Joe, in the scientific sense of “work,” Spetner hasn’t done any in biology to my knowledge.
It’s also not fallacious to discredit any claim of expertise.
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Hi brother Joe,
Hope you and yours are doing well today.
I was refuting the arguments advanced by you and Spetner. If you think that refuting arguments is the same thing as ad hominem, there is nothing I can do to help you. But maybe you would like another opportunity to answer this question that you decided to ignore in your most recent post:
Answering this question would help us understand how it is that you have arrived at your method of applying the definition of ad hominem. I look forward to your answer, Joe.
Moving on… since you do not seem to enjoy discussions about which sources one has read, I will refrain from any further discussion of that topic.
Moving on again…
Spetner made ad hominem attacks when he claimed that a large group of fellow scientists were committing not a mistake, but a fraud, when they assembled the Archaeopteryx fossil. If he had later repudiated the claims of fraud and apologized, or even backed off the accusation of fraud and said the British Museum had been merely mistaken, I would not have mentioned the incident. Unfortunately, Spetner has never backed off his spectacular claims of fraud, to my knowledge. If you can find any evidence to the contrary, Joe, by all means bring that evidence to our attention. It would reflect well on Spetner. I always rejoice in true reconciliation.
By the way, the fact that an astronomer–who went to his grave denying the overwhelming evidence for Big Bang cosmology, no less–supported Spetner’s accusations of paleontological fraud does not particularly help the case for Spetner. In my opinion.
Based on Spetner’s own essays and the ENV descriptions of his works, Spetner’s most recent book (hereafter, TER) is devoted to providing evidence in favor of the model he built in his earlier “Not By Chance.” (NBC) In TER he certainly didn’t repudiate anything he wrote in NBC. The two books work together. Thus refutations of NBC are quite pertinent to the validity of Spetner’s thought. You really ought to address those refutations point by point, Joe, if you think Spetner’s writings are worth defending.
In any case, since you want to discuss TER, let us go there. In his summary of TER, Spetner made several points in favor of what he had previously written in NBC. I will provide his points in italics and my responses in normal font:
Spetner: The probabilistic models in mainstream biology do not support evolution (“it has never been shown that the probabilities of the alleged evolutionary events, according to the theory, are anything but negligibly small”).
Now we see the importance of the critique of Spetner’s mathematical models in NBC! Spetner’s claim, and his model, do not take into account these factors:
- the role of neutral changes,
- the combinatorial possibilities of population genetics (his model assumes linear changes across a single line of parentage)
- the actual mechanisms of enzymes binding to substrates.
- the complexity and extremely high dimensionality of the maxima within an ever-evolving ecosystem.
Spetner: Epigenetic mechanisms demonstrate that non-random responses to environmental factors can be transgenerational.
These are adaptive responses, not a form of evolution. The epigenetic mechanisms are supported by the genome, just as the genome supports hormonal responses to environmental factors.
Spetner: “There is no example of a random mutation that adds heritable information to the genome”
Spetner goes on to a discussion of pupfish and antibiotic resistance among bacteria, but he fails to mention many well-known examples, such as the appearance of nylonase by a point-shift mutation. He was also seemingly unaware of the appearance of the “antifreeze” mechanism in Notothenioids, described by Levin here:
Perhaps an example of how new information emerges in genomes by evolutionary processes would help you to understand. There is a collection of about 100 fish species, called Notothenioids, that live in the frigid waters of the Antarctic. Other fish can’t live there because their blood would freeze. These fish can live in this environment because they produce an anti-freeze protein. Where did the gene for this protein, this new information, come from? It evolved from a duplicate of a completely different gene that encodes a digestive enzyme called trypsinogen. In fact, it arose from within the non-coding region of the trypsinogen gene by mutational expansion of a short region of DNA. How do we know this? The antifreeze gene still contains remnants of the original gene. I have linked to a paper that describes this addition of information to the genome. Please read this and give it some thought. I am happy to provide more detail if anything is unclear. The “accidental nature” of the mutational changes should be evident, as should the selective advantage to a fish that can express this novel function.
http://www.pnas.org/content/94/8/3485.ful
I don’t expect Spetner to have a voluminous knowledge of the biological literature, given that he is a physicist. But I would expect him to avoid making unjustified claims about a literature in which he is not fully conversant.
Spetner: “the trees derived from morphology and from molecular sequences fail to agree as one would expect if common descent were true.”
Biologists are aware of factors that can lead to disagreements between morphology and molecular sequences, such as the incomplete fossil record and the confounding influence of convergent and parallel evolution. Thus Spetner’s attempt to refute the overall congruence of the morphological and molecular trees by anecdotes falls short.
“the concept of convergence was invented to explain away many discrepancies in the phylogenetic trees”
Actually, the concept of convergence was first articulated by British biologist Richard Owen (1804 - 1892). Again, I don’t expect Spetner to be an expert in biology. I just expect him to refrain from making unsupported claims about a literature that he hasn’t read in depth.
Let us move on from Spetner.
I will state for the record that I agree on theological grounds with non-random evolution. I am neither a philosopher nor a biologist, so I am unable to provide details about how God providentially interacted with life on earth over the past billions of years. I simply believe it as a matter of faith,
I would also point out that the theory of evolution itself does not depict evolution as random. Natural selection, a decidedly non-random factor at any particular place and time, is very important to the theory.
