gigabyte is essentially enough to determine many thousand enzyme species, differentiation into more than two hundred cell types, the highly complex anatomy of the human body at all levels, the complex brain architecture at birth, human learning capacity, instinctive behavior and even talents.
I'm sure that at the latest in a future life you will wonder how educated persons of the beginning third millennium were able to belief in such a thing. Have you ever thought how much information is needed in order to build e.g. a computer?
Dr Adequate:
All you need to do is find a protein the synthesis of which is not directed by DNA.
I'm
not sure whether psychons being able of doing that still subsist. But even if they
still exist, it may be rather difficult to detect them, because of their
inefficient replication they may nowhere reach a high enough concentration in
order to be detectable with our current biotechnological means. (The same was
valid before the 1980s with e.g. viruses such as HIV). And to demonstrate
definitively that such proteins cannot somehow be the result of uncommon
splicing and composition, of frame shifts or changes analogous to error
correction, could be quite difficult.
However, it is a quite obvious consequence from the hypothesis of a continuous
evolution that before the invention of the highly complex translation, proteins were somehow able to create
copies of themselves without DNA and RNA. A quote from the psychon theory:
During evolution, psychon animated molecules have been joining together in always bigger units. Animated molecules such as amino acids and nucleotides began sometime to form chains. By specialization psychons emerged which dominated such chains. Proteins are conceivable which replicate by adding corresponding amino acids to one chain end, until an identical protein can split off. Reproduction by base pairing of two complementary strands is even more efficient. The invention of translation, a complex symbiosis of various ribosomal psychons, was certainly one of the most essential steps during the evolution of life.
Wolfgang in #91:
Genes of plants and animals regularly contain non-coding sequences. These introns must be cut out from the RNA copies of the genes. The information indicating which regions represent no code and must be removed is not coded. Some introns even cut out themselves. In several cases, RNA nucleotides are changed, deleted or inserted (RNA editing) before translation starts. In order to produce correct proteins, ribosomes sometimes skip nucleotides instead of translating them. Even from the translated sequences sometimes parts are cut out before protein folding starts. All this is not coded!
Dr Adequate in #101:
Wrong.
Some quotes from SkepticWiki:
"A
gene may have no introns; it may have dozens. In eukaryotic organisms (i.e.
organisms whose cells have nuclei, such as plants and animals) the typical gene
consists mostly of introns. An average protein-coding gene will be about 8000
nucleotides long, whereas an average piece of mature mRNA after splicing will
only be 1200 nucleotides long (figures from Campbell and Reece, Biology)."
"Group 2 introns are also self-splicing, with no assistance whatsoever: purely
as a result of the sequence of bases in the RNA, they curl themselves up and
snip themselves out of the RNA, with the excised intron ending up in what is
known as a lariat structure --- a loop of RNA with a tail."
"Nuclear introns are far from being self-splicing: rather, they are
spliced with the aid of a rather complicated bit of cellular machinery called a
spliceosome".
According
to the psychon thesis, group 2 introns are fully self-splicing because
corresponding psychons have survived. Folding of a chain into an enzymatic
active form always depends on corresponding psychons, which are limited in
number. So, one can predict that such introns cannot always cut themselves out
if genes with such introns are expressed at a too high rate.
This can be verified by experiment: Take an intron which is not very
widespread, transfer it into a crucial and widely expressed gene of a fast
growing organism. At some point in time, it will become impossible to further
increase the genetically modified organism in number, because introns will no
longer be able to cut themselves out, thus impeding the correct expression of
the crucial gene. This is similar to the principle of psychon-deficit
diseases.
You assume that some RNA-sequences cannot be used as information-carrier
because physical and chemical laws will induce these sequences to cut
themselves out (and to correctly bond the two open ends of two remaining
information sequences). This seems very unrealistic to me.
