Hi Joshua, Hope your long weekend was reatorative. Reflecting further on our conversation, I wondered what would be the best conversion factor for comparing Lenski’s design with the “natural” experiment that started 1.3bya. I assumed that Lenski’s design would have an advantage of 4 magnitudes due to a (presumed) higher density of eukaryotic bacteria. You mentioned 2 other factors to consider:
Faster reproduction in the lab environment.
Greater variety of niches to exploit in nature.
These two factors would appear to counteract one another. However, one might be stronger than the other, resulting in a net effect in one direction or the other.
So what conversion factor would you suggest to (roughly) calibrate the Lenski to nature comparison? Is 10^4:1 a plausible ratio?
I think you misunderstood my point #1. It is not an advantage that there is faster reproduction in the lab environment. It is exactly the opposite.
Lab environments in general (and Lenski’s experiment in particular) are optimized to select very strongly for reproduction efficiency. This is why, for example, gene duplications and neutral plasmids are usually quickly lost in most bacterial lab experiments. There is no advantage to keeping hold of genes to metabolize (for example) fructose, or forming spores, if you are being fed glucose all the time. In fact, keeping those genes around just slows down your reproduction, which in this experiment because primarily limited by DNA replication. So the selective forces are very strongly against greater complexity. Lean, mean replicating machines win in this experiment. The selection works against, for example, adaptability and complexity.
So, from one point of view, because of this, I do not think there is a good “factor” to use. I think that Lenski’s experimental design could very well make it impossible for greater complexity (e.g. multicellular life) to arise. It is not clear at all that multicellular life would have the advantage in this system. Nor is it clear that intermediate steps would be selected for.
The taunt that Lenski’s experiment somehow “fails” to produce complexity, from my point of view, really betrays fundamental ignorance of how evolution works. Of course, your probabilistic argument points out one problem. But I still think there is more. If it is to work, evolution requires a large number of varied niches for organisms to fill. Each niche selects for different things, and this is a key driver for diversity and the substrate from which more interesting complexity might arise down the line. In addition to mutations of genome, environment plays a very important role too.
Lenski’s experiment is not just quantitatively different than biological evolution (as you have explored). It is also qualitatively different. Therefore, I am not convinced that even an infinite amount of time would be enough.
I spent a lot of time with chemostats and continuous cultures during my post-doc work.
In Lenksi’s experiment there is cyclical feast/famine. ‘Feast’ when cells are subcultured into fresh media and ‘famine’ when the nutrients are exhausted. This leaves many paths of optimization for reproduction. For example, bacteria can optimize doubling with fresh media. They can also improve scavaging limited resources. Additionally, the ability to come out of stationary phase faster could provide benefits. There are any number of specific changes that could undergo selections over the course of the experiment and it’s clear that the populations never stay still and are always in a state of flux. The citrate utilization mutants Lenski et al isolated were able to exploit the citrate in the buffer as a carbon source, thus allowing the cells to reach higher cell densities than other strains unable to metabolize the compound.
Some pedantic notes:
I agree that lab strains can lose genes over time but it’s not typically all that quick. Often I had to use ‘active’ methods that increased selective pressure on plasmids to cure plasmids from strains. Gene duplications seem to disappear most often not because the additional DNA is a burden on the cell, which covers typically a tiny portion of the energy budget or replication speed, but because duplications are inherently unstable. Duplicated chromosomal sections are subject to recombination excision. One paper I’ve seen describes loss rates as high as 0.01-0.15 per cell per generation (Nature Reviews Microbiology 7, 578-588 (August 2009)).
You are clearly very informed on the Lenski experiment. Thanks for filling in many of the details for the rest of us (including me).
It should be clear, nonetheless, that my point still stands. There are much fewer, and less varied, niches in the Lenski experiment than on planet earth. In the experiment there is still a single (even if it is dynamic) macro environment with only a few microenvironment. I’m just not convinced that anything truly complex (yes, subjective definition) could arise here.
Of course, @Argon, this is all theoretical. I’m not gonna die on this hill. You seem to be informed. Maybe you are right.
Hi Joshua,
I agree with your that there are fewer niches in Lenski’s cultures and that the conditions are not set up for evolution to multicellularity and such. The experiment is best for studying step-wise genetic changes in populations over time within a defined environment. What is interesting – and expected, really – is that the population doesn’t stand still or achieve a perfect, static optima*. A population is always in genetic flux as competition between the lineages in the population shifts. Thus, the predominant strain in cycle #1400 may be out competed by a strain in an earlier cycle, or vice versa, even though each is the ‘winner’ in their particular cycle.
