And every year thereafter. He hasn’t learned a thing.
Nelson showed up in the comments to the earlier post, declaring his intent to publish something to clarify the situation later today. By some miracle, he has already managed to post something today, and not in 2031. Unfortunately, it’s still complete rubbish and empty rhetoric.
As is customary, he begins with some faux flattery and wheedling and a pretense to acknowledging that his earlier efforts were failures. There is no way to calculate ontogenetic depth. He thought it ought to be easy, but it isn’t. Therefore, evolution requires foresight.
What?
That makes no sense. He doesn’t offer any defense of ontogenetic depth 1.0, or ontogenetic depth 2.0, or any other version of his original crackpot idea, but instead offers us a problem in developmental biology, tells us that he can’t imagine an answer, and therefore his failure to comprehend is offered as evidence that evolution requires intelligent design. I thought he was supposed to have had training in philosophy, and he doesn’t see the problem in his logic?
Here’s the problem he can’t grasp, illustrated with his own diagram. Nematode early development is characterized by a series of specific cell divisions, where each daughter cell then follows a specific fate. The daughter cells are going to go on to form ectoderm, mesoderm, endoderm, etc., in a very predictable pattern that is well documented in the literature.
The initial cell cleavages following fertilization in C. elegans. AB and P1 are the primary daughter founder cells, giving rise to the AB, MS, and C lineages (containing mixtures of ectodermal and mesodermal cells), D (muscles), E (intestine), and P4 (germ cells). Abbreviated CEICP in text.
He calls this pattern CEICP, for “C. elegans initial cleavage pattern”. Then, in an exercise in absurdist reification, he asks when this specific pattern evolved. Was it late in evolution, when the worm was an organism with a thousand cells? That can’t be, he says, because what did the worm do with all of its cells before it had the division program? Was it early in evolution, when the worm was only made up of a few cells? That can’t be, because it wouldn’t need the functionality of of the pattern until it had a lot of cells.
Facepalm time. Nelson doesn’t have even the vaguest understanding of either evolution or development.
Why is he portraying the evolution of the worm as a progressive march that increases the number of cells? An early form could have had a mass of cells with relatively little differentiation, and the pattern emerged step by step as a refinement of that mass.
Why is he assuming the whole CEICP had to emerge at once? There’s a simple phenomenon called symmetry breaking that is revealed in his own diagram, and that diagram explains the whole process. The zygote divides into two different cells, AB and P1. Two cell types, at the two cell stage. Evolving the mechanism to do that is the first step, and then it can break symmetry in each sublineage to lead to more differentiation. It didn’t have to happen all at once in one organism.
Hypothetical suggestion: an early evolutionary decision would have been to set aside one population of cells, P4 or the germ line, from the somatic line. A primitive multicellular organism would have been just germ line cells in a colonial mass. Then another evolutionary step would have subdivided one of those lines into specialist roles.
Why is he assuming that C. elegans evolved progressively from simple to the complex form now? I don’t think the worm now is the direct result of increasing complexity. There’s good evidence that the nematode is partly the product of a paring away of developmental pathways — that an earlier ancestor would have been messier and less direct in its development. The specificity and precision of worm cleavage patterns now is partly the result of refinement of the mechanisms of segregation of tissue types. It wasn’t just a matter of “Hey, presto, here’s a lineage mechanism that works to precisely and reproducibly generate cell types with minimal slop.”
You would think Nelson would learn.
Before PZ’s critique, ontogenetic depth (OD) seemed pretty obvious to me. The metric could be calculated as a straightforward product in any animal species, by multiplying the number of adult cell types by the number of cell divisions, from fertilization and first cleavage onward, yielding a good estimate for comparing developmental complexity among the animals. Smaller animals with fewer cell types should exhibit a lesser degree of OD than larger animals with more cell types.
It seemed obvious to him, but he was wrong. He completely misunderstood everything, leading him to conclude he had a strong case against evolution.
Yet here he goes again, thinking he has a strong case against evolution, based on his goofy little thought experiment.
Learn from the past. Isn’t it more likely that once again, he has been misled by his preconceptions, and the most likely resolution of his conundrum for evolutionary biology lies in Paul Nelson’s lack of understanding, rather than throwing out modern biology?
Check in here next year for another episode of “Paul Nelson’s confident ignorance leads him astray again”.
It is worth noting that, as is standard operating procedure, ENV isn’t allowing comments. God literally forbid that the faithful see somebody responding to Nelson’s, erm, Intelligent Design Science™, with, y’know, actual science as practiced by actual scientists. We can’t have that.
Anyway, seeya next year! Can’t wait to see what actual science reveals about the living world in the next 12 months as Nelson, no doubt, ignores his own “theory” and phones some graphics-festooned bullshit in to ENV at the last possible second.
Whaaaaaat!!!! A creationist using the argument from personal incredulity? I’m shocked I tell you, SHOCKED!