In the case of introns which depend on spliceosomes you probably assume: The
information which parts must be removed from the mRNA and which of the
remaining parts have to be put together in which way (alternative splicing) is
somehow coded in the DNA of the spliceosome or of other enzymes. That this is a
rather implausible explanation can be better seen if we deal with the case
where by "programmed frame shifting" a ribosome corrects a fatal
mutation consisting of an insertion of one base pair.
The hypothesis that such a fatal mutation
coincides with other mutations being able to correct the error can be excluded.
However, if we accept the simple and logically consistent psychon thesis, then
such strange error-correction behaviours can easily be explained, because memory is a fundamental principle
of psychons (and of life in general).
The psychons involved in the corresponding protein biosynthesis had so often in
the past created correct proteins and had become so accustomed to create
correct proteins, that they simply were able to ignore the newly introduced
fatal mutation. Think about the monks of the past who copied the same texts
again and again by writing them. They certainly were able to recognize and
correct some errors in such texts, even if they didn't understand the texts.
Wowbagger in #120:
DNA is more like a recipe. ... In a cake recipe, for example, there is no one-to-one mapping of a letter in the text to a specific piece in the cake. The whole recipe works, together, to make the whole cake..
In
the case of recipes, additional information comes from the persons who read and
interpret the recipe in order to make the cake. According to the Psychon
Theory, little biochemical animals (the enzymes) use the DNA as a recipe in
order to give birth to other biochemical animals.
If a cook reads in a recipe that 3 kg salt must be used and 3 gram seem to be a
reasonable quantity, then the cook will probably use 3 g and not 3 kg. Maybe he
will not even notice that there is an error. In a similar way, enzymes are able
to ignore and correct errors at all stages of protein synthesis.
In the case of recipes, the additional information introduced by the cook is
independent from the recipes. However, in the case of purely materialistic
biology, the additional information corresponding to the complex behavior of
enzymes is essentially explained by the same DNA. So apart from information
contained in the biochemical machinery of the fertilized egg, this DNA information
must be essentially enough to determine a human being. And think about the
complexity alone of the nexus between around 108 photoreceptor cells and the brain.
The suggestion of drkitten in post #111 that the
environment in the form of "mother's womb" or of temperature provides
additional information seems not reasonable to me. Even if the sex of an
alligator depends on the incubation temperature of the egg, the information
needed for both the female and the male anatomy (and behavior) must come from
elsewhere and cannot somehow be created by temperature.
Wowbagger in #121:
So, if the population does continue to grow, would that refute psychon theory?
See: this post.
Wowbagger:
If we were to conduct a study on births and deaths, how would we be able to examine the psychons of each person, to see if they are shared or not, to know this was an active mechanism in the world?
The relevant quote:
After death and before incarnation, souls exist only potentially and cannot be located in space. There is some evidence suggesting that the soul of a still living person can start a new incarnation. Then the development of the embryo and (in rare cases) baby is paralleled by a disappearing vitality of the person animated by the same soul, and it seems plausible that preventing a dying person forcefully from dying can lead to the death of a baby animated by the same soul.
I actually do not know how widespread such cases are. As probable examples I consider:
· Michelangelo (1475/03/06 1564/02/18) -> Galileo Galilei (1564/02/15 1642/01/08)
· Joseph Haydn (1732/03/31 1809/05/31) -> Felix Mendelssohn (1809/02/03 1847/11/04)
· Bernhard Fφrster (1843/03/31 - 1889/06/03) -> Adolf Hitler (1889/04/20 1945/04/30)
· Joseph Stalin (1878/12/18 1953/03/05) -> Vladimir Putin (1952/10/07)
Wolfgang in #91:
On the other hand, there are related proteins of similar form and function, whose amino acid sequences have drifted apart substantially. There are even cases where the completely different amino acid sequences, corresponding to different reading frames of a given RNA sequence (frameshift), result in correct proteins or parts of proteins.
Dr Adequate in #101:
I know that, too. This is just standard creationist fare. "It's complicated, so it can't have evolved".