The work also demonstrates how roughly neutral drift (mutations) can set up the population for later, higher-fitness mutations. The citrate utilizers are an example of a multi-step evolution of a trait.
(*) It’s the tendency to drift in competition with other, sister lineages that makes continuous culture a bit of a pain in the ass. After a few days in a chemostat, strains can “throw mutants” that take over the population. That’s generally not a good thing if you’re trying to study a particular cell phenomena under constant conditions or if you want the cells to produce a particular product, like an antibiotic.
There was violence done, Joe, but not to the Scriptures. It was done to Karl Giberson.
You see, the very next sentence after the partial paragraph quoted by whatever YEC site is this:
"I discovered, however, that this was about where Dennett’s acid ran out of steam (or whatever acid runs out of when it stops dissolving everything). The acid of evolution is not universal, and claims that evolution ‘revolutionizes’ our worldview and dissolves every traditional concept are exaggerated."
Giberson then makes a series of affirmations:
For starters, what eactly does evolution have to do with belief in God as creator? It rules out certain mechanisms…but others remain…
And then:
The central idea in Christianity concerns Jesus Christ and the claim that he was the Son of God, truly divine and truly human…
And then:
Christianity merges the Incarnation with the belief that Jesus rose from the dead. Christ’s Resurrection offers hope that we too can have eternal life and one day be united with God…
The specific doctrines in your list, Joe, are the details of a literal-historical hermeneutic of Genesis 1-3. Do you really wish to claim that favoring the framework hermeneutic over a 6-day literalism is doing violence to the Scriptures?
Do you really wish to claim that the doctrines of Scripture are inextricably linked to 6-day literalism?
A couple of concluding points:
In the context of the book, Giberson’s phrase “nearly everything else I counted sacred” is a reference to the YEC beliefs that he was so passionate about.
This is the second time in this thread that the source(s) you have cited have been shown to cut off quotes in a very misleading way. Clearly, the source(s) is(are) not worthy of your trust, or ours. It’s time to implement Proverbs 18:17, and find better sources on the relationship of faith and science.
Chris: Giberson’s “series of affirmations” does not begin after the quote. The quote itself contains several affirmations and what comes after does not mitigate the claims contained therein. Moreover, those affirmations have implications that echo throughout Scriptures: the historicity of the events of Creation week, the fall, Christ as second Adam, the origin of sin; every one of these doctrines is a significant foundation for Christianity.
You know, Chris, I am really frustrated by the fact that you and many others who have contributed to this thread continue to attempt to portray me as young earth and my case as being formed exclusively on the Genesis Creation account. From the beginning, it has been clear that neither is true.
But let’s introduce a big problem for you, Giberson, and others: throughout the Gospels, when Jesus invoked an authority, it was Scripture. Time after time. Not only is it clear that for Him, Scripture was the ultimate authority, when He invoked Scripture, He did so in a very literal sense. So if you are seeking to vindicate Giberson, it would be helpful for you to a) acknowledge that he said what he said, and b) come to terms with Jesus’s high literal view of Scripture and its place as the ultimate authority.
Before learning that life requires a Creator(age 50), I did not feel the least bit compelled to investigate the Resurrection. I was a happy darwinian materialistic atheist.
It’s not that evolution needs to be false. However, as I have testified time and again, the TOE turns believers into atheists. Moreover, the evidence from life clearly points to the necessity of a Creator. ID has the opposite power: it can turn skeptics and open minded non believers into believers. That is exactly how it worked for me. Coming to terms with the fact that I was Created and not the result of a mindless process inspired a zeal in me to investigate my Creator. That zeal, in turn, led me to investigate the Resurrection. There is no reason at all for a Christian to not celebrate the clear evidence from life.
It’s not that evolution needs to be false. But for any Christian to believe it, it had better be the truth!
I do not want to come across as unpleasant, but you continue to take what I say very personally and consequently miss my point entirely. I am not “arguing” anything about George. My point, which has been weakly challenged by a few but not refuted continues to be this:
A purposeless process cannot produce an intended result.
I understand that you believe there is purpose in the process of evolution because you believe in God, but until you understand that purely natural processes, in and of themselves, are devoid of purpose, and that any purpose is external to those processes (in other words, the source of the purpose is God, not the natural processes themselves), you will not get what I am saying.
Actually I did reply to your post. Rather than sending you on a chase, here is a copy-and-paste:
Amen, brother!