He should try this experiment. Toss a coin a thousand times, noting the sequence produced. What’s the probability of that sequence being produced? It’s one in 2 to the 1000. That’s such a vanishing probability that only an intelligent mind could have designed the sequence! I think that’s the problem with IDiots, apart from captiousness – they can’t see the difference between “this pattern” and “all possible patterns”, and this in turn comes from their “great chain of being” assumption, including that Creation culminates in Man (preferably white, male, rich and English speaking).
@2 FossilFishy
I am personally incredulous of your incredulity, therefore i’m going to possit that god made you that way.
This guy cracks me up. “Evolution is too complex for my intelligent mind so the only logical explanation is an intelligent mind!”
Argument from ignorance without even a pretense of anything more compelling.
PZ wrote:
This is exactly the same story you gave me at the Society for Developmental Biology (SDB) meeting in 2004. It didn’t work then, and it doesn’t work now, as I explained in detail in 2011:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/04/understanding_ontogenetic_dept_1045581.html
So you’re right: I will be back next year, and you will too.
One would think that if your “A happens and then B happens” cartoon scenario had any biological realism, someone would have used it already to explain the origin of the nematode body plan. Or any other metazoan body plan. But the literature is empty. And you’ll notice that your story doesn’t actually explain the origin of the C. elegans cleavage pattern.
BTW, for anyone who’s interested: this evolutionary puzzle was the subject of my poster at the 2014 SDB annual meeting, “The Target Problem in Characterizing Early Metazoan Developmental Sequences.” I’ll send the poster pdf to anyone who wants it; contact me at paul.alfredp@gmail.com.
It didn’t work then, and it doesn’t work now, as I explained in detail in 2011…
Did you explain an alternative explanation that works better? Other than “it’s really complex, therefore God,” that is?
Seriously, your blithering sound like that old “what good is half an eye?” gambit, which has already been debunked — why yes, it’s perfectly possible to have a useful “half an eye” (as in, a simpler eye that does less than a human eyes but still serves a purpose).
Kinda sad that the creationists are now saying even a WORM is too complex to have evolved naturally. What’s next on their “irreducible complexity” list — acorns growing into oak trees? Water organizing itself into ice crystals and snowflakes?
BTW, for anyone who’s interested: this evolutionary puzzle was the subject of my poster at the 2014 SDB annual meeting…
Wow, a POSTER? Is there a peer-review process for posters? Pretty soon you’ll graduate to billboards!
Toss a coin a thousand times, noting the sequence produced. What’s the probability of that sequence being produced? It’s one in 2 to the 1000. That’s such a vanishing probability that only an intelligent mind could have designed the sequence!
The real kicker here is that this logic refutes any divine-creation story more conclusively than it refutes evolution. How many possible Universes can an all-powerful God have created? An INFINITE number, of course, since he’s God and he can do anything and everything he wants. So what’s the probability that God would create this Universe out of the infinite number of alternatives? 1 in infinity — which is to say zero. Not “essentially zero,” mind you, not “vanishingly small,” but really truly exactly literally zero point zero zero zip zilch nada buggerall fuggadaboudit. Therefore while evolution is only wildly improbable, divine creation is literally impossible.
Oops, I forgot to finish it off with “QED.” Which I guess is Latin for DUH.
paulnelson58, you said you’d use the other thread to respond to comments, but I guess it isn’t necessary. What I’m gathering is that it’s just an argument from incredulity, filled out with some sciencey-sounding noise. I was hoping you might have something less pathetic to rant about for years on end.
Sorry Paul, your unevidenced and unscientific opinion in no way refutes science. Only more science refutes science. And if you want it to be considered science, you must perforce publish in the peer reviewed scientific literature. A website where you presuppose the answer is drivel. Just like your idea, nothing but drivel. Expected from those who believe in phantasms.
Raging Bee, #9:
That’s very sloppy. If a god wants to make an infinite number of universes and can do so, it doesn’t need to make only one. The probability is 1 that a god makes all of them, because being able to do it and wanting to do it more or less logically entails that this god did that. But if we have a god which doesn’t want to do that, then something else is the case.
If it only made one, having other hypothetical possibilities doesn’t constrain that or affect the objective probability of it occurring at all, since those hypotheticals aren’t objectively real things which represent something happening in the actual world (or set of worlds). According to their hypothesis, there aren’t any constraints on what causes a god to make one choice instead of another, like there are when you or I make choices.
Those physical constraints on us, which “cause” us to choose certain things, have to do with the actual background environment we find ourselves in (or else our epistemic state of uncertainty about what that environment actually is — but that’s also a very sloppy and shifty way to think about it). That actual state of affairs is what determines the probabilities of me acting one way or another, instead of being entailed directly as a logical matter by me wanting it and being capable of anything that’s logically consistent. If you get rid of any determining state of affairs, because a god is a freely-willed agent who can do anything and everything it wants, you’re just lost. You can’t say anything about the probability of this or that because there is no other “this or that” to refer to in their theory. There is a fact about whether it did this or that (which is totally arbitrary, given the whims of this deity), but no facts about what the chances are of it doing this or that.