The hypothesis that the DNA contains the very specific information concerning protein folding and enzymatic behavior leads to this problem:
It is extremely improbable that different reading frames of the same DNA can lead to viable protein parts, because a frame shift leads to a more or less random amino acid sequence.
In
a similar way, it is highly improbable to find a reasonable text which can be
transformed into another reasonable text by a character-transformation
such as for instance: a -> b, b -> c, c -> d,
z -> a.
In the following I assume that all 20 amino acids are equivalent, ignoring
codon bias, stop-codon read-through and similar. I assume also that a frame
shift in a given sequence leads to a fully random sequence.
Let us call viable amino acids sequence a polypeptide which can be part
of a protein with enzymatic activity. Assuming a chain of 100 members in the
following, let us ask how many sequences are actually viable.
Definitely, we can be sure that the answer must lie in between these two
extreme cases:
1. Only one sequence is viable; the probability that a random sequence is viable is (1/20) 100 = 10-130.
2. All 20100 = 10130 sequences are viable; the probability that a random sequence is viable is 1.
In
the first case we have an average viability-probability per amino acid
of 1/20 = 5% and in the second case 1/1 = 100%.
Now let us assume that the viability-probability per amino acid is 25%.
That means that at every position of the chain with 100 members, (because of
mutual constraints only) 5 out of the 20 different amino acids can be used for
a viable sequence to result. In this case, 5100 = 1070
viable sequences exist, and the probability that a random sequence is viable is
(5/20) 100 = 10-60.
The application of a frame shift to these 1070 viable sequences
leads to 1070 random sequences (according to the simplifying
hypotheses mentioned above). Because the probability of a random sequence being
viable is 10-60, we find around 1010 viable sequences
among these frameshifted sequences. Nevertheless, only one out of 1060
viable sequences is able to produce another viable sequence by frameshift.
What happens however, if the viability-probability per amino acid is 20%
instead of 25%, which means that at every position of the chain, 4 out of 20
amino acids are possible, for a viable sequence to result. In this case, 4100
= 1060 viable sequences exist, and the probability that a random
sequence is viable is (4/20) 100 = 10-70.
So the application of a frame shift to the 1060 viable sequences
leads to 1060 random sequences. Yet because the probability of a
random sequence being viable is only 10-70, it is highly improbable
that one single of these frameshifted sequences is viable. Because actual viability-probability
per amino acid seems to be lower than 20%, not even an almighty designer
could create one DNA sequence, coding for two viable (100-amino-acid long)
protein parts in two different reading frames, because such a sequence is
excluded by probability theory.
I'm sure that every unprejudiced person being able to understand the above
reasoning must admit: A biology, where the
whole evolutionary progress is stored in DNA and to a lower extent in other
material structures, is simply impossible from the logical point of view. Whether such a purely materialistic biology has
the form of neo-Darwinism or the form of Intelligent Design does not matter.
Dr Adequate in #126:
Nice made-up numbers, undefined terms, and unsupported assertions. Good use of the complete non sequitur. And the bit at the end when you declare yourself "sure" that every unprejudiced person will agree with you? It's a masterpiece of self-deception.
I may sound arrogant, but I'm sure that no-one on earth knows himself better than I do. Therefore I'm also convinced that there aren't many persons who are as sensitive to self-deception as I am.
Reality Check in #130:
I
have to add my 2 cents worth and agree with the previous posters:
Wolfgang. Please please please learn some basic biology before you make
yourself more ridiculous than you already seem.
Could you explain what you do not understand in my reasoning? And if you understand the reasoning, could you explain why you consider it ridiculous?
- - -
Big-bang neo-Darwinism is rather the contrary of real evolution. Its central principle is not continuous progress but continuous decay. Therefore it is essentially a theory of a one-time creation from Intelligent Design: The universe was created in a state of the highest order (lowest entropy) and with laws so intelligent that even humans can result from random events of blind downhill processes (transforming less probable configurations into more probable configurations, and decreasing the order of the universe as a whole).
