Post #2 of 3: Analysis
Please read the above post first.
Excerpts from the Casey Luskin article:
In September, 2007, I posted a link to a YouTube video where Richard Dawkins was asked to explain the origin of genetic information, according to Darwinism. I also posted a link to Dawkins’ rebuttal to the video, where he purports to explain the origin of genetic information according to Darwinian evolution.
- Which is false. Dawkins explicitly says he didn’t respond to the question because the answer could not fit into a sound bite but required an extended period of time. Thus his article. Luskin claiming that he posted Dawkins answer is nothing more than an attempt to undermine him, since he did no such thing on video.
Dawkins writes, “In my anger I refused to discuss the question further, and told them to stop the camera.” Dawkins’ highly emotional response calls into question whether he is capable of addressing this issue objectively.
- Dawkins has been lied to and is being demanded to answer questions. Yet, to his credit, he finished the interview because he did agree to it. So he did not back down from his word, despite being lied to. Dawkins is on record as saying he will not debate ID advocates, so his quandary in the duplicitous interview is evident. I’m actually surprised he had the composure to continue. So this is yet another sad attempt by Luskin to knock his opponent’s credibility, not his intellectual position.
Before continuing, it should be noted that Luskin is on the payroll of The Discovery Institute, a group whose job it is to uphold ID. His very credentials make the argument suspect, since scientists have no stake in taking sides…objectivity is their profession, not a particular agenda. So it is in their best interests to report the facts as they see them. Their findings may promote one viewpoint over another, but they are not being paid to say one or the other, simply to report the facts. The same cannot be said for Luskin.
Still, if this is so, his argument should be porous. It is.
…anyway, on to the science (or lack thereof).
- I shall skip the first section of the article to get to what I believe to be the heart of the matter. In the first section, of both articles actually, they define ‘information’ to suit their particular needs. Semantics, really, even for Dawkins, since one can find a definition for it that suits opposite opinions quite easily. Neither seems more right than the other unless it can be backed by science.
- I shall attempt to paraphrase the main argument of Dawkins before posting Luskin’s rebuttal: Gene duplication accounts for increase in genome information. Genes can and do duplicate themselves. The majority of genetic information is vast amounts of duplicated material, commonly referred to as “junk” DNA (more on this later). Even Luskin doesn’t argue that they duplicate. But that leaves us with nothing but copies of the same gene. This is where random mutation comes in, because copying fidelity among genes isn’t 100%. Mutation, combined with natural selection and unfathomably long amounts of time, account for gene variation among the duplicated genes. Thus, the total information increases because you have a wide array of genes that, through natural selection, have been chosen because they promote survival. Luskin, of course, sees fault with this.
I now have 2 questions to ask of Darwinists who claim that the mechanism of gene duplication explains how Darwinian evolutionary processes can increase the information content in the genome:
(1) Does gene duplication increase the information content?
(2) Does gene duplication increase the information content?
Asking the question twice obviously does not double the meaningful information conveyed by the question. How many times would the question have to be duplicated before the meaningful information conveyed by the list of duplicated questions is twice that of the original question? The answer is that the mere duplication of a sentence does NOT increase the complex and specified information content in any meaningful way.
- This was answered in my synopsis of Dawkins point: That mutation and natural selection combine to foster new genes into successive generations. But the truly perplexing part about Luskin’s article is that he provides the same answer later on in his article. So what, if anything, was the point of the quotation I posted (he devotes even more time to this point)?? There isn’t one, except to try to pick battles he knows he can win. It amounts to a moot point, because it means nothing in the article, but to an untrained eye it looks like a victory in the ID column.
Darwinists laud the mechanism of gene duplication because they claim it shows how one copy of a gene can perform the original function, freeing up the other copy to mutate, evolve, and acquire a new function. But the new genetic information must somehow be generated during that subsequent evolution of the gene. To explain how Darwinian processes can generate new and meaningful genetic information, Darwinists must provide a detailed account of how a duplicate copy of a gene can evolve into an entirely new gene. But ask Darwinists for details as to how the duplicate copy then starts to perform some new function, and you probably won’t get any.
- Here’s the answer I was talking about. Except he has an ultimatum for Darwinists: they must show precisely how one gene becomes another very different gene, step by step, before they can be believed. Before responding to this I feel it is important to include his full argument.
Yet the crucial question that must be answered by the gene duplication mechanism is, exactly how does the duplicate copy acquire an entirely new function? Stephen Meyer explains in Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington that it is difficult to imagine how duplicated genes acquire new functions since they must successfully undergo “neutral evolution” and traverse a random walk in order to acquire a new function:
- The crux of this point is that the likelihood of a gene incurring numerous random mutations, surviving each, and eventually having a new function is extremely small. And in this much, he is right. But he is too narrow-sighted to realize the flaw of his logic: he is working with too short a timeframe. Imagine a gene duplicating itself numerous times, then a certain percentage of those genes mutate every generation and make more duplicates. Pretty soon you have a LOT of variation, without many generations. Granted, early in the evolutionary process, most of the host organisms will die without reproducing. But a certain percentage will survive because the mutations will be advantageous or at least neutral in survival terms. Then add the hundreds of millions of years upon which evolution is founded, and it becomes more preposterous to think that complexity wouldn’t arise via natural selection.
Rather than giving a step-by-step mutational account of how a duplicated gene acquires a new function, Dawkins’ article substitutes bland evidence of sequence identity between different genes as evidence for Darwinian evolution by gene duplication. Dawkins gives the example of the evolution of various globin genes that he claims arose via gene duplication. His evidence is that “[c]areful letter-by-letter analysis shows that these different kinds of globin genes are literally cousins of each other, literally members of a family.” Of course the “[c]areful letter-by-letter analysis” simply means finding amino acid sequences that are similar or identical between two different proteins. David Swift explains that such claims of relationship “are inferred solely on the basis of assuming a common ancestry and then deriving a route of polypeptide evolution, typically the most parsimonious one, to fit the known present day amino acid sequences and consistent with the observed pattern of conserved amino acids.”
- Here is Dawkins backing his point by showing similarity among variant genes. We know, for example, that all animals, and thus gene pools, are technically “cousins” because we can trace back to a common ancestor. For many of these ancestors, we have fossil records. So we don’t assume ancestry, as Luskin says. We prove it with empirical evidence, then work from that basis. Once again, many ID’ists like demanding complete fossil records before they believe this, which (of course) we do not have and will never have due to the rarity of fossils. But partial records, radio-carbon dating techniques, and DNA analysis of these animals are usually enough for rational individuals.