RNA Designed to Evolve?

JohnnyB also gives me some hope that IDers, properly exposed to real science, will quickly reject it as scientifically vacuous

Oops, thanks, corrected it.

ok. please delete my previous entry and this one. (and PvM's reply?)

RNA is hardly the only thing to share this trait, we know that with proteins structure space is much smaller than sequence space but in this case it isn't so much how far can we move away from the sequence and maintain the structure (which is quite far actually) but how many unique protein folds are there? And the current estimate is not very many, which is perfectly in line with how we believe proteins involve which is as modular units and possibly through domain building in loop regions.

We can go well down in to the "twilight zone" of protein sequence homology and still identify homology based on structure, which changes at a much slower pace than sequences do.

Reading the rest of the discussion on UD, it seems as if they're inching their way towards the strong anthropic principle.

Perhaps we could categorise all creationist theories along a scale from 0 to 100:

0 - No intentional act of creation, no creator
10 - Creator set in place physical laws for a universe, then stepped back
20 - Creator set in place physical laws designed to permit life, then stepped back
30 - Creator set in place physical laws designed to permit life, then made ongoing adjustments to results until basics of self-replicating life were in place
40 - As 30, except ongoing adjustments continued for elements of complex organisms
50 - As 40, except ongoing adjustments are continuing today
60 - Creator explicitly created complex organisms from nothing
70 - As 60, and 'laws of physics' are not as science thinks of them today
80 - As 70, except creation continues today
90 - All things exist under the direct and immediate control of the creator, nature is unknowable
100 - All things are just figments of the creator's imagination

Sort of a Richter scale for creationism. ID would sit, I think between 30 and 50 - but only because a step back to 20 would leave evolutionary theory entirely untouched and going to 60 would be indistinguishable from classic creationism even to them (although I don't know what in ID prevents wholesale creation a la Genesis). The scale also doesn't differentiate the idea that man was created directly by God, with everything else being as it appears, although it might be somewhere in the high 50s.

But the pressure is certainly on to move ID down the scale to the 20s, where strong anthropic theory lies, because until the ideas of specified complexity (or whatever it's called today) have been shown to have validity there's just no reason for ID to pick its ground any higher, except through belief.

The arguments in that UD discussion seem to implicitly accept that, since some of the participants are now saying "well, even if physical laws allow that [the small space in which RNA variations live] then how likely is THAT to just have happened? Eh? Eh? See! Proof!"

R

Rupert Goodwins,

I like your Richter scale for creationism. I think I want to tweak it though to get in ideas about macro versus micro evolution and such.

I think I'll put something like it on my blog and credit you, if you don't mind.

http://normdoering.blogspot.com

Please do! It's only a crude idea at the moment and needs a lot of modification before exhibiting fitness, if ever. The middle ground needs more resolution, while the stuff at either end takes up forty percent of the space for a minimal amount of utility. As it is, though, I think it can take quite a lot of standard creationist stances (and not just those in the Mosaic religions).

I'd be interested in the reaction of ID supporters to such an idea, too: I don't think it's in any way biased against them.

Rupert

I think I want to tweak it though to get in ideas about macro versus micro evolution and such.

Wouldn't that be in the 40-50 range?

Microevolution is between 40-30.

Uh-Oh, we've got semantic arguments already.

I think what we are accidentally exposing is just how muddled the micro vs macro concept is. I was thinking 40-50 for macroevolution because the creator would hav to step into microevolution world to make it happen. "Let there be new species" and some such. The IDer/creationist mindset may not be expressable in such an ordered way, for perhaps the same reason their thinking went astray in the first place.

MarkP --- Rationality Disorder?

I don't know exactly where the various flavours of speciation/differentiation would fall, but I'm not sure that there's a big enough vocab overlap with the creationists who care about such things to make it useful. Macro would be below 40, I guess. At the other end, there could be a 'creator explicitly created all complex creatures' between 70 and 80.

But yes, this highlights the facts that in evolutionary biology there are ever more subtle ideas of how to differentiate and group, while in ID any attempt to make clear distinctions immediately raises the terrible spectre that some blighter will then try and test for them.

