Over at
Evolution News this article dated 1/11/12 shows empirically that the Darwinian process degrades rather than constructing new functional systems. The article also states "
It seems like some
notable workers are converging on the idea that the information for life
was all present at the beginning, and life diversifies by losing pieces
of that information. That concept is quite compatible with intelligent
design. Not so much with Darwinism."
So, we have more support for IDvolution.
"The work of Finnegan et al. (2012) strikes me as quite thorough and
elegant. I have no reason to doubt that events could have unfolded that
way. However, the implications of the work for unguided evolution appear
very different to me than they've been spun in
media reports.
The most glaringly obvious point is that, like the results of Lenski's
work, this is evolution by degradation. All of the functional parts of
the system were already in place before random mutation began to degrade
them. Thus it is of no help to Darwinists, who require a mechanism that
will
construct new, functional systems. What's more, unlike
Lenski's results, the mutated system of Thornton and colleagues is not
even advantageous; it is neutral, according to the authors. Perhaps
sensing the disappointment for Darwinism in the results, the title of
the paper and news reports emphasize that the "complexity" of the system
has increased. But increased complexity by itself is no help to life --
rather, life requires
functional complexity. One can say, if
one wishes, that a congenitally blind man teaming up with a congenitally
legless man to safely move around the environment is an increase in
"complexity" over a sighted, ambulatory person. But it certainly is no
improvement, nor does it give the slightest clue how vision and
locomotion arose."
"Finnegan et al.'s (2012) work intersects with several other concepts.
First, their work is a perfect example of Michael Lynch's idea of
"subfunctionalization," where a gene with several functions duplicates,
and each duplicate loses a separate function of the original. (Force et
al., 1999) Again, however, the question of how the multiple functions
arose in the first place is begged. Second, it intersects somewhat with
the recent paper by Austin Hughes (2011) in which he proposes a
non-selective mechanism of evolution abbreviated "PRM"
(plasticity-relaxation-mutation), where a "plastic" organism able to
survive in many environments settles down in one and loses by
degradative mutation and drift the primordial plasticity. But again,
where did those primordial functions come from? It seems like some
notable workers are converging on the idea that the information for life
was all present at the beginning, and life diversifies by losing pieces
of that information. That concept is quite compatible with intelligent
design. Not so much with Darwinism."