Wolfgang in #125:
I'm sure that every unprejudiced person being able to understand the above reasoning must admit: A biology, where the whole evolutionary progress is stored in DNA and to a lower extent in other material structures, is simply impossible from the logical point of view. Whether such a purely materialistic biology has the form of neo-Darwinism or the form of Intelligent Design does not matter.
rocketdodger in #128:
Numerous people here have told you, explicitly, that nobody who knows what they are talking about has made the claim that the whole evolutionary progress is stored anywhere.
You cannot make a logical problem disappear by simply ignoring it. It is impossible to build a tool, a house, a car or something else without corresponding information. The advent of automated machines and computers has shown that even the construction of simple tools needs quite some information.
rocketdodger:
I find it remarkable that someone who claims to know as much as you about biology could be so uneducated in the realm of molecular biology that they think DNA actually stores the information needed to grow and run the human body -- modern science has known, for some time, that it simply helps derive that information when needed.
Compare the bone structure of a human with the bone structure of a chimpanzee. Every single bone has several degrees of freedom. And in order to determine a degree of freedom, information is needed. That is simple logic (see also). Or take the pseudo-thumb of the two panda species, which has emerged during phylogenetic evolution in addition to the five fingers. The information that such a pseudo-thumb appears during ontogenetic development must come from somewhere. Or do you suggest that a panda embryo can scan the body of its mother and use this as information?
rocketdodger:
Does a mass store the information that it should drop when affected by gravity? Does an airfoil store the information that it should lift when propelled through the air? Does wood store the information that it should burn when lit? Of course not. Similarly, DNA does not "store" the information of how any protein should work, or even how proteins should interact with each other -- the laws of nature take care of that automatically once the protein has been assembled.
Where are the degrees of freedom in your examples? Do you suggest that the fact that a HIV protease cleaves viral polyproteins at twelve different sites is similar to the free fall of a stone or to the burning of wood?
"The HIV-1 protease is a small, 99-amino-acid aspartic enzyme that mediates the cleavage of Gag, Gag-Pol, and Nef precursor polyproteins. These reactions occur late in the viral life cycle, during virion assembly and maturation at the cell surface. The process is highly specific, temporally regulated, and essential for the production of infectious viral particles. In total, 12 proteolytic reactions are required to generate a mature infectious virion. Each reaction occurs at a unique cleavage site that differs in amino acid composition." (Source)
A
macromolecule like the HIV protease could also not work at all, or do
uncountable other things instead of cutting amino acid chains. And apart from
cleaving viral amino acid chains in a "highly
specific, temporally regulated" way, it could cut cellular amino
acid chains. And even if something similar to a gravitational force attracts
the HIV protease to HIV amino acid chains, where does the information
concerning the locations of the twelve cleavage sites (with each a different
amino acid composition) come from?
Because the 99 amino acids of the HIV protease are coded by 297 base pairs of
DNA or RNA, and one base pair represents 0.25 byte, genetic information in the
order of 75 byte can be attributed to the HIV protease. Sorry again, but from
the point of view of pure reason, the assumption that this information could
somehow be enough to determine the "highly
specific, temporally regulated" behavior of the HIV protease is
more than grotesque!
The whole HIV-RNA is 9749 nucleotides long and codes for a polypeptide of
around 3250 amino acids (ignoring overlapping and not used regions). So in
principle there may be in the order of 325012 = 1042
different (including chronology) ways to apply twelve cleavages to HIV
polypeptides. (It is obvious that more than one of these ways is viable.)
Think about the information needed for and by a robot capable of recognizing
and cutting the twelve sites of macroscopic models of HIV polyproteins. And
don't forget: the information content of the HIV protease is only in the order
75 byte.
Maybe the following animations can help to recognize that enzymes are in fact
animated beings with inborn instinctive behavior (acquired during biological
evolution, and representing information): HIV Replication 3D Animation and HIV Lifecycle.