R

Of course, scale free networks have been shown to be able to arise from the simple process of duplication and preferential attachment.

Rupert,

I'm not sure what mechanisms you have in mind in the 30-59 range, but before you get to "from nothing" (60) you should specify:

a. independent abiogenesis of species from existing nonliving matter.

b. "in vivo" origin of new species by non-evolutionary mechanisms.

IOW, "a" denies common descent, but "b" doesn't. That's the part IDers especially want to avoid, because they know that the classic creationist explanations are nonsense, but they can't admit it for political reasons. Dembski did admit, however, that the "from nothing" is nonsense. Heck, even classic creationists say "dust" (though one wonders where the water came from).

Nevertheless, because of its "don't ask, don't tell" policy, ID attempts to accommodate anything >0.

Common descent's a good 'un, and I've never fully understood ID's stance on this - well, that's a bit of a fib. I've never fully understood ID's _stated_ stance on this, or even if there is one. I know where they're coming from.

Evolutionary biology is clear. All species we know are believed to come from a common ancestor. If a completely different sort of life were discovered in some long-isolated niche, that wouldn't damage evolutionary thought in the slightest (in fact, it's a discovery devoutly to be wished: the new perspectives would be incredibly valuable). If cats and dogs were shown to have no common ancestor, then evolution would need to be massively rethought.

Above 60, common descent is fairly meaningless. If you have a creator making complex creatures through individual, single acts of creation, and if there's no way of telling created creatures from evolved creatures, then you cannot use any of the scientific evidence for common ancestry. Godidit. That sort of thinking is used by believers in von Daniken who, having watched Randi replicate the spoon-bending, say "Ah, but you can't prove that von Daniken did it that way. He could still be using psychic powers".

What would be genuinely interesting would be to write an online questionnaire to find out where IDers sit on all these issues, and then map the spread of results.

R

Common descent's a good 'un, and I've never fully understood ID's stance on this - well, that's a bit of a fib. I've never fully understood ID's _stated_ stance on this, or even if there is one. I know where they're coming from.

— rupert goodwins

What would be genuinely interesting would be to write an online questionnaire to find out where IDers sit on all these issues, and then map the spread of results.

— Rupert Goodwins

Rupert said: Above 60, common descent is fairly meaningless. If you have a creator making complex creatures through individual, single acts of creation, and if there's no way of telling created creatures from evolved creatures, then you cannot use any of the scientific evidence for common ancestry. Godidit. That sort of thinking is used by believers in von Daniken who, having watched Randi replicate the spoon-bending, say "Ah, but you can't prove that von Daniken did it that way. He could still be using psychic powers".

Evolutionary biology is clear. All species we know are believed to come from a common ancestor. If a completely different sort of life were discovered in some long-isolated niche, that wouldn't damage evolutionary thought in the slightest (in fact, it's a discovery devoutly to be wished: the new perspectives would be incredibly valuable). If cats and dogs were shown to have no common ancestor, then evolution would need to be massively rethought. Above 60, common descent is fairly meaningless. If you have a creator making complex creatures through individual, single acts of creation, and if there's no way of telling created creatures from evolved creatures, then you cannot use any of the scientific evidence for common ancestry. Godidit. That sort of thinking is used by believers in von Daniken who, having watched Randi replicate the spoon-bending, say "Ah, but you can't prove that von Daniken did it that way. He could still be using psychic powers".

Sort of a Richter scale for creationism.

Von Daniken had the planets almost colliding with the earth, IIRC.

That was Velikovsky. Von Daniken was the "We were visited by (comparatively) god-like aliens in the distant past, as you can see by this aztec drawing of a spaceship" guy. I had a comic-book based on his sterling research as a child - which was great, but didn't answer that most important of questions - Astronaut vs Caveman, who would win?

Mr. Goodwins,

How about adding some kind of scoring for each entry say, according to testability \ measurability?

Related to this, I'd like to see someone set a potted plant down in front of Dembski and ask him to calculate its CSI.
Gee (LOL) what do you think would happen?

Testing.

No, FTK, you're still not banned or censored here. For banning and censoring, try uncommon descent, or maybe your blog.

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