The Co-evolutionary Paradox
All the hoopla over intelligent design has created the widespread false impression that it is the only actual or possible scientific (or pseudoscientific, to some) criticism of evolution theory -- there are others. For example, criticism can be based on co-evolution, but this criticism has hardly been touched upon.
One of the main arguments used against irreducible complexity -- the main scientific concept of ID -- is "exaptation," the idea that parts of an irreducibly complex system had other functions before becoming part of the system, e.g., jawbones supposedly evolved into middle-ear bones. However, "exaptation" does not change the fact that all the parts of the system must simultaneously come together in their final forms to create the irreducible system, and that is unlikely. Also, parts that previously had essential functions would not be available to help create the irreducible system unless duplicates or modified duplicates could be created. Nonetheless, despite these problems, opponents of ID claim that ID has been completely refuted by the principle of exaptation and for other reasons. However, the following arguments against natural co-evolution may be harder to counter than ID.
Co-evolution is defined as the mutual evolutionary influence of two kinds of organisms -- e.g., bees and flowering plants -- that become dependent on each other. The big problem with co-evolution is that often there is nothing to adapt to because the corresponding feature is likely to be initially absent in the other organism. In contrast, the fixed physical features of the environment — e.g., water, land, air, and climate -- are always there to offer an immediate advantage to individual organisms that adapt to them.Suppose that a bee and a flowering plant just by some great coincidence happen to have mutations creating corresponding features that would give a mutual advantage in co-evolution. But if the bee and the flowering plant are separated by many miles and/or many years in time, as is likely, the mutations would do neither of them any good because the bee and the flower would never meet, and the mutations might actually be detrimental to the bee and/or the flower. Actually, what would be necessary is that large numbers of the bees and flowers possessing the corresponding beneficial mutations would miraculously have to simultaneously appear in the same place, because a single bee visits many flowers, and each flower is visited by many bees.
One kind of pollination by insects is so specialized that the resonant vibration of the insect's wingbeating shakes loose the pollen -- this is called "sonication pollination" or "buzz pollination." See -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_pollination
Some other examples of extremely specialized mutual dependence (this mutual dependence is called "mutualism") are in http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/0305/0305_feature.html
-- and --
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio303/coevolution.htm
One of the main arguments used against irreducible complexity -- the main scientific concept of ID -- is "exaptation," the idea that parts of an irreducibly complex system had other functions before becoming part of the system, e.g., jawbones supposedly evolved into middle-ear bones. However, "exaptation" does not change the fact that all the parts of the system must simultaneously come together in their final forms to create the irreducible system, and that is unlikely. Also, parts that previously had essential functions would not be available to help create the irreducible system unless duplicates or modified duplicates could be created. Nonetheless, despite these problems, opponents of ID claim that ID has been completely refuted by the principle of exaptation and for other reasons. However, the following arguments against natural co-evolution may be harder to counter than ID.
Co-evolution is defined as the mutual evolutionary influence of two kinds of organisms -- e.g., bees and flowering plants -- that become dependent on each other. The big problem with co-evolution is that often there is nothing to adapt to because the corresponding feature is likely to be initially absent in the other organism. In contrast, the fixed physical features of the environment — e.g., water, land, air, and climate -- are always there to offer an immediate advantage to individual organisms that adapt to them.Suppose that a bee and a flowering plant just by some great coincidence happen to have mutations creating corresponding features that would give a mutual advantage in co-evolution. But if the bee and the flowering plant are separated by many miles and/or many years in time, as is likely, the mutations would do neither of them any good because the bee and the flower would never meet, and the mutations might actually be detrimental to the bee and/or the flower. Actually, what would be necessary is that large numbers of the bees and flowers possessing the corresponding beneficial mutations would miraculously have to simultaneously appear in the same place, because a single bee visits many flowers, and each flower is visited by many bees.
One kind of pollination by insects is so specialized that the resonant vibration of the insect's wingbeating shakes loose the pollen -- this is called "sonication pollination" or "buzz pollination." See -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_pollination
Some other examples of extremely specialized mutual dependence (this mutual dependence is called "mutualism") are in http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/0305/0305_feature.html
-- and --
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio303/coevolution.htm
Labels: Non-ID criticisms of evolution
posted by Larry Fafarman | 4/15/2006 10:04:00 PM
87 Comments:
But if the bee and the flowering plant are separated by many miles and/or many years in time, as is likely, the mutations would do neither of them any good because the bee and the flower would never meet,
why is this likely?
BWE wrote --
>>>why is this likely?<<<
Because the mutations are random and rare, they are not likely to occur in the same place at the same time.
But it wouldn't take much of a mutation and not only that, species exploit the same niches in different ways so proximity would be easy. Pollen didn't need bees. Pollen works with wind for closely packed members of a community. (Would that explain third world birth rates?) And if an insect evolved to eat some particularly sugary part of a plant and just happened to carry it's pollen a little farther,... well? Do you see an advantage? Once there is an advantage, specialization develops. That's kind of the way niches work. Exploiting them I mean. Economics works the same way. No?
BWE wrote ( April 21, 2006 4:58:48 PM ) --
>>>But it wouldn't take much of a mutation and not only that, species exploit the same niches in different ways so proximity would be easy. Pollen didn't need bees. Pollen works with wind for closely packed members of a community.<<<
Pollens tend to be specialized according to how they are typically transferred. Wikipedia says, "This transfer can be mediated by the wind, in which case the plant is described as anemophilous (literally wind-loving). Anemophilous plants typically produce great quantities of very lightweight pollen grains, often with air-sacs, and generally have inconspicuous flowers. Entomophilous (literally insect-loving) plants produce pollen that is relatively heavy, sticky and protein-rich, for dispersal by insect pollinators attracted to their flowers." -- from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollen
(Besides pollination by wind and insects, pollination also occurs by water and other kinds of animals, e.g., birds and bats, and some plants are self-pollinating).
Though pollen that is normally wind-carried conceivably could also be carried by insects or other animals, some co-dependent features of organisms are simply so specialized that they have no conceivable use or function outside the co-dependent relationship. Examples are (1) buzz pollination, discussed in the first of my references in the opening post, and (2) the meganosed fly and the flowers it feeds on, described in the second of my references in the opening post. My third reference has a very interesting example of a relationship between two different kinds of organisms --
"The reward offered is not always food. There is a tropical orchid with flowers that look and smell like females of a certain species of wasp. Males of this species emerge a week before the females. A male who smells a flower of this orchid, think it’s a female wasp, gets closer and the flower looks like a female, lands on it and it feels like a female, tries to copulate, gives up in frustration, and goes on to the next thing that smells like a female, and ends up transferring pollen."
One of the distinctive things about this relationship is that it benefits only the flowering plant and not the insect. This relationship is not really "co-dependence," i.e., "mutualism," but is more like "commensalism" if the delayed emergence of the females is of no real harm to the wasp species, or even a strange sort of "parasitism" if the delayed emergence of the females is harmful to the wasp species. So the wasp has "evolved" a feature -- the delayed emergence of the females -- that is of no benefit and possible harm to the wasp but is of benefit to the flowers (presumably, horny male wasps would be having less "sex" with the flowers if real female wasps were around). For a discussion of different relationships between different kinds of organisms, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiosis This article is specifically about symbiosis, where the two organisms live intimately, but some of the concepts also apply where the organisms mostly live separately.
Basically, evolution is adaptation to the environment. Constant and widespread physical environmental features such as water, air, land, and climate are always available for organisms to adapt to. However, in co-evolution, other kinds of organisms becomes part of the "environment" that is to be adapted to. But as I pointed out in my opening post, the problem here is that often there is nothing to adapt to because the corresponding feature is likely to be initially absent in the other organism (in fact, if the corresponding feature is not initially absent, then the adaptation is not really co-evolutionary, as I discuss below). So it really doesn't matter if only a "little" mutation is required, because there is nothing to adapt to. Where both of the corresponding co-dependent features are detrimental to the organisms in the absence of the corresponding feature in the other organism, co-evolution is virtually impossible. Even when neither feature would be harmful in the absence of the corresponding feature, co-evolution would be very difficult because neither feature would offer any advantage in natural selection when the corresponding feature is absent. The adaptation would be straightforward when one of the organisms adapts to a pre-existing feature of the other organism, but that would not really be "co-evolution," which is defined as mutual evolutionary influence between two different kinds of organisms.
So, it seems that the essential point here is somewhat similar to that of "irreducible complexity" in that the presumption is the complementary adaptations comprise a system that requires each component in order for there to be any benefit. Additionally, the combined liklihood of each component appearing spontaneously in such a way that they may work together is so extremely unlikely that it may safely be pronounced next to impossible. Is that the general idea?
Anonymous said (April 22, 2006 10:03:49 AM )
>>>>>>>>
So, it seems that the essential point here is somewhat similar to that of "irreducible complexity" in that the presumption is the complementary adaptations comprise a system that requires each component in order for there to be any benefit. Additionally, the combined liklihood of each component appearing spontaneously in such a way that they may work together is so extremely unlikely that it may safely be pronounced next to impossible. Is that the general idea?
