Hitchens completely misunderstands the actual debate about natural selection, and his example here completely misses the point.

It is well-settled that when we have a species with a given DNA family, such as salamanders, dogs, cattle, etc., either natural selection or intentional breeding can narrow the DNA pool. For example, we can wind up with Schauzers and Cocker Spaniels out of the same original DNA family. Each dog breed has a smaller DNA pool than all dogs did originally. Natural selection and intentional breeding can achieve specialization, but they narrow a species' gene pool. They don't expand it.

We can wind up with blind salamanders when we started with sighted ones, or with other variations in a given species. No serious critic of natural selection denies this.

In lay terms, the changes that occur in a given species are sometimes called "micro evolution". There is no debate about micro evolution. Those changes to a species involve just rearranging the existing DNA in that species.

The real evolution debate is about something else entirely: how is new DNA created from scratch, especially complex DNA such as is needed for some species ears, eyes, reproductive organs, etc.? It is the nature of such organs that they don't work at all until they are fully evolved, so how is such new DNA created?

If it is created through random chance, through accidental defects in the original DNA, how can random variations account for complex structures in higher species? The complexitiy and sheer volume of DNA in say, a human, dwarfs that of many less complex species. Modern science has not identified any process by which such new DNA can be created by chance, or how a gene pool can be expanded through natural selection.

This is the "macro-evolution" debate. Secularists take on "faith" that such DNA must be created naturally, because their definition of science requires natural explanations for all phenomena observed in nature. Religious people take on "faith" that such complex DNA must be divinely created.

Good points. There really is no "smoking gun" proof that select representatives of a species can or will eventually "branch off" and produce a unique, continuing genetic line that is incompatible with the parent species. The best examples evolutionists have been able to come up with involve relatively minor genetic variations.

For instance, we've been breeding the domestic dog since ancient Egypt, yet any domestic dog breed can mate with any other breed(within size constraints) and produce fertile offspring. The dingo was isolated in Australia for millenia, yet the purebred dingo is either already extinct or fast becoming extinct, because domesticated dogs have been able to infilitrate the gene pool, and produce continuing dog-dingo lines. The flu virus mutates often enough that we need a different vaccine every year to fight it, but its still a flu virus.

The famous black and white pepper moth scenario was not the evolution of a new species, it was a population shift between different color phases. They are both still pepper moths.

regfife wrote:

For instance, we've been breeding the domestic dog since ancient Egypt, yet any domestic dog breed can mate with any other breed(within size constraints) and produce fertile offspring.

But, if you took populations of the largest dogs and the smallest dogs and put them in an environment where they could interact without human intervention reproductively, would they hybridize freely, or stay separate? The caveat 'within size constraints' might be important. If two true-breeding populations are unable to successfully mate due to size incompatibility, then how are they not different species? Would a pack of wild chihuahuas interbreed with a pack of mastiffs, or would they provide dinner?

It's true that Hitchens isn't accurately describing the problems some people have with evolution.

It isn't true that "Modern science has not identified any process by which such new DNA can be created by chance..."

Take a basic course in genetics, and you will learn about many ways in which new sequences are generated. Here's a simple and very well-established one:

<link>

If you are going to criticise evolutionary theory, you need to learn about it. Scientists don't take it on faith that DNA must be created naturally, we just know of the mechanisms by which it is.

As for the emergency of complexity, it doesn't emerge suddenly. This is a huge straw man of IDers. Evolutionary theory doesn't posit that complex structures like eyes suddenly appeared. It posits that they likely emerged through mutation/selection in some stepwise fashion. With virtually every example the ID community comes up with of supposed irreducible complexity, the eye, the bacterial flagellum, the blood clotting cascade, shortly after some comparative biologist comes up with a nice map of how they evolved in such a way, based on known homologous/paralogous structures and sequences.

So don't accuse scientists of taking things on blind faith. We've spent a long time collecting evidence for evolution, and if you bother to learn about it, you can see how overwhelming it really is.

is one that cannot successfully mate with it's antecedants. Then you are out of the realm of "microevolution." Can the blind cave salamanders successfully mate with normal salamanders? If not, you have a new species.

As for mutations in the genetic code, this happens continuously through environmental damage or through simple replication error. If such a mutation is harmless or advantageous to the organism, it survives and gets passed to the offspring. If it is damaging, it reduces the individual's chances of survival and reproduction and dies out.

Thus, mutations are random, but the random mutations are edited by their effect on the robustness of the resulting individual.