The problem I would like to get across to my brothers and sisters here at BioLogos by sharing my own testimony is this: As a young man with questions and doubts, my embrace of the TOE logically meant my rejection of the Bible. At that point, God was dead to me. God did not exist. It was fruitless to seek Him, to seek evidence for Him, to investigate the life of Jesus. None of it mattered because the Bible was wrong - dead wrong - on life. The credibility of the Bible was destroyed.
I began researching ID as an atheist. My motives were frankly notorious. I wanted to learn the arguments of ID, so I could counter those arguments effectively. What I found, to my surprise, was a much stronger case for the cause of life than what I had been taught in school. ID did not bring me to Christ, but it brought me to the realization that I had a Creator. At that point, I had a burning desire to know anything I could about my Creator. So I began to research God really for the first time in my life at age 50.
Ultimately, a year later, it was the evidence for the Resurrection that brought me to the cross. Sadly, though, many do not get to that point. Many remain at that dark moment when, having embraced the TOE - a necessary pillar of metaphysical materialism - they realize that the Bible cannot be trusted, and simply walk away for good.
Dennett was right: the TOE is a universal acid that eats through everything. Provine was right: evolution is the greatest engine for atheism ever invented. Dawkins was right: darwin did make it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
I have come here to open the eyes of my brothers and sisters. There is no witness in the TOE. There is, however, good, solid evidence that cannot be overturned, that life is the result of a Creator. The former does indeed have the power to turn believers into atheists. The latter has the power to prevent that from ever happening.
Thanks for the favor of a heartfelt reply, my brother. Before I would venture a reply on hermeneutics, I would like to understand where you are coming from. You have made statements that, at first glance, seem to contradict one another. If you could clarify your position for me, I will be able to respond in a more productive way.
So here’s where I’m confused. On the one hand, you say:
Given that Genesis chapter 1 describes six days of creation ("evening and morning") culminating in the creation of Adam and Eve, it would seem that a “historical,” “very literal” approach would necessarily lead the reader to the belief that all of life, including humanity, was created in something pretty close to its current form in a period of 144 historical, very literal hours. Does that make sense?
On the other hand, you state:
So I invite you to clarify your hermeneutical approach to Genesis 1-3, if indeed you disagree with the YEC hermeneutical approach to that portion of Scripture.
While we’re talking, I am also a bit perplexed by this contention:
Permit me to ask: who was the person who first raised the issue interpreting Genesis 1 - 3 in this thread, Joe: You or I?
Also, Joe, what percentage of my posts, would you say, focus on interpreting Genesis 1 - 3? You just seemed to imply the percentage focused on Genesis 1 - 3 was 100%, if I read you correctly. Do you stand by that assessment?
Would you claim that the proportion of my posts focused on other issues such as evidence from biology, and the philosophy of science and its relationship with Christian faith, is zero percent?
Finally, I call your attention to this interesting point you made:
I accept the authority of Scripture, because God has given the Scripture to His people, and it is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. It helps us see the heart of the issue (our relationship with God) by cutting between soul and spirit, between joints and marrow.
On the other hand: ultimate authority? Really? Is not Christ the Lord of all?
Have a good day, and may the Lord grant you favor in your family, your business, and your testimony of Christ’s love.
Chris Falter
EDIT: It occurs to me that you have profoundly misinterpreted some statements made during the course of examining the definition of the theory of evolution. Abundant evidence has been presented to you that most biologists do not make ultimate claims about teleology, that no scientific endav or makes such claims, etc.–yet you haven’t even acknowledged that evidence, much less grappled with it (at least, in this forum). Instead, you have continued to insist that evolution is an acid, that it is inherently atheistic (rather than agnostic with respect to spiritual matters), and so forth.
I do not think it unreasonable to observe that your fierce convictions about the definition of evolution are congruous with the convictions of the fundamentalist church where you grew up. At the same time, neither I nor anyone else in this thread has explored the motivations behind that fundamentalist definition of evolution. I am quite sure that there’s much more to it than simply arguing over the hermeneutical approach to Genesis 1-3, however.
I would suggest to you, my brother, that you would find it spiritually fruitful to ponder what, at the root, motivates the view that evolution is inherently atheistic and the true Christian must go at it with hammer and tongs. How is that view connected with the believer’s sense of self, and relationship with the community he identifies with, and with the surrounding world? These are questions that get to the heart of what we have been discussing.
I have been urging that reflection, Joe, because my relationship with God grew stronger when I reflected on these questions. I cannot, of course, claim to have reached the end of my journey. But I can affirm to you that the journey is worth the trouble, however risky and dangerous it may seem.