>>>>>>>>
I have thought of co-dependence (mutualism) as being a sort of "irreducible complexity" involving two kinds of organisms, but there are differences. One difference is that the mutations required in each organism may just be mutations creating single simple features rather than mutations creating whole irreducibly complex features consisting of many parts. Another difference is that since the co-dependent organisms may interact in large numbers (e.g., a single bee visits many flowers and a single flower is visited by many bees), it may be necessary for large numbers of both kinds of the co-adapted mutant organisms to appear simultaneously at the same place.
Another difference is that my arguments against co-evolution are not subject to attack by the "exaptation" argument, which I defined in the original post. Because a co-evolutionary mutation may involve just a single simple feature, it does not matter whether that feature existed and had a different purpose prior to the mutation.
Also, in the case of co-evolutionary mutations, there is no benefit in natural selection if the corresponding feature is absent in the other organism. However, in the case of the sudden appearance of an irreducibly complex system such as functional flying wings on a terrestrial dinosaur, there is an immediate benefit in natural selection.
Also, in the example of the wasps having "sex" with the flowers (see comment of April 22, 2006 1:39:37 AM), this relationship was of no benefit to the wasps, yet involved a special adaptation of the wasps, the delayed emergence of the females (this relationship is not real "co-dependence" -- it is one-sided dependence).
Some kinds of co-dependence may involve whole irreducibly complex sets of corresponding features -- e.g., a bee not only needs the ability to consume nectar and pollen but also needs the ability to find the flowers. This kind of irreducible complexity would make co-evolution even more difficult. However, some kinds of co-evolution can be incremental -- for example, bees could first develop the ability to see the flowers and then develop the ability to smell them.
( By the way, you are certainly welcome to remain anonymous, but if you cannot get the commenter identifier heading to work, you might consider signing your comments with your posting name. Also, the first post in this blog has been reserved for testing your posts, in case you want to make test posts to try to get the identifier heading to work )
I am a new reader of your blog and am very happy to have found it. Thanks.
(Referred by Uncommon Descent.)
There was a recent episode of Nature on PBS named "The Queen of Trees" which describe the amazing co-dependent relationship beween a fig tree and a wasp: "Without the wasp, the tree could not pollinate its flowers and produce seeds. Without the fig, the wasp would have nowhere to lay its eggs."
Notice that is is more than just pollination: the wasp actually lays its eggs in a hollow inside a fig at a very precise moment in the fig's development. Too soon and the tiny opening whereby the wasp wiggles its way inside does not exist. Too late and fig closes it up again.
Remarkable!
Endoplasmic Messenger wrote ( April 22, 2006 7:14:39 PM ) --
>>>There was a recent episode of Nature on PBS named "The Queen of Trees" which describe the amazing co-dependent relationship beween a fig tree and a wasp: .............. remarkable!<<<
Yes, and the three articles linked at the bottom of my opening post describe some other amazing examples of highly-specialized co-dependent relationships (mutualism). Some other interesting examples are shown here .
Many of the co-dependent features are so highly specialized that they have no conceivable functions outside of the co-dependent relationships. So "exaptation," where a feature that serves one function converts to serving another function, could not create these co-dependent features. Also, even if exaptation or some other mutation could create these features, there would likely be nothing to adapt to because the corresponding feature in the other kind of organism is likely to be initially absent. Furthermore, some of the co-dependent features may be irreducibly complex by themselves. So improbabilities are compounded by improbabilities.
The Wikipedia article on co-evolution says, "Few perfectly isolated examples of evolution can be identified: essentially all evolution is co-evolution." That may be something of an exaggeration, but the co-dependence of different kinds of organisms is far more important than many people realize. For example, some beekeepers offer agricultural pollination services by trucking beehives around the country -- the Wikipedia article on pollination says, " The largest managed pollination event in the world is in Californian almond orchards, where nearly half (about one million hives) of the US honeybees are trucked to the almond orchards each spring. "
=====================================================
Glenn J wrote --
>>>I am a new reader of your blog and am very happy to have found it. Thanks. <<<
Wow -- compliments, compliments ! Thanx.
Actually, I started this blog almost by accident. I was commenting on another blog on a comment thread that had my name and that was devoted to attacking one of my ideas, and then the blog owner started blocking my comments and I said that was unfair because the thread was about me in particular and I did not have a blog of my own for responding. He then suggested that I get a blog of my own under this free blog service ( www.blogger.com ). I have since found that a personal blog has a lot of advantages other than just the avoidance of censorship, and I recommend that other people think about starting their own blogs.
If you want a whole new interpretation of co-evolution I recommend you read my paper:
"Ontogeny, Phylogeny and the Origin of Biological Information" Rivista di Biologia 93: 513-524, 2000.
That is one of the several of my papers that DaveScot purged from the side board at Uncommon Descent. I am still waiting for him to restore them. Fat chance eh Dave? Let's hear the reasons for purging them and then of course the reasons you refuse to restore them. This is the place to do it where anything goes. Don't be shy. Speak up. Tell us the real reasons. If you don't I will just have to remind the world that you are a cowardly dastardly blowhard. Surely the great Spravid Dinger, blogczar extraordinaire at the great Uncommon Descent forum of Dilliam Wembski wouldn't want that to happen. Maybe he would. We will soon see.
I love it so!
Hi Larry! This is incredibly poor anti-evolutionary reasoning, even by your lax standards. First, you seem to miss the point that co-evolution is the rule, not the exception. IOW, to a first approximation, ALL evolution is co-evolution. You say:
In contrast, the fixed physical features of the environment — e.g., water, land, air, and climate -- are always there to offer an immediate advantage to individual organisms that adapt to them.
This misses the point that the relationships of almost all organisms to these environmental constants are mediated by other organisms in a complex web of co-evolutionary interactions called an ecosystem.
Co-evolution and mutualism are quite good evidence for natural selection. These types of relationships have been directly observed at various levels of specialization. Really, why do you waste your time blogging claims that are already on TO's Index?
I refer you to http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB630 See the references at the bottom? Why don't you try actually reading something rather than advertising on the web how proud you are of your ignorance?
John:
Quit yer bellyachin'. Yeah, yeah, I read your ontogeny paper. What do I think of it? I think my MOTHER could write a better paper, and she's DEAD! It's MY blog, so knock it off before I take the next flight up from the Great State of Texas, fly up to your pussyass LIBERAL state of VERMONT, and deliver you a PERSONAL asskicking AT YOUR DOOR. Capisce?
I love your mother so!
Spravid Dinger
I just disposed of you at the Censorship thread. Read it and weep. Please do come up to Vermont and just barge right in at L4 Grandview Drive, South Burlington Vt 05403, where you will be greeted with a load of buckshot from my trusty double barreled Lefevre twelve guage. You see it is perfectly acceptable to kill a man who breaks and enters another persons home in Vermont. By the way, just because I live in the most liberal state in the union does not mean I am a flaming pinko you degenerate Nazi bully. Kiss my ass to a purple blister. Then do the world a favor and do yourself in before you end up in a rubber room. I forgot. You are too cowardly to commit suicide so just wait till your family puts you away. They can you know.
I love it so!
So,... Mr. JAD,
I take you don't really like dave much? Why don't you start a competing blog? Dave is an idiot and Dembski can only convert baptist to baptism. Start it up elsewhere. Give Larry material to publish. Short, to the point posts. Lots of people moving this way anyway. The crazy debate suits the topic. I appreciate it.
Also, Larry, you need some new posts.
BWE wrote --
>>>Also, Larry, you need some new posts.<<<
I have some ideas for new posts, but I already have my hands full -- and then some -- in trying to keep up in responding to comments on posts that I have already created. I have to write a lot of the responses myself. I want to wait for things to simmer down a little before I create new posts.
bwe
I have a blog -
newprescribedevolution.blogspot.com
Drop in, post something and see whether I feel it is worth anything or not. Whatever you do, don't use your right name. I don't have a lot of respect for anonymous posters and so I especially relish deleting them. Most of them are just plain nasty. DaveScot is a good example. Of course you might be an exception. Don't misunderstan me. If you are really gross I wouldn't delete you for the world. I certainly never deleted Dinger and I never will.
You are right. I don't have a lot of respect for Dinger. I have about the same amount of respect for him as for another Nazi, Der Fuhrer Herr Dotor Professor Esley Welsberry (pronounced Velsberry). They are both intolerant, insecure, unpublished bigots, living in fantasy worlds of their own creation sort of like Dichard Rawkins don't you know.
I love it so
CJ O'Brien wrote ( Sunday, April 23, 2006 4:37:08 PM ) --
>>>you seem to miss the point that co-evolution is the rule, not the exception.<<<
I did not miss the point entirely. In my comment of Sunday, April 23, 2006 6:08:03 AM, I noted that the online encyclopedia Wikipedia said, "Few perfectly isolated examples of evolution can be identified: essentially all evolution is co-evolution," but I added, "that may be something of an exaggeration." On second thought, I think that it is an exaggeration. There are major alleged evolutionary adaptations -- e.g., wings on flying creatures and legs on terrestrial creatures -- that primarily are not co-evolutionary adaptations but are adaptations to the widespread fixed physical features of the environment.