It is the nature of such organs that they don't work at all until they are fully evolved,

Ask a person who was born without lenses if they'd give up the limited ability to discern colors that they have. Do you think animals that that have eyespots, but no image-forming or color-discerning ability, are unable to use the ability to tell light from dark? Your argument for irreducible complexity is old, moldy, and consistently disproven.

If it is created through random chance, through accidental defects in the original DNA, how can random variations account for complex structures in higher species?

This indicates a basic lack of understanding of evolutionary processess. "Random chance" doesn't account for complex structures in higher species, and nobody who understands evolutionary theory at greater than a sixth-grade level would ever suggest such a thing.

Modern science has not identified any process by which such new DNA can be created by chance...

Google "gene duplication," see if you don't get an answer to this question.

...or how a gene pool can be expanded through natural selection.

Nobody who understands natural selection or evolutionary theory, or the meaning of the words "gene pool," would make any such claim.

Secularists take on "faith" that such DNA must be created naturally, because their definition of science requires natural explanations for all phenomena observed in nature.

Any meaningful definition of science requires natural explanations for observed phenomena, and therefore, "secularists" don't take anything on faith. The fact that you don't understand something, or haven't bothered to learn about it, doesn't mean that scientists and those who have taken the time to learn about it don't understand it.

Sorry you are pretty much wrong on all of your assertions.

First off

There is no debate about micro evolution

Yeah there is (well not debate per-se, but anti-evolutionary argument). ID posits that any complex organism that is well adapted to its environment was DESIGNED - because otherwise the complex tuning would not occur.

The real evolution debate is about something else entirely: how is new DNA created from scratch,

Wrong again. There is no real debate (other than anti-evolutionary arguement) on how self-replicating, complex organic molecules can self-synthesize. This has been experimentally shown to be feasible and while a paricular DNA strand has not been shown to develop, other self-replicating molecules have.

especially complex DNA such as is needed for some species ears, eyes, reproductive organs, etc.? It is the nature of such organs that they don't work at all until they are fully evolved, so how is such new DNA created?

This has at its core the incorrect assertion that complex organs do not work until fully evolved. As we have seen with eyes, there are a variety of optical sensor paths that "work" but not as well as the human eye, though in other cases they work better in a particular adaptive environment. So there really aren't any such organs that don't have simpler, less functional but still useful antecedants.

If it is created through random chance, through accidental defects in the original DNA, how can random variations account for complex structures in higher species

Actually this isn't in question at all with anyone who has an understanding of the mathematics of non-determinism aka parallelism. The simplest example is the new generation of "multi-core" CPUs. The ability to solve a complex problem is dramatically accellerated by starting down multiple solution paths in parallel. Then whichever one reaches fruition first, or whichever one has the most effective outcome, is the one that "wins". In biology, you essentially have as many possible parallel developments as there are members of the species.

So if you have 10 million proto-salamanders with light sensitive cells (proto-eyes), you have 10 million parallel DNA Development paths all running in parallel. So that's a potential for quite a bit of random variance.

So your claim

Modern science has not identified any process by which such new DNA can be created by chance

Is simply wrong. The path IS well explained, its just that most anti-evolunist don't understand non-deterministic mathematics. There is no "faith" involved. Its simple math. OK not so much simple, - but it still mainstream mathematics

Raleighroader:

Hitchens completely misunderstands the actual debate about natural selection, and his example here completely misses the point.

Ironic. After reading the rest of your post, I would say you are guilty of misunderstanding the debate.

It is well-settled that when we have a species with a given DNA family, such as salamanders, dogs, cattle, etc., either natural selection or intentional breeding can narrow the DNA pool. For example, we can wind up with Schauzers and Cocker Spaniels out of the same original DNA family. Each dog breed has a smaller DNA pool than all dogs did originally. Natural selection and intentional breeding can achieve specialization, but they narrow a species' gene pool. They don't expand it.

This is a poor understanding, and I do hope that this misunderstanding is part of why you think there's a debate, and not some emotional or psychological reason that you, and the Discovery Insitute, are backing up with shoddy understanding of science.

Selection does restrict the genepool, the number of alleles for all loci in the species, but its nominal. Selection works against a specific allele, and sometimes other alleles linked to it.

Any actual shrinkage of a genetic diversity (what you refer to as narrowing a gene pool) in a population would not come about from selection normally. That would be almost surely due to the population size being to small.