Good grief. This is the standard Ken Ham question — “where did the first man find the first woman to mate with?”
Creationists apparently do not possess clocks nor calendars and have zero ability to assess the passage of time.
Consciousness rasta’s comment didn’t seem quite clear enough, so Google Translate helped:
It’s a big mess. O code generation infinitely some places, and it does not have to be someone. And there is a possibility of the formation of the sub-code tattoo Leslie, more or less, this code is logical desire to get a tattoo for him. Progress is a value FN Tattoo truancy ceiling not clean the house, if you can reduce the OS code and the Archos Internet.
We accept only the F theoretical chance to go top of the house to another person or legal tattoo (or the world), the actual name of the fair in the real world, this goal is likely to happen there effeithio. In theory, if you decide to write your code in case dewis limit unrhyw the rest of the day, and I am very impressed with you.
The house is part of the environmental conditions, a real alternative and uncertainties background eipistéimeolaíocht ynghylch (their “why” more than we have been limited in practice, the physical environment, the Vice-President to work to get a tattoo – but, on reflection ynghylch) further decisions, very dirty . Congress, I serve as a potential problem in some way before anything directly on the current state of the events I want to publish your logic, nothing to remove the desire and the logic and consistency where possible. There you have it you want to know the status and willingness free agent in grid code when all complete kit, there is not anything you can, Leslie important. This “like” what’s the difference theory, ynghylch, see the tattoo is not able to find something to say that this is a great option as Leslie. Ynghylch huge tattoo tattoo ynghylch than in reality, but the reality is that there is a chance (imuiroyi divine issuing the group).
Now that’s a lot clearer.
The personal incredulity and the ‘thought experiment’ are deja vu with regards to Paul’s previous arguments on both abiogenesis and metamorphosis. A one-ring circus.
jacksprocket:
I don’t know if there’s something specific you don’t get about how probabilistic arguments can be misused, since you don’t say. There aren’t good reasons for believing in gods, if that’s what you’re worried about, but thanks for chiming in.
@consciousness razor:
yeah, except you’re missing the part where Raging Bee never stipulated that god wants to.
Moreover, the fundie Xians have a theological investment in there being no life anywhere else in this universe …while I haven’t seen them address the question of multiple universes from a theological perspective, I have seen them laugh at physicists who take the idea seriously merely for taking the idea seriously.
What makes you assert that god wanting to create All the Universes! is relevant to this discussion of this particular god?
Let’s start with the hypothetical Raging Bee did. There are infinite (of some cardinality) possible universes that a god could have created. We do already know there is a universe, so the story goes that it chose to make this one by selecting among those possibilities (wanting or choosing that, because it’s supposedly an entity which wants and chooses, like we do). However, it could have chosen to make all of those possibilities into actual universes, not just the one we know about. That’s a hypothetical and logical possibility, which reveals something about how the logic shifted in RB’s argument. Also, epistemically, for all we know, there may be other actual universes. Although personally I have strong doubts about multiverse theories as they’re presented in physics, that is a possibility.
Anyway, if it could have made them all, we can stop. There’s nothing to calculate. It’s supposedly omnipotent, so it can do anything it wants. We can make the charitable assumption that the powers implied by “omnipotence” are supposed to be logically consistent. Nothing can make square circles even with omnipotence, but it can do all of the logically possible and self-consistent things.
So, saying “it wants X” is a shorthand way of saying “it’s possible for it to do X” in this context. It does whatever it does, and it can do any or all of those things. The only (totally arbitrary) limitation on whatever actual result occurs is what it wants to happen. And there’s no reason to believe it can’t want to make just this universe, some other universe, lots of universes or all of the possible universes — certainly not because they are “too many” choices which makes it so “improbable” as to be “impossible” for this thing which can do all logically possible things. If some universes a god could have made rule out other universes, then that of course can’t happen. But that isn’t RB’s argument.
We can’t do whatever we want without restriction, nor can we do infinite things or choose among infinite sets, nor are we undetermined and “free” generally, but we’re not the sorts of being stipulated in the discussion. So, probabilities at least make sense for talking about us, because our choices are in the context of an environment and a history which determine our behavior and how likely any given result will be.
How likely is it that I’ll go to the store tomorrow? Well, I don’t know the actual figure, but it is something nonzero, however small. Whatever that is is determined the physical states I’m in. If you listed more and more things I could do until you came up with an infinite number of choices that are possible for me, I won’t actually be able to consider all of those as actions that I’ll take. But I will nevertheless do at least one of the possibilities, despite the fact they are an infinity of them, because I’ll be doing something as long as I’m not dead tomorrow. That infinity is just a hypothetical abstract thing you dreamed up, which isn’t telling me about the actual state of the world that I’m living in — so you can’t derive probabilities for my actions that way. That’s not how you would do it, if probabilities were applicable.
But even according to the believers, there aren’t any such states determining what a god wants to do. It just does whatever the fuck it does, as a prime mover, with no prior state or cause, and we’re supposed to be amazed about that and believe it’s true.