>>>"In contrast, the fixed physical features of the environment — e.g., water, land, air, and climate -- are always there to offer an immediate advantage to individual organisms that adapt to them."
This misses the point that the relationships of almost all organisms to these environmental constants are mediated by other organisms in a complex web of co-evolutionary interactions called an ecosystem.<<<
Your statement is just a vague high-falutin generalization -- I am talking about specifics. I think that you have missed my point that "the big problem with co-evolution is that often there is nothing to adapt to because the corresponding feature is likely to be initially absent in the other organism."
>>>I refer you to http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB630 See the references at the bottom?<<<
Your URL link address is incomplete -- the complete address is --
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB630.html I have seen this article before. This article says,
" Obligate mutualism can evolve gradually from nonobligate associations. For example, a yucca can be pollinated by many insects and gradually specialize to attract just one moth, and a moth may live off many species of yucca and gradually specialize on just one. In fact, some yucca species are still pollinated by more than one moth, and the yucca moth Tegeticula yuccasella pollinates several species of yucca. "
For one thing, the above statement assumes that a co-dependence already exists -- the pollination of yuccas by many insects -- and that this co-dependence just becomes more specialized. Also, co-evolution of a more specialized co-dependence would face the same problem as co-evolution of the basic co-dependence, and that problem is that it is likely that there is no existing corresponding feature to adapt to.
As for the references at the bottom of that Talkorigins webpage, I do not have ready access to these references, and there is no guarantee that these references address the issues that I raised here. And if in fact these references do address the issues that I raised here, then these references might reach the same conclusion that I did -- that co-evolution by natural means is almost impossible.
Despite the importance of co-evolution and despite the fact that the Talkorigins website lists several hundred "creationist claims" ( http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html ), this short article is all that Talkorigins has to say about co-evolution as an issue in the evolution controversy.
My 2000 paper in Rivista, "Ontogeny, Phylogeny and the Origin of Biological Information." which Dinger has just disparaged is mandatory reading in preparation for my 2005 paper."A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypopthesis," in the same journal. It is one of my most significant papers which is precisely why Dinger has to treat it with his inimitable personal and transparently rabid contempt. The man abhors excellence wherever he finds it.
"Prescribed," "natural born," homozygous sociopaths are like that don't you know.
I love it so!
I want to apologize to everyone for writing what's quoted below. I'm a monumental dumbass fuckstick with a big mouth and a kneejerk response that belongs in the Guiness Book of World Records. Through sheer ignorance I had no idea that anyone can use DaveScot's name or even my fucking name. Maybe I'll get the message when I read this. Then again, maybe I'm just too fucking stupid to ever get it.
I just disposed of you at the Censorship thread. Read it and weep. Please do come up to Vermont and just barge right in at L4 Grandview Drive, South Burlington Vt 05403, where you will be greeted with a load of buckshot from my trusty double barreled Lefevre twelve guage. You see it is perfectly acceptable to kill a man who breaks and enters another persons home in Vermont. By the way, just because I live in the most liberal state in the union does not mean I am a flaming pinko you degenerate Nazi bully. Kiss my ass to a purple blister. Then do the world a favor and do yourself in before you end up in a rubber room. I forgot. You are too cowardly to commit suicide so just wait till your family puts you away. They can you know.
I can't prove who used my name to post that tirade about me but it sure does look like the work (and language) of Spravid Dinger. the biggest bully in cyberspace.
I love it so!
He forgot that.
I added, "that may be something of an exaggeration." On second thought, I think that it is an exaggeration. There are major alleged evolutionary adaptations -- e.g., wings on flying creatures and legs on terrestrial creatures -- that primarily are not co-evolutionary adaptations but are adaptations to the widespread fixed physical features of the environment.
Those fixed features certainly constrain the adaptations that will be possible, given the co-evolutionary factors that are going to be the driver of selection. Think about it, there's no intrinsic adaptive advantage to flying, or to living on land, except in the presence of other organisms. The crux of the problem is you want to pick one, isolated example of mutualism and show the unlikelihood of that exact relationship, as if it were pre-specified. You go on:
Your statement is just a vague high-falutin generalization -- I am talking about specifics. I think that you have missed my point that "the big problem with co-evolution is that often there is nothing to adapt to because the corresponding feature is likely to be initially absent in the other organism."
But some features are always present. And that's all it takes to 'get the ball rolling' toward a highly specific mutualism. You say you want to get specific. Fine. Let's do. In all cases, evolutionary reasoning will supply a much better explanation for the relationship than design.
Specificity is the stumbling block. Once you get past the notion that anything or anyone was trying to arrive at a given, exact state of co-evolved traits, it becomes clear that such relationships are predicted by natural selection.
You say:
And if in fact these references do address the issues that I raised here, then these references might reach the same conclusion that I did -- that co-evolution by natural means is almost impossible.
A few points. Your local public library almost certainly has a copy of Climbing Mount Improbrable. Lack of availability is a lame excuse for failure to read. Plenty of specifics there, and it certainly does not reach your conclusion. Quite the opposite. Co-evolution by natural means is, in fact, inevitable. Creating and maintaining a specific co-evolutionary relationship by artificial means is what's 'almost impossible.'
And that's why I think you're wasting your time. It's a claim that's been thouroughly analyzed, and found to be clear support for natural selection, and clear evidence against design.
Repeating it doesn't change anything.
Please do come up to Vermont and just barge right in at L4 Grandview Drive, South Burlington Vt 05403, where you will be greeted with a load of buckshot from my trusty double barreled Lefevre twelve guage. You see it is perfectly acceptable to kill a man who breaks and enters another persons home in Vermont.
Wiggum: Now sideshow bob cant get in without me knowing. And once a man is in your home, anything you do to him is nice and legal.
Homer: Is that so?
Oh Flanders, won't you join me in my kitchen?
Wiggum: Uh, it doesn't work if you invite them in.
Ned: Hidely Hey!
Homer: Go home.
Ned: Toodly Doo!
CJ O'Brien wrote ( Monday, April 24, 2006 12:13:46 PM ) --
>>>>>>
"There are major alleged evolutionary adaptations -- e.g., wings on flying creatures and legs on terrestrial creatures -- that primarily are not co-evolutionary adaptations but are adaptations to the widespread fixed physical features of the environment."
Those fixed features certainly constrain the adaptations that will be possible, given the co-evolutionary factors that are going to be the driver of selection. Think about it, there's no intrinsic adaptive advantage to flying, or to living on land, except in the presence of other organisms.
>>>>>>
Adaptation to widespread physical features of the environment -- e.g., developing wings to fly -- are not examples of co-evolution because co-evolution is by definition the mutual evolutionary influence that two different kinds of organisms have on each other. For example, developing the ability to fly neither necessarily requires nor necessarily causes evolutionary responses in other kinds of organisms.
>>>I think that you have missed my point that "the big problem with co-evolution is that often there is nothing to adapt to because the corresponding feature is likely to be initially absent in the other organism."
But some features are always present.<<<
Not necessarily. Many of the co-dependent features are so specialized that they have no conceivable function outside of the co-dependent relationship, so there would be no reason for an organism to evolve those features independently. And co-evolution of improvements to an existing co-dependent relationship faces the same problems as originating a co-dependent relationship -- these problems are described in my opening post.
What would truly make co-evolution difficult or even impossible is where one or both of corresponding co-dependent features are deleterious in the absence of the corresponding feature of the other organism. For example, pollen tends to be specialized for either transfer by wind or transfer by animals, but it is possible in some cases that the pollen could be transferred by both. However, in buzz pollination, the pollen adheres so strongly to the plant that insects' wing vibrations are necessary to dislodge it, so this adherence is a feature of the pollen that would be deleterious in the absence of the ability of insects to loosen the pollen by vibration. It would be an interesting study to try to find cases where the corresponding features are deleterious to both organisms when the corresponding feature is absent.
>>>"And if in fact these references do address the issues that I raised here, then these references might reach the same conclusion that I did -- that co-evolution by natural means is almost impossible."
A few points. Your local public library almost certainly has a copy of Climbing Mount Improbrable. Lack of availability is a lame excuse for failure to read.<<<
You have provided no evidence that these references address the issues I have raised here, so I am not going to become involved in what could turn out to be a wild goose chase.
>>>And that's why I think you're wasting your time. It's a claim that's been thouroughly analyzed, and found to be clear support for natural selection, and clear evidence against design.<<<
I am not talking just about design here -- co-evolution could involve just simple features that are not irreducibly complex. But often the features or combinations of features in co-evolution are irreducibly complex, and in these cases the problems of co-evolution are compounded by the problems of irreducible complexity.
And I am not convinced that my challenges to co-evolution have been thoroughly analyzed.
I have seen no references on the Internet -- including Talkorigins -- that address my challenges.
Natursl selection was always what it still is, anti-evolutionary and entirely conservative in nature. The only thing it was ever good for was to ensure ultimate extinction, something that is rampant today because many species are quite unable to make the necessary adaptive changes that are necessary to survive in an environment so drastically altered by man. Natural selection just won't permit it just as it never even permitted speciation. The entire Darwinian fairy tale is a monumental joke. The orgin of not a single species on this planet ever resulted from allelic mutations or the natural selection for or against them. Just like ontogeny, phylogeny too (past tense) was entirely driven from within exactly as postulated by the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis. Got that? Write that down.