I think that “Evolution” only turns people into atheists if they have some of biblcal literalism that is challenged by the science. If we instead think of God as a God who gives the cosmos and the earth freedom to grow and change there is no problem. We know the universe operates under laws of probability and related to “laws” that are fit for life. If we doubt God in this maybe our idea of God is too small and limited.
Besides which what is better to believe, that God deliberatley created diseases that can affect innocent life or that disease is the downside of freedom?
Some still try to create “proof” of God but I think that faith may actually be validated by the results of goodness, and by the personal testimonies of those changed by faith from something bad to something good.
I am quickly arriving to the conclusion that there is absolutely NOTHING worth talking to you about.
What would you like to call - - to label - - this process, this thing that normal people would describe as “God using Natural Selection and Mutations to produce the human race?”
You are quite right. Any natural process WITHOUT God CANNOT produce an “intended result”.
But BioLogos is not promoting a natural process without God, is it? So why do you continue to re-state and be-labor the issue which is actually, and in reality, virtually OPPOSITE of what you want it to be.
I recommend that we agree to call the process E.G.G. [ Evolution, God-Guided ]. In this way we can avoid using the term Evolution … since you insist on only understanding Evolution as a GODLESS process.
So… does this sound fair? Or are you going to wait another week (presumably so people forget what you were disputing), and start the same foolish discussion over again?
The game is over. You either engage the topic based on how BioLogos writers are presenting it … or move along. I’ll give you two more posts to get it out of your system… and then I’m done with you.
Your stubborn presumptions are wasting EVERYONE’s time.
Of course they do. Try and make a snowflake and see how much technology you need. For a start, you will need 10^18 molecules. Do you have any idea how large that number is? It’s huge. That’s a massive amount of information right there. And where will you get all those molecules? You can’t just buy them from the molecule shop.
You’ll also need nanoscale tools to make a snowflake. To mass produce them on an industrial scale of billions of every year, and each one unique, you’ll need highly advanced factory machinery. The fact that they always have six sides and are symmetrical makes them obviously information rich. Six sides, always symmetrical, look at all the information embedded right there! And the fact that billions are made but none are ever identical, means you need a huge and ever growing database to store the patterns you’ve used before, and another system to check that your new patterns aren’t the same as the ones in the database.
If you found a piece of glass shaped like a snowflake, you would immediately recognize it as the product of intelligent design, and recognize all the signs of information richness and technologically advancement. But you look at a snowflake, which is made from water (much more difficult to shape than glass!), and all you see is a natural process? Inconceivable!
But anyway, I’ve pulled out of you the answer I was looking for.
Thank you. This expresses the validity of the Evolutionary Creationist position perfectly. You’ve summarized it very well; if an artifact can be wholly explained by physics and chemistry, we don’t need to look for an intelligent designer at the artifact level. Now you’re thinking the Biologos way.
I have to protest and contradict the sentence I have highlighted.
I THINK you meant to write something more like this!
“. . . if an artifact can be wholly explained by physics and chemistry, it is a Theist’s belief in God that allows BioLogos supporters to see design and intention in the evolution that Atheists think was done purely by the unintentional unfolding of natural law.”
Keith Furman: “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” (Dobzhansky). Yet, NOTHING IN LIFE makes sense apart from the GOSPEL!!!
First let me say that the Dobzhansky quote is out of date and no longer true. Today nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of Ecology. This is the true that evolutionists do not what to acknowledge. .
Dr. S_**Two comments. **
1. I could not agree more with Keith here. Except to point out that the Gospel is the good news of “Jesus.”
2. The second clause, about the centrality of the Gospel and Jesus, is usually lost in the origin’s debate. [/quote]
Jesus is the Author and Finisher of our faith. Jesus is also the Logos, the Rational WORD of God, through Whom everything including evolution was created.
Therefore if the Bible is true, if the Gospel is true, then Natural Selection is the Power of God shaping life and humanity in God’s own Image. It is as simple as that. It is true or not true.
The evidence indicates that it is true. See Life’s Solution by Simon Conway Morris.
I don’t think changing the level addresses the awkwardness of this phrase:
“… if an artifact can be wholly explained by physics and chemistry, we don’t need to look for an intelligent designer at the artifact level.”
By not defining what you mean by artifact, it leads to troubles.
And since you are implying that evolution is one of these things that can be explained by physics and chemistry, it becomes doubly troublesome…
Deliberately-Stubborn is contending that there is no way to use evolution as an INTENTIONAL process … because his definition of Evolution PROHIBITS the inclusion of God.
This is what you have to deal with when disputing with him…