Wolfgang in #137:
Think about the information needed for and by a robot capable of recognizing and cutting the twelve sites of macroscopic models of HIV polyproteins. And don't forget: the information content of the HIV protease is only in the order 75 byte.
rocketdodger in #142:
Think about the information needed for and by a robot capable of reconstructing every snowflake shape found on Earth. And don't forget: the information content of the water molecule is in the order of 0 bytes.
Water molecules form snowflakes in a similar way as viral enzymes form viral particles. Thus a correct analogy would be rather:
Think about the information needed for and by a robot capable of taking, together with a huge number of identical robots, such symmetric configurations characteristic of snowflakes.
However, the formation of snow crystals is at least in some respects still a mystery. A quote from The physics of snow crystals, 2005:
"Although it appears to be a relatively simple monomolecular physical system, the growth of snow crystals exhibits a surprisingly rich behavior as a function of temperature, supersaturation and other external parameters. As we will see below, a great deal of this behavior remains unexplained, even at a qualitative level."
This
paper is referenced on the excellent site on snowflakes with many wonderful pictures.
I would say that the existence of snowflakes is evidence not only for a general
tendency of nature toward order and harmony, but also for panpsychism. Because matter
is taken for granted in panpsychism, pandualism is actually a better name for a
world view in which a psychic aspect of nature is omnipresent, starting with
elementary particles.
If we take into account that a typical snow crystal may consist of around 1018
water molecules, then we should not too hastily exclude a pandualist
explanation sketched by these two quotes from the Psychon Theory:
"The
astonishing ability of carbon atoms to build hollow balls (fullerenes), the
ability of water molecules to build elaborate crystals, or the catalytic power
of atoms and simple molecules, all this can be (better) explained if we
attribute to the atoms and molecules primitive perception of their surroundings
and purposeful behaviour. If enzymes are conscious beings, it seems obvious
that also simple molecules and atoms can be conscious beings."
"It seems obvious that the same molecules can be animated by different
psychon types. The environment continuity maintains order. For psychons which
animate matter of such a low complexity level there should be no difference
between inactivity and death. (In the case of humans the connection between
soul and body with its psychons is so complex, that it can be built up only
during ontogenesis)."
Environment
continuity could be the key to "understanding
the dramatic variations seen in snow crystal morphology as a function of
temperature, a mystery that has remained largely unsolved since its discovery
75 years ago."
In order to get a better imagination of what happens during snow crystal
formation, let us increase all spatial proportions by a factor of 109.
Then, a water molecule has a 'diameter' of around 30 cm (around 30 water
molecules per cubic meter), and the diameter of a typical snowflake (around 1
or 2 mm in reality) is as large as 1000 or 2000 km. How could it be possible
that local, more or less random motions of objects with a size of a football
create such incredibly ordered configurations extending over huge distances? See also.
Richard Masters in #139:
Look up gastrulation, cell differentiation and cell migration.
We
agree on facts, and even on this: All happenings in living beings are by
definition biochemical. However, you simply continue to ignore the fact that
cells cannot migrate to specific destinations without specific information. Or
do you claim that during ontogenetic development, biochemical manifestations of
algorithms appear?
The hallmark of true science has always been dealing with concrete
qualitative and quantitative relations in space and time in due consideration
of logical consistency. Simply claiming that an algorithm can create the
necessary amount of information does not help, if absolutely nothing suggests
that something only partially similar to an algorithm is executed during
ontogenesis.
And even more important: Information created by an algorithm lacks degrees
of freedom at the level of the created information. Yet during biological
evolution, every part of an organism (e.g. a not yet existing pseudo-thumb of the panda-predecessors) can
change as a function of necessity or advantage.
In principle it is possible to demonstrate the continuous transition from
e.g. blue whales to humans by a series of pictures of real animals/humans,
all having lived or still living on earth.