I love it so!
I love it so!
Larry, are you going to ban people, like Dave Tard does, for admitting they think the intelligent designer is God? Are you prejudiced against Christians like the folks at uncommon descent?
JAD,
Could you describe how prescribed evolution works during speciation?
Oh and you wrote your signature twice in your last post. ;-)
jeannot
First you have to understand that true speciation and the formation of any of the higher taxonomic categories is no longer going on. If you are unable to accept that anything I now further say will mean nothing to you or any other Darwinian.
Since contemporary forms are incapable of creative evolution, the mechanism for such evolution must have been different from what is the mode today. That is what led me to the Semi-meiotic Hypothesis which was first published in 1984. The first meiotic division is capable of producing, from a female heterozygous for a chromsome pair one of which has undergone an inversion, both a new chromosome structural pair and the original wild-type pair in equal frequency. This system can in principle produce a new discrete species in a single step at the same time that it preserves the ancestor. Such a mechanism is in full accord with what we know from the fossil record where all real evolution has proceeded saltationally without gradual intermediates. For the details I refer you to the original 1984 paper and several of my later papers especially my unpublished Evolutionary Manifesto. Once produced such a female can reproduce with the original male species to produce both the old and new species in equal frequency once the homozygotes are produced, in the F2. From that point forward Mendelian mechanism prevailed until the next evolutionary saltation took place. The establishment of a new chromosome homozygote has always been the problem as Goldschmidt was acutely aware. The Semi-meiotic Hyopothesis provides the answer. It is unfortunate that it never occurred to him. He was a great geneticist only to be vilified by his peers for criticizing the Darwinian fairy tale.
All these several publications were summarily purged from the Uncommon Descent side board in a fit of purely puerile personal pique (try saying that fast) by its self-proclaimed iron-fisted blogczar, one Spravid Dinger.
Why don't you ask him why he did it. I know why he did it. You see I questioned the wisdom of the Idists presenting Intelligent Design for debate. That is all it took and Wembski lowered the boom on me for the second time incidentally. Dinger, his faithful chihuahua (they too really are nasty little curs) proudly took the credit but refuses to say why. The reason he refuses to say why is because it was a contrived dastardly act done vindictively against me because I had made the terrible error of crticizing him also for interjecting his high-handed pronouncements in the very middle of comments by those posting at UD. That is just like being heckled in the middle of a lecture and I said so. The man is nothing but a bully or he would restore my several publications so they could be available for appraisal by an objective audience. After all, he is the one that placed them there on the side board in the first place. The history of this whole episode reveals both Wembski and Dinger as a pair of lightweight, frightfully insecure, egomaniacal blowhards. The internet is crawling with them on both sides of the evolutionary fence.
In any event my papers can be found elsewhere on the internet anyway in particular at ISCID's "brainstorms" forum, my home page and of course in any decent library. I am currently posting at "brainstorms" without all the vitriol that greets me here and elsewhere on the internet. At least I haven't been banned here thanks to Larry's tolerant policy and I appreciate that. That is more than I can say for EvC, ARN, Panda's Thumb, Uncommon Descent, FringeSciences etc. etc.
Thanks for asking. I hope I have partially answered your question.
I love it so!
"Men believe most what they least understand."
Montaigne
Thanks for the reply, Mr Davison.
The process you describe with chromosomal re-arrangement seems to correspond to 'stasipatric' speciation, which may occure in nature but has not been thoroughly confirmed yet (it's not equivalent to speciation by polyploidy which occures frequently in plants).
I know you're not inclined to, but I you should really check 'speciation' by Coyne & Orr, where chromosomal speciation is discussed : probability of occurence under several conditions (drift, selection, population size...), the way to detect it, and so on.
Anyway, stasipatric speciation is one mode of speciation among others. It cannot account for the origin of every species, since lots of sisters species don't differ in their caryotypes. There is a huge amount of evidence for non-chromosomal speciation modes.
I'm a little hesitant to devote energy to a meaningful discussion here, where it is likely to be drowned out by JADspew, but I will give it one more try.
Rather than trying to convince Larry that evolution must have been the cause of these relationships, I'd like to explore the daunting challenge posed by these questions to creationist accounts.
Here's where we find ourselves in the discussion: We have all of these seemingly fine-tuned co-evolutionary relationships: flowers and bees, predators and prey, parasites and hosts. And I think we can agree that all of the organisms concerned are engaged in "the struggle for existence," whereby reproductive advantage gained leads to disproportionate representation in succeeding generations of the genes for the trait(s) that conferred the advantage. In short, we can accept the logic of 'microevolution' if that's what we're calling it. Larry has also pointed out that the traits involved are often mal-adaptive in the hypothetical situation that the 'partner' in the co-evolved relationship no longer exists. In short, these are to some degree antagonistic relationships between organiisms looking out for their own reproductive advantage at the expense of the other's. But Larry wants us to marvel at how specific they are: buzz polination and the like.
As I see it, as a creationist (or designist or however you would have it) you have a few choices:
What, exactly, was designed? Everything? or just some things, e.g. IC structures?
So, following the above logic about reproductive advantage (all creatures 'seek' it) and microevolution (the logic of which is impeccable), creationists are caught on a fork. If everything was designed, you're pretty much locked into a young-earth position, because over time, microevolution is going to throw a wrench in these very specific relationships, changing them into different ones that were, in fact, not designed, obviously contradicting the 'everything is designed' position.
If only certain among these relationships were designed, but others are the product of minor variations (which inevitably occur given the competition for reproductive advantage), then you can accept an old earth (deep time), but you're left with the problem of determining when the chain of reproduction was broken, in certain lineages, in order to 'prop up' these otherwise improbably specialized features. In this case, it seems to me, you're either with the theistic evolutionists (it 'just happened' but it was God's plan all along), or you're denying that even microevolution happens.
So forget whether these relationships evolved. Try to see that they could not possibly have been designed, unless there has not been enough time for variation based on differential reproductive advantage to occur, i.e. YEC. In that case, we can forget the argument altogether and talk about how every single relevant shred of evidence contradicts a young earth.
Pick your poison, Larry.
Mr JAD,
I wasn't accurate: stasipatric speciation is (almost) confirmed in several species of mammals.
cj obrien
This is just for you. EVERYTHING in the universe was designed from the get go. Chance never had a chance as it were. It was all determined or if you prefer, using my term, "prescribed." Got that? Write that down. I do not spew. I enlighten. If you don't want to learn, go elsewhere. Try Panda's Thumb, EvC or Uncommon Descent. You will love it because you won't find me there cluttering up the proceedings. They all banned me long ago some twice.
Don't take my word for anything. Take the considered judgment of the greatest mind that ever lived.
"Everything is determined... by forces over which we have no control."
Albert Einstein
"You can lead a man to the literature but you cannot make him comprehend it."
John A. Davison
I love it so!
JAD:
"Don't take my word for anything"
Don't worry.
CJ O'Brien said ( 4/26/2006 01:07:20 PM ) --
>>>We have all of these seemingly fine-tuned co-evolutionary relationships: flowers and bees, predators and prey, parasites and hosts.<<<
Wikipedia defines co-evolution as "the mutual evolutionary influence between two species that become dependent on each other." IMO, of the above three relationships, I consider only the flowers-bees relationship to be truly co-evolutionary. The evolution of the bees and the flowers would have required mutual evolutionary responses, e.g., the flowers developed colors and/or scents and the bees developed the ability to sense these colors and/or scents. But the evolution of a predator or a parasite does not necessarily require an evolutionary response from the prey or host (and if there is such a response, it is one of escape from or resistance to the predator or parasite). The term "co-evolutionary" may sometimes be applied to inter-species relationships other than mutualism (i.e., commensalism, amensalism, and parasitism), but I feel that the term should only be applied to mutualism.
>>>In short, we can accept the logic of 'microevolution' if that's what we're calling it<<<
I never questioned microevolution, as it has been actually observed in progress. What I question is macroevolution.
>>>Larry has also pointed out that the traits involved are often mal-adaptive in the hypothetical situation that the 'partner' in the co-evolved relationship no longer exists.<<<
Yes, where there is great dependence on another organism, the extinction of one organism can cause the extinction of another. However, what I was talking about in my post "The co-evolutionary paradox" is that the co-dependent feature is initially absent in the other organism and as a result there is nothing to adapt to.
>>>In short, these are to some degree antagonistic relationships between organiisms looking out for their own reproductive advantage at the expense of the other's.<<<
In mutualism, both kinds of organisms benefit -- there is no antagonistic relationship.
>>>Larry wants us to marvel at how specific they are: buzz polination and the like<<<
Well, they are very specific and something to marvel at.
>>> If everything was designed, you're pretty much locked into a young-earth position,<<<
ID does not assume a young earth. Even ID guru Behe ( and I am not claiming that ID should be defined by Behe alone ) does not argue for a young earth.