A large enough population, or several joining populations of interbreeding species, will maintain high genetic diversity through genetic drift.

That demolishes the first part of your argument.

We can wind up with blind salamanders when we started with sighted ones, or with other variations in a given species. No serious critic of natural selection denies this.

In lay terms, the changes that occur in a given species are sometimes called "micro evolution". There is no debate about micro evolution. Those changes to a species involve just rearranging the existing DNA in that species.

The real evolution debate is about something else entirely: how is new DNA created from scratch, especially complex DNA such as is needed for some species ears, eyes, reproductive organs, etc.? It is the nature of such organs that they don't work at all until they are fully evolved, so how is such new DNA created?

It's quite naive to say that "It is the nature of such organs that they don't work at all until they are fully evolved."

Simply untrue.

You're talking about "real debates" that actually don't exist except for in the minds of people who don't understand evolution, and thus the basis for any debate is totally dependent on their misunderstanding it.

If it is created through random chance, through accidental defects in the original DNA, how can random variations account for complex structures in higher species?

This is the question biologists asked a long time ago, and they actually do have the answers, you just don't understand them.

The complexitiy and sheer volume of DNA in say, a human, dwarfs that of many less complex species. Modern science has not identified any process by which such new DNA can be created by chance, or how a gene pool can be expanded through natural selection.

I just informed you of how a genepool can be expanded by natural selection, in that it's not supposed to. If a population reproduces, genetic diversity is high.

The basics for selection work like this: Most mutations reduce fitness, and are selected against (negative or purifying selection). Sometimes a mutation is equal to something already in the population. This might be fixed or not. If its fixed, diversity goes up, but theres no consequence either way, so you can't predict what will happen if the mutation isn't linked to something else. Rarely, the new mutation gives an advantage and is fixed by positive selection.

This is the "macro-evolution" debate. Secularists take on "faith" that such DNA must be created naturally, because their definition of science requires natural explanations for all phenomena observed in nature. Religious people take on "faith" that such complex DNA must be divinely created.

That's just fallacious logic. A scientist doesn't have to take on "faith" that anything happens naturally. As it stands, scientists can only work with natural things -- that is how they test, predict, and establish knowledge. To equate that with something that takes "faith" because it is not testable and part of a realm or demension which we don't even know exits (contrast that with the realm of "natural" existence, which we darn well know exists) is extremely misleading which is why its a common canard in creationist propaganda.

There is no debate, at least not among serious scientists. You are basically posing two questions:

1) How does new DNA or genes arise?

2) How can random chance account for highly ordered, complex structure.

First, there are many ways in which new DNA can occur, point mutations, frameshifts (which changes every amino acid coded for), large scale deletions or insertions etc. Each germ cell was created by cellular machinery that has quantifiable error rates. The whole process of sexual reproduction seems to be so successful because of the level of genetic variation it creates.

Your complexity argument is really a straw man. The first photosensitive cell survived not because some some descendant in a million years would have eyes. It survived because sensing light gave it a competitive edge. The complexity came later, but each iteration must have been useful in the environment that the organism lived in. Consider a bat's wing. The ancestor of bats clearly was not able to fly, but it survived better because of some little flap of skin. This could have allowed it to survive a fall from a greater height. Over many generations, the proto-wing would evolve greater aeoronautical abilities.

“In lay terms, the changes that occur in a given species are sometimes called "micro evolution". There is no debate about micro evolution. Those changes to a species involve just rearranging the existing DNA in that species.”

>>It can sometimes also take the form of adding new DNA to that species, as the result of a gene duplication or insertion mutation, for example.

“The real evolution debate is about something else entirely: how is new DNA created from scratch, especially complex DNA such as is needed for some species ears, eyes, reproductive organs, etc.?”

>>There is no such debate other than in the minds of creationists, since natural mechanisms capable of resulting in the creation of new DNA not only are known to exist but are known to have been operative in creating new biological systems. The clotting cascade, for example, is the result of the duplication and subsequent mutations of previously existing gene homologs.

“It is the nature of such organs that they don't work at all until they are fully evolved, so how is such new DNA created?”

>>No, it isn’t the nature of such organs that they don’t work at all until fully evolved—you’re making the mistake of presuming that organs as they exist could never have existed in any form other than they currently display.

The eye is a good example of how intermediate stages, each functional but functioning different, each conferring increased fitness compared to no vision at all, could lead to a complex organ as the result of discrete evolutionary changes over time. See Don Lindsay’s summary at <link>

“If it is created through random chance, through accidental defects in the original DNA, how can random variations account for complex structures in higher species?”