In the case of algorithm-created information however, such a continuous
transition is not possible. Take e.g. (the information corresponding to) the
decimal digits created by an algorithm calculating the square root of numbers.
In the case of 2 we get 141421356... and in the case of 3 we get 173205080...,
both representing somehow an infinite amount of information. Nevertheless, it
is impossible to create by such a square-root algorithm sequences intermediate
between these two sequences.
Also in the case of fractals, there is no
continuous transition between e.g. the Mandelbrot set and the Julia set.
Richard Masters in #140:
At least take down the section called: "A final devastating argument against reductionism". Your devastating argument is completely destroyed by a video game. (See previous post.)
Are
you serious? Do you suggest that the complexity of a computer game of 97.28
kilobyte can be compared with the complexity of living systems?
My argument:
"The
information of the genetic code of HIV is less than 2.5 kilobyte.
Computer science has shown how little this is. This genetic information can
never be enough information for a virus to survive.
The part of the human genetic code which is used (about 1 to 10%) can be
compressed (at least) to about 10 or 100 megabyte. In many cases this
information is even used in such an inefficient way that the information which
is used to produce a protein is many times higher than the information which is
stored in the final amino acid sequence of the protein."
The actual content of most counterarguments presented in this discussion by
orthodox skeptics is nothing more than circular reasoning (petitio principii), a
logical fallacy already well-known to Aristotle. In our case the fallacy looks
like this:
All that happens in living beings is by definition biochemical, and biochemistry is by definition explainable by (purely materialist) chemical and physical laws. Thus all facts concerning ontogeny or phylogeny must agree with pure materialism, and every argument suggesting otherwise is necessarily wrong.
A good example of this fallacy has been put forward in post #134:
"Creationists,
in general, attempt to disprove scientific
hypotheses by negation, i.e., such and such cannot be true because the
probability of its occurrence is infinitesimally small.
This sort of reasoning is unscientific, because no matter how small the
probability of some event may be in advance of its happening, if the event
actually occurs, then its probability is instantly raised to Unity
(100%)."
Without
circular reasoning, from the low probabilities of a given explanation one can
only conclude that at least one of the "scientific hypotheses" is
extremely unlikely (and therefore also the explanation as whole) .
In post #125 I
presented a simple logical argument showing that it is extremely improbable
that two different reading frames of one DNA sequence can lead to functional
protein parts.
From the fact that such cases of frameshift actually exist, rocketdodger felt
entitled to claim in #133:
"An intelligent person would expect certain sequences to have a much higher probability of producing something meaningful after a shift than other sequences."
This is similar to:
An intelligent person would expect certain sentences to have a much higher probability of producing something meaningful after the character-transformation a -> b, b -> c, c -> d, z -> a than other sentences.
From
the fact that such frameshift cases have emerged during evolution, one cannot
logically conclude that the currently prevailing theory of evolution is consistent
with such frameshift cases. This conclusion is either the consequence of a confusion
between the fact of evolution and the prevailing theory of evolution or
again a petitio principii.
The pandualist explanation of such frameshift cases is simple:
Psychons, animating single amino acids (and having tendency to form chains in order to better survive), had already existed in huge numbers, when something similar to translation began to spread. Using existing RNA chains as templates, (precursors of) ribosomes chained amino acids, resulting in apriori random amino acid chains. The amino acids of such chains collaborated e.g. in defending themselves from getting destroyed. Their coordinated behavior became more and more specific. By specialization emerged psychons able to dominate such amino acid chains. If a widespread RNA chain was translated according to two different reading frames, two completely different, arbitrary amino acid chains emerged, both however with the potential of further evolution (independently from mutations, which are more problematic in such cases because one mutation affects two proteins in a completely different way).
But I know: Because of our past biological evolution, it is very difficult for us to change fundamental parts of our world views. So most of us simply die with the old beliefs and learn the more adequate new ones in a new life.