>>>because over time, microevolution is going to throw a wrench in these very specific relationships, changing them into different ones that were, in fact, not designed, obviously contradicting the 'everything is designed' position.<<<
Yes. Natural selection will weed out the harmful mutations, but harmful mutations tend to greatly outnumber beneficial mutations, and without enough beneficial mutations the fitness of the species may degrade over time. Also, in extremely small populations, inbreeding can be a problem. Maybe JAD has a good point when he says that natural selection is primarily destructive.
>>>So forget whether these relationships evolved. Try to see that they could not possibly have been designed, unless there has not been enough time for variation based on differential reproductive advantage to occur, i.e. YEC. In that case, we can forget the argument altogether and talk about how every single relevant shred of evidence contradicts a young earth.<<<
Yes. But to maintain a big tent, ID has not been used to argue for or against such ideas as young-earth creationism, old-earth creationism, theistic creationism, etc.. All ID is supposed to do is just determine the likelihood that particular biological systems were initially created by natural genetic variation and natural selection. How biological systems were maintained after they appeared is yet another question.
Anyway, this new blog is really HOT ! It is only a few days old but is already getting a tremendous amount of traffic.
Everything we see now is "natural" or it wouldn't be there. The only need for a supernatural was in the very beginning. Once the ground rules were laid down and all the front loading was finished, everything flowed automatically from those first causes. All real evidence points to a dead God, but one, when alive, had an intelligence and power beyond our comprehension. Get used to it. Einstein did and so have I.
"Everything is determined... by forces over which we have no control."
Albert Einstein
"The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive."
ibid
I love it so!
Ok Mr. JAD, I'll bite. Why do you think that everything worked for one way for so long but has now stopped. Is this sort of a Francis Fukiama End of History argument?
I asked you to pick a poison, and you did, when you said:
I never questioned microevolution, as it has been actually observed in progress. What I question is macroevolution.
and then answered:
>>>Larry wants us to marvel at how specific they are: buzz polination and the like<<<
Well, they are very specific and something to marvel at.
Here is the side of the fork you chose, as I put it last time:
If only certain among these relationships were designed, but others are the product of minor variations (which inevitably occur given the competition for reproductive advantage), then you can accept an old earth (deep time), but you're left with the problem of determining when the chain of reproduction was broken, in certain lineages, in order to 'prop up' these otherwise improbably specialized features. In this case, it seems to me, you're either with the theistic evolutionists (it 'just happened' but it was God's plan all along), or you're denying that even microevolution happens.
You have to deny the obvious reality of 'microevolution' to hold the position that these co-evolutionary interactions were established, as is, in some ancient 'design event'. Since the features involved, we agree, are incredibly specific, they are obviously within the ability of mere 'microevolutionary' changes to affect. If 'microevolution' does not, in fact, routinely alter these highly specific, finely balanced mutalist interactions, then they are not worthy of consideration as the kinds of features we are willing to say pose even a passing concern for proponents of evolutionary theory. Highly specified means fragile in a highly complex web of interactions of greater or lesser specificity, which is what an ecosystem is.
bwe
Bite this.
If you had read any of my papers which you obviously haven't you would know exactly what brought evolution to a standstill. So I say the hell with you. You are just another mindless unulfilled blowhard.
I love it so!
CJ O'Brien said ( Thursday, April 27, 2006 12:16:54 AM ) --
>>>Since the features involved, we agree, are incredibly specific, they are obviously within the ability of mere 'microevolutionary' changes to affect. If 'microevolution' does not, in fact, routinely alter these highly specific, finely balanced mutalist interactions, then they are not worthy of consideration as the kinds of features we are willing to say pose even a passing concern for proponents of evolutionary theory. <<<
Only mutations that improve the co-dependent relationship or that are neutral will be preserved and maybe propagated. Mutations that harm the co-dependent relationship will be eliminated through natural selection.
Also, though the question of how biological systems were preserved through time is important, we also need to address the question of how biological systems were created and propagated in the first place. Questions concerning irreducible complexity, co-evolution, and the propagation of beneficial mutations are challenges to the Darwinian claim that biological systems were created solely by natural genetic variation and natural selection. As I put it in my last post ( Wednesday, April 26, 2006 6:00:11 PM ) --
"...to maintain a big tent, ID has not been used to argue for or against such ideas as young-earth creationism, old-earth creationism, theistic creationism, etc. All ID is supposed to do is just determine the likelihood that particular biological systems were initially created by natural genetic variation and natural selection. How biological systems were maintained after they appeared is yet another question. "
Mr. JAD,
You say "mindless unulfilled blowhard" like it's a bad thing.
In fact, I read one of your papers. In it you say things like:
In the Darwinian or sexual model, one might anticipate some universal
sex-determining mechanism operating throughout evolutionary history.
If, as I believe, the role of sexual reproduction is to limit
evolution, one would anticipate a wide variety of sex-determining
devices evolving independently. Such is the actual case.
Now, it's been a while since I studied this stuff and, in all honesty, I studied echinoderms which have almost got less in common with a rat than with a slime mold so I am not an expert. However, the "Darwinian" model you are talking about here seems to suggest that any number of sex determining devices might come about. There is far more potential for varieties of chromasomal mutation in sexual reproduction than in asexual reproduction. Mutant starfish are not typically the result of cloning, rather they are the result of (often environmentally damaged) fertilized offspring. I would guess that one would expect to see whatever works best out of the possibilities in any niche. I would be surprised to see complicated tendencies for sex selection in relatively stable niches and more variety in more marginal or variable niches. Why is that not the case?
In your paper you point out lots of things that support your second statement but I don't understand how they don't also support the first. My appologies for my ignorance; college was a long time ago and I don't use my training on a regular basis any more.
Also forgive me for thinking that you are marginally insane. As you point out, it's usually the guy who looks insanre who is.
I would be surprised to see complicated tendencies for sex selection in relatively stable niches and more variety in more marginal or variable niches. Why is that not the case?
Should read:
I would be surprised to see complicated tendencies for sex selection in relatively stable niches and I would expect to see more variety in more marginal or variable niches. Why is that not the case?
A couple of posts back, Larry said:
In mutualism, both kinds of organisms benefit -- there is no antagonistic relationship.
And this is what is meant when we say, "Nothing in Biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution." You see, in rejecting the evolutionary logic behind these admittedly fascinating relationships, you give up hope of understanding them, and, instead, assert that they represent a paradox, and must not, in fact, act as biologists have described them.
But reality's a bitch, don't you know, and they DO behave as biologists have described them, and, what's more, the really perplexing details ONLY submit to the logic of natural selection. That's what I've been trying to get through to you, and it's why I think you're arguing a lost, even counterproductive, cause.
What you would like to call 'mutual benefit' is really much more like 'mutual exploitation.' And any time there's mutual exploitation, there's the possibility of an asymmetric situation, where one side is doing more exploiting, and more benefiting.
bwe
Since you confess you know nothing anyway, I will ignore you. Got that? Write that down. Thanks.
I love it so!
At least I can spell my own name which is more than that homozygous mimicing moron can do.
Yes Larry, you run a wonderful blog here. Keep up the great work! You should win the "Blog Of The Year" award if your blog lasts a year that is. Frankly I think the FCC or Bill Gates should shut you down as a menace to society and the sooner the better. Favorably associating your name with some of your posters is very revealing.
I love it so!
CJ O'Brien said ( Thursday, April 27, 2006 5:16:02 PM ) --
>>>"Nothing in Biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution."<<<
That is an exaggeration. Evolution theory primarily concerns the origin of species, and there is a lot of stuff in biology that does not concern the origin of species. Also, evolution theory is often used unnecessarily in discussions of biology.
>>>>But reality's a bitch, don't you know, and they DO behave as biologists have described them, and, what's more, the really perplexing details ONLY submit to the logic of natural selection. That's what I've been trying to get through to you, and it's why I think you're arguing a lost, even counterproductive, cause.<<<<<
I think that a lot of your arguments here have just been vague generalizations and that you never really addressed many of the specific issues that I raised in my opening post.
>>>>What you would like to call 'mutual benefit' is really much more like 'mutual exploitation.' <<<<<
I would not call mutualism -- e.g., the relationship between bees and flowers -- to be "mutual exploitation." To me, exploitation is more like predation and parasitism. The four categories of species interrelationships are mutualism, commensalism, amensalism, and parasitism (Wikipedia online encyclopedia discusses these terms) -- there is no mutual exploitation category.
Anyway, to me the important thing is that we have an atmosphere where evolution theory may be challenged openly, and the Dover and Cobb County (textbook sticker) decisions are not conducive to such an atmosphere, to put it mildly.
Okay, Larry, I'm the one arguing "vague generalizations" while you just talk past me with assertions and end practically every comment with a non-sequitur about how much your dim-bulb blog here rocks or some crap about Cobb county, which if I cared about I would argue with you about that.
But I'm not. I am, for the benefit of anybody reading this, pointing out that you're undermining your own creationist arguments by criticizing co-evolution, one of the best and most interesting examples of evolution in action.
You said you were interested in specifics, yet at no point have you referred to a species, or any particular interaction. Probably because the sheer variety of examples available, and the gradation found from 'mutual benefit' to 'mutual exploitation' or near-parasitism, is so pronounced as to make almost any example a point for my argument.
