And i am afraid that you have not considered following :
The hardware and software of the cell, evidence of design
Paul Davies: the fifth miracle page 62
Due to the organizational structure of systems capable of processing algorithmic (instructional) information, it is not at all clear that a monomolecular system – where a single polymer plays the role of catalyst and informational carrier – is even logically consistent with the organization of information flow in living systems, because there is no possibility of separating information storage from information processing (that being such a distinctive feature of modern life). As such, digital–first systems (as currently posed) represent a rather trivial form of information processing that fails to capture the logical structure of life as we know it. 1
We need to explain the origin of both the hardware and software aspects of life, or the job is only half finished. Explaining the chemical substrate of life and claiming it as a solution to life’s origin is like pointing to silicon and copper as an explanation for the goings-on inside a computer. It is this transition where one should expect to see a chemical system literally take-on “a life of its own”, characterized by informational dynamics which become decoupled from the dictates of local chemistry alone (while of course remaining fully consistent with those dictates). Thus the famed chicken-or-egg problem (a solely hardware issue) is not the true sticking point. Rather, the puzzle lies with something fundamentally different, a problem of causal organization having to do with the separation of informational and mechanical aspects into parallel causal narratives. The real challenge of life’s origin is thus to explain how instructional information control systems emerge naturally and spontaneously from mere molecular dynamics.
Software and hardware are irreducible complex and interdependent. There is no reason for information processing machinery to exist without the software, and vice versa.
Systems of interconnected software and hardware are irreducibly complex. 2
Yes! Wagner’s Arrival of the Fittest is really good; I’m sure I’ve seen you mention it before. He has a new piece at TREE but I think it’s behind the paywall: The White-Knight Hypothesis, or Does the Environment Limit Innovations?
He’s talking about “latent traits” and exaptation, definitely relevant to cryptic variation.
I’m glad you liked the teosinte piece; it’ll be ten years old this year! Yikes.
I read all that, but I still don’t understand why information storage and information processing have to be separated just because they’re separate processes in modern life.
Haven’t had a chance to chat with you yet. I’m glad you’re here to discuss important topics with us.
I wanted to bring to your attention the discussion in this thread that you have not yet appeared to notice, as it is quite relevant to the topic of irreducible complexity. The basic idea is that “cryptic mutations” supply a mathematically demonstrated way to evolve new functionality that seems irreducibly complex. Moreover, as mentioned in posts by the real biologists, they have discovered mechanisms that would qualify as cryptic mutations. I.e., it’s not just theoretical.
@Otangelo_Grasso1, do you think you are debating atheists here? This is BioLogos, where many of the organization’s supporters believe God has personally led Evolution through these stages of complexity.
So what’s the big surprise? Can you tell me where all the new species came from after the Ark landed? That is the difficult question, yes?
The Ark held many kinds … but even the Ark didn’t carry 1 million terrestrial kinds. So . . . if you don’t accept the age of the Earth as millions of years old… where did somany species come from after the Ark emptied out its animals?
do they include shell of turtles (Cebra-Thomas et al. 2005), flight (Prum 2005), flowers (Albert, Oppenheimer, and Lindqvist 2002), the ability of great tits to open bottles of milk (Kothbauerhellmann 1990), the transition from the jaw to the ear of some bones during the evolution of mammals from reptiles (Brazeau and Ahlberg 2006), eyes (Fernald 2006), hearts (Olson 2006), bipedalism (Richmond and Strait 2000), and the origin of Hox genes (Wagner, Amemiya, and Ruddle 2003);
No, Otangelo. This sentence is referring to your claim: “No evidence that RNA molecules ever had the broad range of catalytic activities…”
Why don’t you answer my question before demanding that I answer yours? Mine is simple: what is peptidyl transferase, the enzyme assembling every protein in your body?
I don’t think you know the answer (Wikipedia will help you), and it’s extremely important to the point you’re trying to make.
It definitely includes the ability of E. Coli in Madison, WI to metabolize citrate in aerobic conditions.
However, these changes you mention seem to have involved a very lengthy series of incremental changes rather than a single change that could be described as irreducibly complex. Moreover, many of them do not seem to qualify as IC in my amateur opinion. Finally, I am not a professional biologist, so I am not the best person to ask the question. There are real biologists participating in this thread; I’m sure they could give you a better answer.
I have a thread at my library that deal with these issues
Two sites exist on a ribosome for activated tRNAs: the peptidyl site and the amino-acyl site (P site and A site respectively). The initiation codon, carrying methionine, enters the P site. The 3’ UAC 5’ anticodon of the tRNA is paired with the complementary 5’ AUG 3’ mRNA codon. The second tRNA enters the A site. An enzymatic part of the ribosome called peptidyl transferase then creates a peptide bond to link the two amino acids. Upon formation of the peptide bond, the amino-acyl bond that connected the amino acid to its corresponding tRNA is broken, and the tRNA is thus able to leave the P site. This is followed by ribosomal translocation to position a new open codon in the empty A site and also move the second tRNA – which is now bonded to a dipeptide – from the A to the P site. And so the cycle repeats until the occurrence of a stop codon that prevents further chain elongation.
As I look at Otangelo’s site, it seems that he believes that the earth is very young and that evolution/common descent does not explain biochemical mechanisms that we observe today (this thread, passim).
@Otangelo_Grasso1 , have I represented your opinions correctly? I want to make sure I do not misrepresent you.
The answer is yes. Im not sure about the great tits and milk bottles, but I am about the others. And you could include feathers, wings, lungs, and legs. Frankly I think you are misreading some of the papers (or you are taking these from websites where they are being misinterpreted). I know this is true for the Hox gene paper, since I know that one.
I am unsure. i am still in a process of forming a informed opinion on this question. My bias is towards a young earth, also because of the bible, but there are issues to which i put question marks. As to tree rings , indicating trees , 12thousand years old, the star light problem etc.
On the other side, i do not know how error prone uranium lead measurements are to measure the age of the earth. It seems they have to make a number of assumptions a priori.
Your answer is correct, but to a different question. According to the link you posted, the question that we agree the answer is no to, is "Can neo Darwinian mechanisms explain ‘new information, form, and structure arise from natural selection acting on random mutations arising at a very low level within the biological hierarchy—within the genetic text.’ The link then goes on to list a variety of other, newer mechanisms (all part of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis) that have been proposed to extend the classical evolutionary theory. Since you are new here, you probably havent seen much discussion on this topic, but there has been quite a bit, and Jim Stump, one of Biologos senior staff people attended the recent Symposium on the EES in London.
In other words, its possible that your conception of what modern evolutionary theory says is a bit out of date. Here is a link to an article that you might find helpful on this topic.
