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Welcome to the discussion group for Making of the Fittest by Sean Carroll. Prompts and posts are student generated. This is a collective effort to engage in discussions that connect the theory of evolution with the biological concepts and themes discussed in our course throughout the year.
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2009
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04/12 - 04/19
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- The next step
- Evolution: why does it really matter?
- The Uses of the Study of Evolution
- Biological Themes
- Diversity of Life
- Why the Genetic Perspective?
- Making of the Fittest Reflection
- The Cambrian Explosion
- The Theory of Evolution vs. The Theory of Economics
- "Preserve the old, but know the new"
- DNA and Evolution
- The Evolution of Eyes
- Is Gene Splicing the Answer?
- Intelligent Design
- Creating a Super-Human Race
- Huxley quote
- Why so much homology ?
- Does ingenuity slow down evolution?
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- ► 03/22 - 03/29 (5)
- ► 03/15 - 03/22 (8)
- ► 03/08 - 03/15 (5)
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04/12 - 04/19
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"Intelligent design" is for anti-Darwinian, pro-religion people. Intelligent design teaches that life on Earth, because of its diversity and complexity, must have been designed by some supeior and more intelligent agent(s). This idea was brought into biology textbooks as an alternative way to teach the origin of life. Creationists supported this idea of intelligent design, but other people did not. There was a court case in 2005 - Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District - in which high school students objected to the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative way to teach the origin of life. Intelligent design was more of a religious movement than a scientific explanation in all reality. Carroll even answers his own question of who the intelligent designer could be by stating "proponents often take pains not to name Him or Her out loud, but God would be a good guess" (243). Some people just couldn't believe that such a complex world could develop from the randomness of natural selection.
ReplyDeleteIn chapter 5, Carroll discussed the idea of "use it or lose it". Carroll describes the case of Saccharomyces kudriavzevii (italicized), a type of baker's yeast that was found on decaying leaves. Normally, baker's yeast converts galactose into usable glucose using an enzymatic pathway. In total, there are seven genes responsible for this pathway. In S. kudriavzevii (italicized), "the text of each galactose gene's code...is obliterated in many places, but the preceding and following paragraphs encoding other genes are untouched" (131). Natural selection selects for the genes that are necessary, and for some reason, the genes for the galactose pathway weren't necessary for the yeast to survive. Therefore, several mutations were given access to the galactose genes until those genes didn't code for the galactose enzymes anymore.
Another example Carroll uses on page 131-132 is Mycobacterium leprae (italicized), a pathogen that causes leprosy. M. leprae's genome has been sequnced, and 1100 fossil genes were found. M. leprae cannot survive on its own, and must live within macrophages. Because M. leprae obtains everything it needs to survive from the host cell, several genes can be "relaxed". Basically, M. leprae didn't ever USE certain genes because of the circumstance, so M. leprae ended up LOSING those certain genes.
The two examples I have given show that natural selection does in fact cause immense complexity and change in species and the idea of intelligent design is "utter nonsense" (244).
Intelligent design is the same basic idea as creationism, that some higher power created the organisms that live on the planet as they exist today. In fact, the only difference between creationism and intelligent design is the term "God," and intelligent design was a term first coined in order to convey religious beleifs without using the term "God."
ReplyDeleteCarroll's entire book is a challenge to intelligent design, because every organism he describes shows some evidence of change over time, meaning that no higher power designed it and placed it on earth as a static, non-evolving creature. The changes in opsin numbers, the appearance of anti-freeze proteins, the loss of hemoglobin in ice-fish, and the development of complex eyes are proof that a designer did not create static creatures for the earth.
My question is, is there any proof of an intelligent designer? I frankly have no incling of any evidence after reading this balanced book.
The theory of intelligent design says that a creator in some cases “god” is the creator of earth and all its inhabitants. This clearly contradicts the belief of evolution because animals were not simply created by “god” they have changed over billions of years to get to the advanced animals that we see today on the earth. Therefore, Carroll’s whole book is evidence proving that evolution exists and therefore that intelligent design is a myth. A specific example, can be seen in pigeons. On page 55 Carroll explains how most pigeons are “blue-barred pigeons” and are constantly being attacked and captured by falcons. The “white-rumped pigeons” are few in number but are captured by the falcons a lot less. This was tested and the “white-umped pigeons” were able to distract the falcons with their coloring making it harder for the falcons to capture them. Over the time of the experiment the amount of “white-rumped pigeons” increased. This shows the process of evolution and natural selection. Since, “white-rumped pigeons” are captured less they have an advantage and are therefore selected for. The increase in the species is showing the evolution of the pigeon which will eventually contain only “white-rumped pigeons”.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the theory of intelligent design can not be proved as a scientific theory as evolution can be, there is no proof that some sort of “creator” does not exist. Science does not have all the answers. No one knows how everything in the entire universe was created. Humans may have been created through evolution but where did LUCA come from? Questions such as these are not answered by evolution.
Intelligent design started out as an attempt to disprove Darwinism scientifically by creationists. The corner stones of this argument, irreducibly complex structures and specific complexity, are used by intelligent design proponents to show that nature contains specimens too complex to be created by a random process. Irreducibly complex structures refer to formations which cannot function if any one of their components is missing. Proponents of intelligent design say irreducibly complex disprove natural selection because the selective advantage of developing all the components of the irreducibly complex structures only manifests itself after the irreducibly complex structure is complete. Thus, believers of intelligent design say that either these structures could not have formed from natural selection which requires changes structure of a species to provide a selective advantage. These believers also use irreducible complexity in attempts to prove that an intelligent designer created the first cell(s) with all the irreducibly complex structures. Proponents of intelligent design also use concepts of specific complexity to argue that the information presented in DNA is to complex to arise by chance; they argue that probability of certain sequences arising randomly is lees than the universal probability bound (10^150).
ReplyDeleteAs Erin notes, Carroll uses the concept of evolution, “use it or lose”, in order to disprove that the first cells contained all the irreducibly complex structures. Carroll argues that either mutations or selective pressures would have changed these irreducibly complex genes before they were able to be represented in modern animals. Carroll also notes the fundamental flaw with the intelligent design argument: no testable assertions. The nature of the intelligent design arguments are such that the arguments cannot by quantitatively tested. Thus intelligent design argument has little credibility and remains simply a theory at best.