I have already invited YOU to get specific. I do so again. Find any example, and I will show you how evolution explains it better than design. You're caught on a fork that you haven't wiggled off, you've just decided to get used to it I guess.
johnadavidson is genetic garbage and one of the many reasons this blog sucks. Got that? write that down. I'll bet its Spravid Dinger. One thing is for sure. He can't possibly prove it wasn't. That is good enough for me. Thanks Spravid.
I love it so!
CJ O'Brien said ( 4/28/2006 11:04:28 AM ) --
>>>>Okay, Larry, I'm the one arguing "vague generalizations" while you just talk past me with assertions and end practically every comment with a non-sequitur about how much your dim-bulb blog here rocks or some crap about Cobb county, which if I cared about I would argue with you about that.<<<<
I have done almost no bragging about how this blog "rocks" -- most of that has been done by an imposter. I have not mentioned the Dover or Cobb County cases where inappropriate. Also, I am usually the one who has to answer comments about legal issues in those cases, and I can't spread myself too thin. The main points I have been trying to make in regard to scientific issues are -- (1) there should be open inquiry on scientific challenges to evolution, and (2) there are several significant scientific non-ID challenges to evolution. I am not necessarily trying to prove that any particular scientific challenge to evolution is valid -- I just want to show that such challenges are arguable. It should not even be necessary to show that these challenges are arguable -- open debate should be allowed anyway. In the Dover and Cobb County cases, the issue of the separation of church and state has been exploited by Darwinists to create an artificial barrier to open discussion of scientific challenges to Darwinism. In incredible acts of hubris, the judges in those two cases have banned those challenges from public-school science classrooms.
You have not made many arguments here -- mostly you have just made flat dogmatic statements like, "evolution theory gives the best explanation for co-evolution."
>>>>I have already invited YOU to get specific. I do so again. Find any example, and I will show you how evolution explains it better than design.<<<<
The links I have given at the bottom of my opening post show many examples of highly specialized co-dependent relationships, and my opening post gives general reasons as to why these relationships should not be evolvable. Also, "design" might not be involved, as a co-dependent feature in an organism may be very simple.
You keep asking me to "get specific." Why don't you get specific by presenting an example of where you think evolution theory is a good explanation for a co-dependent relationship ?
I have already discussed several specific examples in my comments of Saturday, April 22, 2006 1:39:37 AM, Saturday, April 22, 2006 12:22:21 PM, and Monday, April 24, 2006 6:58:53 PM. I don't see how you can accuse me of not being specific.
Also, consider the meganosed fly again (this fly is discussed in the second link at the bottom of my opening post). The long proboscis of this fly gives it the advantage of an exclusive food supply, very deep flowers, but great depth is a disadvantage to the flowers because it reduces the number of kinds of insects that can pollinate it. So how did the deep flowers evolve ?
Also, I pointed out that where the features required in both organisms would be detrimental to both organisms in the absence of the corresponding feature in the other organism, co-evolution would be virtually impossible. I cannot think of any examples offhand.
One thing is for sure. He can't possibly prove it wasn't. That is good enough for me. Thanks Spravid.
That's just like ID, IC and YEC isn't it?
(1) there should be open inquiry on scientific challenges to evolution, and (2) there are several significant scientific non-ID challenges to evolution. I am not necessarily trying to prove that any particular scientific challenge to evolution is valid -- I just want to show that such challenges are arguable. It should not even be necessary to show that these challenges are arguable -- open debate should be allowed anyway.
Right, um.. there is open debate. You come up with a hypotheses, do the experiments and publish the results. People read it, do their own experiments or attempt to repeat yours, publish the results and etc.
But that is not the role of high school biology. They need to understand what has been published and learned first. We don't teach string theory in high school yet either. Or cold fusion, ...
THe fly bit:
A flower has a little bit deeper of a crevice than its brothers and sisters.
A fly that already has a little bit longer of a nose finds it and exploits it. Some other bug that damages the flower normally can't get in to damage it and voila! an advantage. Over time, they become more and more adapted to exploit that advantage. Really, if it weren't for this ridiculous thing about god, you wouldn't be having this discussion.
More info at my blog Here.
Do you think that no evolution has occurred? Have all animals been what they are now since day 1?
Why weren't there people when there were dinosaurs? Why was the carboniferous period like it was? What is the carbon cycle? Why do deserts grow? What role do forests play in regional weather patterns? Why do magnetic allignment of rocks on the seafloor show more than one direction? Is there a pattern to this phenomenon? How do organisms deal with the extremes of tidepools? Have they always been able to do that? What do bananas and echinoderms have in common? WHy do you think that the moral character of our country is in decline? Who enacted the ESA? why? Did you read silent spring? Have you ever gone swimming? Do you play golf? Isn't it incredible to look out into a clear night sky and see all the stars? Have you ever wondered what they are?
Perhaps the reason Davison is so anxious to go to federal prison is so he can finally get an American bone in his body, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
The long proboscis of this fly gives it the advantage of an exclusive food supply, very deep flowers, but great depth is a disadvantage to the flowers because it reduces the number of kinds of insects that can pollinate it. So how did the deep flowers evolve ?
You've got it backwards, as would be expected from somebody who doesn't understand the underlying logic of the phenomenon he's baffled by.
The flower is manipulating the fly.
The benefit of a dedicated pollinator is the same as the benefit of animal pollination in general over wind-pollination: less wasted pollen. When a plant has a specific pollinator, a much larger percentage of the pollen it produces actually gets to a flower of the same species. It's easy to see how this would evolve, because the link to reproduction is direct. (Incidentally, this is the point that makes co-evolution trouble for anti-evolutionists)
Follow along: the variant plant that more efficiently 'delivers' its pollen via fly wings to fertile flowers of its own species spreads more pollen containing genes that make the plants efficient exploiters of fly wings. The variant is disproportionately represented in the next generation of plants. Sounds a lot like natural selection, doesn't it?
My point all along. The question for you is: How does God stop this?, not How did this get started?
It's YEC or denial of 'microevolution.' You can't have it both ways.
Pick another example. That one's too easy.
CJ O'Brien said ( 4/28/2006 03:25:20 PM ) ---
>>>>The long proboscis of this fly gives it the advantage of an exclusive food supply, very deep flowers, but great depth is a disadvantage to the flowers because it reduces the number of kinds of insects that can pollinate it. So how did the deep flowers evolve ?
You've got it backwards, as would be expected from somebody who doesn't understand the underlying logic of the phenomenon he's baffled by.<<<<<
Can't you Darwinists make an argument without putting someone down ?
>>>>When a plant has a specific pollinator, a much larger percentage of the pollen it produces actually gets to a flower of the same species.<<<<<
The second of the three links on the bottom of my opening post addresses this issue --
"There are advantages for the specialists on both sides of this relationship. The long-nosed flies obviously get privileged access to pools of nectar. And the plants pollinated by long-nosed flies benefit from a near-exclusive pollen courier service—or at least one that minimizes the risk of delivery to the wrong address. But specializing can also be a risky strategy for the plants if the pollinators are less interested in fidelity than the plants are. Long-nosed flies could not survive on the nectar they could get by visiting just one plant species; the flies must visit several plant species to gather the energy they need. Johnson and Steiner observed meganosed flies visiting at least four species with deep flowers."
Also, this advantage of having a specialized pollinator is offset by the disadvantage of getting no visits from pollinators incapable of reaching the nectar.
We know that there are many kinds of shallow flowers that do not have specialized pollinators, yet these flowers appear to do quite well. Maybe one of the reasons for this -- besides the fact that these flowers can be visited by many kinds of pollinators -- is that a high percentage of the nearby flowers are of the same species.
Also, there is not just the question of whether the relationship is beneficial to the fly and/or the flower, but there is also the question of how the relationship evolved in the first place. A mutation producing a deep flower will not propagate if there are no long-nosed insects available to pollinate the flower. And though a long nose on an insect might not be a disadvantage, it is certainly not an advantage when deep flowers are absent.
>>>>Pick another example. That one's too easy.<<<<
I would like to continue this discussion, but I have to set priorities. There are other comments I should answer and there are other posts that I would like to make. I feel that I have fulfilled the main purpose of my original post here by showing that co-evolution is a debatable challenge to evolution theory.
Okay, Larry. take your ball and go home.
As far as "putting you down," I will say that I have extended, if anything, more courtesy than you really deserve. I have argued my position in good faith, and I have not been involved in the childish (but rather amusing to my inner child) hijacking of your blog with sock-puppets and gratuitous insults.
I really do think you have it backwards, and that the logic of natural selection is the only way to understand mutualism and other forms of co-evolution.
CJ O'Brien said...
>>>>Okay, Larry. take your ball and go home.<<<<
I can hardly be accused of leaving the game early. If you go back over this thread, you will see a lot of long replies from me. If you go to Panda's Thumb, you will see that the bloggers there usually do not participate much in the discussions, even though they each may have only one or two threads to worry about whereas I have several. I would like to attract more commenters to this blog so I do not have to make so many of the responses myself, but I think that may be hard to do because a lot of people are already fed up with all the banning and deleting crap that happens on evolution blogs.