The only thoroughgoing refutation of fine tuning of which I am aware is the multi-verse hypothesis. However, the multi-verse hypothesis to date seems to be largely an exercise of faith, since the ability to test empirical observations is so elusive. If we reach the point where the MV hypothesis can make empirically verified predictions, I would abandon fine tuning as evidence for a Creator. I would nevertheless believe in a Creator–to be more precise, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob–based on historical evidence and personal experience.
Have a great day, Joe!
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Prof. Spetner is quite the loose cannon! Sometimes rabbinical flights of fancy can really soar !
"Spetner was inspired by the rabbi David Luria (1798 - 1855), who calculated that, according to Talmudic sources, there was 365 originally created species of beasts and 365 of birds.
“Spetner developed what he called his “nonrandom evolutionary hypothesis”, which proposed rapid microevolution (which he attributed to a “built-in ability” in animals and plants to “respond adaptively to environmental stimuli”), but rejected macroevolution.”
Spetner has been described as a Jewish Creationist. In 1980, at a conference for Jewish scientists, Spetner claimed that Archaeopteryx was a fraud. Spetner continued his attack on the modern evolutionary synthesis in his book Not by chance! Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution.
“Spetner is a critic of the role of mutations in the modern evolutionary synthesis. Spetner claims mutations lead to a loss of genetic information and that there is no scientific evidence to support common descent.”
“We see then that the mutation reduces the specificity of the ribosome protein and that means a loss of genetic information. … Rather than saying the bacterium gained resistance to the antibiotic, it is more correct to say that is lost sensitivity to it. … All point mutations that have been studied on the molecular level turn out to reduce the genetic information and not increase it.”
— Lee Spetner, Not by Chance, Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution
[END OF QUOTE]
I remind you once again of the springboard for this entire tangent. This is you quoting me:
You told Jon you could easily work with this definition:[quote=“glipsnort, post:1069, topic:4944”]
DNA sometimes encodes functional, prescriptive information (FPI) for making biologically useful proteins.
[/quote]
To this I add that FPI requires the arbitrary (arbitrary in that they could have been otherwise) conventions of code, syntax, and semantics, and that FPI instructs.
Until now, I have been attempting to reason with you within the terms of your example of FPI coming from a non-intelligent source. FPI does not and cannot arise de novo. Occasionally a copying error can occur that can still provide a coherent message, but that can only happen because the conventions of code, syntax and semantics which are already in place, allow the possibility.
The source of any FPI is the information system itself.
When we trace FPI to its source, that source is always an intelligent agent, and never natural processes.[quote=“glipsnort, post:1064, topic:4944”]
A word of advice: Inventing motives and assigning them to your opponents may make you feel good, but it doesn’t advance your argument.
[/quote]
Forgive me for attributing this motive to you. It is true however that mutation/selection is the mechanism for the TOE. It appears to me that you are arguing for the TOE. Perhaps I erred in attributing this motive to you, but the motive is certainly not an invention of mine and I would be delighted to learn that you are not arguing for the TOE[quote=“glipsnort, post:1064, topic:4944”]
You contend that in both cases, the process is the same. It is not.
The generation of functional information from random mutations is indeed the same.
[/quote]
No its not, and you admit as much when you say, "[quote=“glipsnort, post:1064, topic:4944”]
I agree that random mutations are used by the immune system to serve a specific function.
[/quote]
From the beginning, my assertion has been supported by the observation that life requires FPI and technologically advanced engineered systems (such as the immune system), and that FPI and technologically advanced engineered systems are very reliable signatures of the activity of intelligent agency. Empirical observations of what intelligent agents are and are not capable of, and ontological truths about natural processes are what make these reliable signatures of intelligent agency. As far as I am aware, the claims of abiogenesis constitute far weaker assertions.
You have offered the mutations of the adaptive immune system against my claim, but those mutations simply are not available without the context of FPI and the adaptive immune system. You claim that the mutations constitute novel genetic information, but you really need to understand that they do not constitute the source of the FPI.
Hi Joe,
Hope you and yours are doing well. My wife and I just returned to coastal South Carolina to an intact house with electricity. Very, very grateful! The best part was the traveling companion we brought with us, an elderly widow (neighbor) who is spiritually seeking. I invite those of you who practice prayer to lift her up before the Lord.
The reason you are having a discussion with our friend and brother Steve (@glipsnort) is that he has asserted that the immune system uses a random generation + selection process to produce FPI. The long discussion about Shakespeare hasn’t really addressed his assertion. Speaking just for myself, I still find his argument convincing.
I would even extend Steve’s line of thinking. The immune system has a design specified by information in the DNA, but it uses an evolutionary algorithm. Analogously, all of creation itself has a design (equations and constants of physics, chemistry, etc.) specified by the mind of our Creator, but it uses an evolutionary algorithm to produce the life we observe…and enjoy.
Blessings,
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Great. We’re in agreement: the source of the FPI in my B cells is the biochemical information-generating system of my immune system.
And in the next sentence you contradict yourself. My immune system is not intelligent – but you just said it was the source of the FPI, as indeed it is.
Of course I’m arguing for the TOE – I’m a biologist, after all. Arguing for a position is not a motive. I objected to you inventing a motive for why I am arguing for the TOE.
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