>>First, evolution argues that organs AREN’T created through random chance, since selection with respect to environment operates in a non-random manner. Second, why are you characterizing an alteration in pre-existing DNA as a defect, rather than simply a change? Consider the receptor mutation that conferred a resistance to Bubonic plague and now confers resistance to AIDS—by what standard is that a defect, rather than an improvement?

“The complexitiy and sheer volume of DNA in say, a human, dwarfs that of many less complex species.”

>>Perhaps-did you have a point? Complexity doesn’t argue against evolution.

“Modern science has not identified any process by which such new DNA can be created by chance, or how a gene pool can be expanded through natural selection.”

>>Yes, science has. Gene duplication, as I’ve mentioned, will increase the size of the genome, and subsequent mutation of the duplicated gene may result in an allele that confers increased fitness, and if that increase is sufficiently great natural selection would then act to conserve that change. In a few generations the gene pool of the all members of that population may exhibit that expansion. This has been directly observed, by the way, in populations such as the Flavobacterium K-172, where a point insertion mutation increased the size of the genome by one thymidine base pair (resulting in the expression of a novel protein capable of digesting nylon).

“This is the "macro-evolution" debate.”

>>Again, there is no genuine debate. The mechanisms that result in evolutionary change at or below the level of the species are sufficient to explain evolutionary change at higher taxa. In fact, macro-evolution has been directly observed in populations of living organisms in the form of speciation events—new species populations arising by descent from previously existing ones.

“Secularists take on "faith" that such DNA must be created naturally, because their definition of science requires natural explanations for all phenomena observed in nature.”

>>No faith is necessary, since we have seen it happen and understand the mechanisms that result in the creation of new genetic alleles.

“Religious people take on "faith" that such complex DNA must be divinely created.”

>>That’s the first really accurate statement in your post.

I think the basic problem here is that the self-proclaimed "scientific" community and the remaining 99.999999% of people are talking past each other. The only common language that both sides understand is snark and condescension.

It would be nice if the "scientists" stuck to science (i.e. collecting evidence and testinging theories) and refrained from glorifying their computer simulations. Computer models, test tubes, math formulas, their output and predictions, are just a toolset. We should all be able to agree that a tool can help expose evidence, but can't produce it. Maybe our tools can help us discover real evidence some day. But we shouldn't claim that we have evidence of evolution when all we've done is toy with and our expensive "science" kit.

On the other side, we have idiots such as myself who don't name math formulas after ourselves. Nor do I pretend that I can explain the observed behavior of the inanimate universe, much less how my own body works. It would be quite absurd for me to pretend to explain how I, or all of us, was created. But at least I know what I would look like if I tried.

I’ve pointed out where Raleigh’s claims are false, and identified the one accurate statement his post contains. How is that snark?

degsme:

Wrong again. There is no real debate (other than anti-evolutionary arguement) on how self-replicating, complex organic molecules can self-synthesize. This has been experimentally shown to be feasible and while a paricular DNA strand has not been shown to develop, other self-replicating molecules have.

Getting ahead of yourself a bit here. Starting out with "self-replicating complex organic molecules" is ALREADY starting out with an evolved structure.

If you really want to show evolution, start with carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hyrogen, trace elements, and make a self-replicating complex molecule from it, in what are assumed to be the conditions of "old earth".

So far that's been unsuccessful.

Bondsman:

degsme:

Wrong again. There is no real debate (other than anti-evolutionary arguement) on how self-replicating, complex organic molecules can self-synthesize. This has been experimentally shown to be feasible and while a paricular DNA strand has not been shown to develop, other self-replicating molecules have.

Getting ahead of yourself a bit here. Starting out with "self-replicating complex organic molecules" is ALREADY starting out with an evolved structure.

If you really want to show evolution, start with carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hyrogen, trace elements, and make a self-replicating complex molecule from it, in what are assumed to be the conditions of "old earth".

So far that's been unsuccessful.

"If you really want to show evolution, start with carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hyrogen, trace elements, and make a self-replicating complex molecule from it, in what are assumed to be the conditions of "old earth"."

>>You're inappropriately conflating biogenesis with evolution .Evolution makes absolutely no statements or prediction re: self replicating models arising frome elemental precursors, I'm afraid--it only addresses genetic changes in already existing populations of already living organisms.