>>>>As far as "putting you down," I will say that I have extended, if anything, more courtesy than you really deserve.<<<<<
More than I really deserve ? Here is the way you responded on the first time that you raised a particular issue: "You've got it backwards, as would be expected from somebody who doesn't understand the underlying logic of the phenomenon he's baffled by." Saying that I was "baffled" by an argument that you had not even made was a put-down.
>>>>I have not been involved in the childish (but rather amusing to my inner child) hijacking of your blog with sock-puppets and gratuitous insults.<<<<
I don't see what is "rather amusing" about someone being harassed so soon after opening a censorship-free blog.
Anyway, I would like to respond to a nonscientific issue that you raised in one of your comments here. You wrote ( Friday, April 28, 2006 2:13:56 PM ) --
>>>>But that is not the role of high school biology. They need to understand what has been published and learned first. We don't teach string theory in high school yet either. Or cold fusion, ...<<<<<
Why shouldn't students learn something about ID, string theory, and cold fusion in the public schools, even though these ideas are not fully developed and accepted ? Why should judges decide which scientific ideas may be taught in public schools ? Why should students be expected to learn these subjects from their parents or in Sunday school ? Many parents didn't finish high school or can't speak English or didn't study this stuff on their own, so what do they know ? And a lot of public-school students do not go to Sunday school, and how many Sunday schools teach about string theory and cold fusion ?
Larry
If you don't introduce a note of common decency into your experiment here you can kiss my ass good bye. Got that? Write that down. I have better things to do with my remaining time than to participate in a flame fest that you seem to enjoy thoroughly. This doesn't require an answer by the way, just some action.
I love it so!
JohnADavison said --
>>>>Larry
If you don't introduce a note of common decency into your experiment here you can kiss my ass good bye.<<<<
JAD,
Unfortunately, a lot of commenters are frustrated by the fact that they are too ignorant and/or stupid to make a significant contribution to a discussion, so they take out their frustration by heckling other commenters and making general nuisances of themselves.
Occasionally a post that just ridicules or makes an ad hominem attack is appropriate or funny. But a lot of the people who place these posts just want attention and so they don't know when to stop.
Also, some moron is probably trying to goad me -- particularly by the repeated impersonations of other commenters -- into breaking my no-deletions policy in order to have an excuse to call me a "hypocrite." This scumbag is trying to harm people who never did anything to him. When I first created this blog, I should have said that I reserve the right to delete nuisance posts, but I did not because I hoped that nuisance posts would not get out of hand. So far these nuisance posts have not yet reached the point where they threaten the survival of this blog. One of my main worries is that nuisance posts may become so numerous as to crowd out the posts actually participating in the discussion -- that has happened on Panda's Thumb.
Anyway, though my no-deletions policy may have been an overreaction to the arbitrary censorship on other blogs, I want to see if I can keep this policy. I am strongly considering breaking this policy for impersonations of other commenters.
Larry
I'll stick around a while longer just to continue exposing the biggest coward in cyberspace -Spravid Dinger. He is definitely worthy of my undivided attention just like his lord and master Dilliam Wembski is. I wouldn't give a nickel for either one of them. Who would? They are both intellectual cowards. So is Esley Welsberry over at the Panda's Pathetic Pollex. All any of these lightweights know how to do is ban, ban, ban. They make me barf.
"Cream rises. Most turds sink."
anonymous
"There are more horses asses than horses."
John A. Davison
"A past evolution is undeniable. A present evolution is undemonstrable"
ibid
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Larry
Your culprit is more than likely Spravid Dinger. He is the master of deception, subterfuge and deceit. He even brags about all the crap he has been able to get away with.
Homozygous, "prescribed," egomaniacal bullies are like that don't you know. He can't help it. He was just "born that way." He even suggested as much a while back if you recall. He is a confessed loser. Naturally -
I love it so!
This is for cj obrien or any other Darwinian mystics out there in cyberspace.
"The struggle for existence and natural selection are not progressive agencies, but being, on the contrary, conservative, maintain the standard."
Leo Berg, Nomogenesis, page 406
If you don't like that one try this one on for size:
"Natural selection is a real factor in connection with mimicry, but its function is to conserve and render preponderant an ALREADY EXISTENT likeness, not to build up that likeness through the accumulation of small variations, as is so generally assumed."
Reginald C. Punnett, Mimicry in Butterflies, page 152. My emphasis.
or this one:
"Any system that purports to account for evolution must invoke a mechanism that is not mutational and aleatory."
Pierre Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisms, page 245.
Of course that is exctly what the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis does.
How do you like them apples cj baby? I hope it gives you the runs!
Anybody who still regards natural selection as a creative factor is a homozygous, illiterate damn fool.
I love it so!
Hey Larry,
Areyoutalkingtomecallingmeafreak? That is one word.
Jad, it was not Larry who made that "freak" comment about you. Take your mouse and point it over the name of the poster. Compare the profile numbers displayed in the URL. It is someone impersonating Larry. Dave perhaps?
I'll buy that!
There is no evidence that any form of mutualism ever came about through the agency of natural selection. The involved organisms were both reading a common prescribed blueprint and the interdependencies were probably produced instantaneously. Show me otherwise. You can't because that sort of evolution isn't even occurring any more and probably never will again. It is all over folks. Get used to it. All we see now is rampant extinction without a single documented replacement.
"A past evolution is undeniable. A present evolution is undemonstrable."
John A. Davison
I love it so!
I heard something hard to believe, Professor Davison. Is it really true the editor who approved your evolution papers for publication is young earth creationist?
JohnADavison said ( Monday, May 01, 2006 12:41:48 PM ) --
>>>>>There is no evidence that any form of mutualism ever came about through the agency of natural selection. The involved organisms were both reading a common prescribed blueprint and the interdependencies were probably produced instantaneously. (emphasis added) <<<<<
Yes, as I pointed out in my opening post, generally large numbers of both kinds of organisms with the necessary co-dependent features would have to suddenly appear at the same time in the same place because of one or more of the following reasons --
(1) The co-dependent features in one or both organisms may be detrimental in the absence of the corresponding features in the other organism.
(2) The two kinds of organisms may interact in large numbers -- for example, a bee visits many flowers, and a flower is visited by many bees.
(3) Even if the two organisms interact on a one-on-one basis, the chances of a pair of the organisms with the necessary mutations ever meeting would be extremely small, particular when the required mutations would be detrimental to one or both organisms when the corresponding mutations are absent in the other organism.
The camel with the longest shlong always carries the princess. Co-evolution? or is it just as random as DaveScot's pecker peeking through the local gloryhole every friday night?
The mutual morphological and physiological adaptations that characterize bee/flower relationships for example arose simultaneously as each form was reading the same prescribed blueprint setting up the relationship, a blueprint that had been established long before and was finally being read.
I realize that this sounds crazy but I am convinced it is the only conceivable explanation. Convergent gradual evolution through natural selection is just another Darwinian fairy tale without a shred of evidence.
"Everything is determined... by forces over which we have no control."
Albert Einstein
"That which IS determined most certainly WAS determined long ago."
John A. Davison
I love it so!
Mutations of course had absolutely nothing to do with it just as Grasse claimed and as I have posted here and elsewhere. It is all just one more manifestation of a "prescribed evolution." Get used to it. I have.
I love it so!
The Editor of Rivista di Biologia where my recent papers have been published is Giuseppe Sermonti, a gentleman and a scholar, a rare combination in journal editors, most of whom are devout Darwinian atheist mystics who haven't done an experiment in their entire lives and abandoned science long ago in order to spread their atheist Darwinian agenda. Wolpert, the Editor of Journal of Theoretical Biology is a perfect example.
I know of no evidence that Sermonti is a young earth creationist. If he were I doubt very much if he would be willing to publlsh my papers. He is most certainly not a Darwinian atheist mystic that is for sure and I don't think he is a Protestant Bible waving, font dunking, seat hurdling Fundamentalist, teaching at a Baptist seminary either. He is a fine man. We respect each other which is all that matters. How does that grab you oh most anonymous one?
Could you by any chance be Spravid Dinger? You sound like him.
I love it so!
JAD, the editor that published your evolution papers doesn't think man evolved from primates. What say you to that?
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v15/i3/apes.asp
Not from the apes
by Giuseppe Sermonti
Many schools proclaim as a matter without any doubt that man has derived from the African apes. Many textbooks in primary schools in my country, Italy, have on the cover page the illustration of an ape (usually a chimpanzee) gradually rising from its bent posture, to assume the elegant figure of man.
This is a falsehood which any honest scientist should protest against. It is not balanced teaching. That which science has never demonstrated (and therefore which no serious scientist in the world would ever assert) should be erased from any textbook and from our minds and remembered only as a joke in bad taste.
One should also teach people how many hoaxes have been plotted to support the theory of the simian (ape) origins of man.1 This began with Java ‘man’ in 1891 which was nothing but a giant ape-like skull-cap and a human leg-bone found 15 metres and one year apart.
It continued with the Piltdown skull in 1912, which was a combination of an ape’s lower jaw with a modern human skull-cap (probably planned and executed within the British Natural History museum), and the last was Peking man in 1923, whose controversial interpretation was solved with the ‘disappearance’ of 10 skeletons in 1925 and the ‘loss’ of the whole collection of fossils in transit to America in 1941.
Surely these events (among others) justify the sad statement of Professor W. R. Thompson, FRS, that ‘The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity.’ Professor Thompson also said, ‘A long-enduring and regrettable effect of the success of the Origin was the addiction of biologists to unverifiable speculation’.
And even, I would add, to disproved hypotheses.
Reference
W. R. Thompson, FRS, New Challenging ‘Introduction’ to the Origin of Species, Everyman Library No. 811, 1956.
I say that Sermonti like any other person has every right to believe whatever he wants to believe. He has always treated me with respect, a respect I return.
Incidentally, I do not regard it as defintely proved that Homo sapiens has been derived from apelike ancestors. Nor has it been definitely proved that God did not create man de novo or by Divine Intervention in an otherwise natural process.
Whatever else Sermonti may believe, he certainly never swallowed the Darwinian hoax and I for one am very grateful for it. He is a decent man. He certainly never tried to prevent me from presenting my views.
As for what we believe as opposed to what we know:
"Men are most apt to believe what they least understand."
Montaigne
What say you to that?
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sermonti the evolution denier said
You are anonymous and so I don't take what you say very seriously anyway but I would point out that Sermonti apparently said what he did before 1956 when he and I were both in our twenties. I believe we are about the same age. I probably felt much the same way at that age. I can't even remember for sure but even then I had rejected Darwinism just as Sermonti had and it got me in some trouble too. It still does.
What say you to that?
Anonymity sucks!
I love it so!
Not From the Apes
First published:
Creation 15(3):13
June 1993
Sermonti doesn't believe humans evolved. He believes they were created. The article he published was in Creation Magazine. The only editor in the world that would publish your evolution papers is a biblical creationist.
Isn't that just precious?
So what Dinger, you cowardly two-faced swine. I believe humans were created too. I even explained how in the Manifesto,
"God works in mysterious, semi-meiotic, ways.
As for publishing my papers, I haven't even bothered to try another journal after that Darwinian mystic Wolpert assumed the editorship of the Journal of Theoretical Biology. The vast majority of contemporary journals are in the hands of ultra liberal atheist Darwinan zealots most of whom abandoned their early work in order to control the minds of others. Sermonti and I have never had to agree in order for him to allow my papers to appear his journal. That is the difference between a gentleman and a homozygous pig like yourself, Sus springeriana, you low life trash bag. Go soak some corks to stopper up your home grown booze. You always were a cork soaker. I hope your liver goes too. Your brain and your integrity already have. You are the laughing stock of the internet and haven't even got the common decency to leave me alone. I thought you were going to pretend I don't exist. You can't keep your word and you never could. What a loser. Thanks for once more exposing your sorry, lying, hypocritical ass. You are my best ally.
i love it so!
All you know how to so is to soak Wembski's cork. I'm sure he loves it too. What a pair of losers. You deserve each other.
I love it so!
Is that the problem, John? Did Bill Dembski steal the only person in the world stupid enough to stand up for you?
Dembski knew exactly what he was getting when he appointed Dinger blogczar, a loyal subject that would do exactly as he was told. That is now a matter of record. It looks to me as if Dembski may be having second thoughts about the biggest two-faced phony in cyberspace. If he isn't he is a damn fool.
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Uh John, didn't you mean Wembski, not Dembski?
What difference does it make - Wembski, Dembski, Schlembski? They are all the same to me, closet Fundies pretending to have proven something that is obvious to any unfettered observer: namely, a universe that was designed from beginning to end.
"Everything is determined... by forces over which we have no control."
Albert Einstein
"A past evolution is undeniable. A present evolution is undemonstrable.
John A. Davison
I love it so!
When a man's several papers are purged without explanation, he is hardly being ignored. That is your record Spravid Dinger and you still haven't got the guts or the integrity to explain your actions to the people in your own forum. All you know what to do is what all yellow bellied lying cowards do. When openly confronted they melt into nothing and change the subject, in your case into mindless spite. Don't stop.
I love it so!
Yes it IS being ignored. You are the proverbial persona non grata. Or in the words of PZ Myers "Your stench precedes you".
Dear Sus springeriana, boy bully.
I am now holding forth in an interesting dialogue over at ISCID's "brainstorms" forum. They have an open viewing, invited posting policy. Why don't you join in and continue your exposure of me over there at a decent forum?
I'll tell you why you won't. First they won't let you mouth off there and second you are a cheap shot artist and homozygous coward who contributes absolutely nothing to any forum where you ever posted. That is why!
You are my greatest ally. Thanks for posting
I'l leave a light on for you, slime ball. Don't disappoint me.
I love it so!
You bet I refer to the good Reverend as Dilliam Wemski. That is automatically conferred on anyone who bans this published scientist from their forum and I don't care who that is. Wembski is a dounle winner because he got his chief goon, Spravid Dinger, to do his dirty work for him the second time. Other winners in the bannishment category include M.P. Zeyers, NRA, CvE and Esley Welsberry. There are other ways to be rewarded. For example, if I feel that certain luminaries have contributed little or nothing to our understanding, I reward them with the same distinction. These include Richael Muse, Jillip Phonson, Dilliam Wembski (he wins in this category too), Mernst Ayr, Gephen J. Stould, Pott L. Scage and the biggest phony of them all, Dichard Rawkins. There are many more, way too many to mention.
Of course all this is utterly meaningless because nothing that transpires on the internet has any bearing on what really counts which is what is published and is for all time on the shelves of the world's libraries. That is where you will find the several papers of John A. Davison and that is where you will find the publications of his sources, some of the finest scientists of two centuries.
I am sure that the Great God Wembski could have me banned from "brainstorms" as the drop of a pin. He already conned the management not to present my 84 paper. I had to get Chris Beling to do it. Wembski won't ban me because it would make him look less than pristine. So you know what he did instead? He sent his chief goon down to discredit that paper and its author which is exactly what the good little gofer Spravid Dinger did to the best of his low class nasty lying ability. And do you know what I did? I turned that thread over to Dinger because I don't have to defend a paper I wrote 22 years ago just because some piece of fecal ooze with the real name of David Springer publicly called me a liar. Got that? I want that to stand forever. That is why I never delete anything this garbage mouth ever says. He had to edit his own attack on me after he realized how unprofessional it really was. He does that all the time, the knee-jerk moron. He has absolutely no self conrol. I invite all to visit "brainstorms" and observe the great pontificating arrogant blowhard up close and in action. It is an education in internet etiquette. What a joy he is to me.
I love it so!
Davison,
Dembski didn't send me to attack you or your paper you paranoid lunatic! You're beneath his notice. Unfortunately for you you're not beneath mine as I find you an entertaining diversion. Most people have more important things to do than exposing incompetent, inconsequential frauds like you. The way I see it is it's a dirty job but someone has to do it. LOL
Sus springeriana aka DaveScot also known as David Springer a name he is too cowardly to post under.
Dilliam Wembski is afraid to mention my name at Uncommon Descent for exactly the same reason that Esley Welsberry is afraid to at Panda's Thumb. That is why both of these cowardly assholes have send out their goons to try to discredit the only real scientist that is even posting on these half-assed blogs. They are both scared shitless of me and my sources and that is the real reason. I am not beneath their contempt at all. They are in mortal fear of me and they damn well better stay that way. You cowardlt shit, I dare you to mention my name at Wembski's Fundie Palace just as I dare Falan Ox to do the same at Panda's Thumb. You have both been instructed to keep your mouth shut about me and my distinguished predecessors. Just to prove my point, say something about me , good bad or indifferent at Uncommon Descent you cowardly sycophantic toadie. Explain why you purged my papers after you had praised them you two-faced lying hypocrit. The same for another slice of genetic garbage, Falan Ox. You are both spineless trash, trapped in blogs run by tyrannical ideologues neither of whom is a scientist by any stretch of the imagination. Neither of you has any choice because nobody else will have either one of you. Read it and weep assholes.
I love it so!
so you think bees just popped into existence? The pollination of angiosperms (eg flowering plants) was and is not solely done by bees. Beetles are known to have been around at the time of the evolution of angiosperms from gymnosperms and it is not too much of a stretch of the imagination that a beetle may have eaten the pollen of the plant. in eating some of the pollen some became stuck to its body and when the beetle went to the next flower to eat again it pollinated the flower. Oh look a niche has been created and both sides are happy. then one plant evolves a nectary or sweet tasting part behind the pollen producing organ. because of this the beetle does not eat as much pollen and from that alone the plant out competes the others (natural selection). now that a large pop. of plants have a nectary another mutation occurs, the pollen producing organ and the basic nectary are sunken into a leaf by chance. Only certain types of beetles are now able to get to them. this means the plant began specificity and with specificity the plant did not have to produce as much pollen (huge amounts of energy saved), the beetle also learned that in those plants it did not have to compete with others so it went to that type of flower more. this is the first signs of co-evolution. over the millions of years that followed the plants became more specialized to save more energy and the insects became more specialized to take advantage of them.
an example of co evolution where the animal has become extinct is the osage orange
ps sorry about my grammar
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