What happens when they hold an Intelligent Design conference and one of the scientist accidentally admits that they saw evolution happen right in their own lab???? They just shut down the discussion. Read the last paragraph....

i'm sure the "beneficial mutation" was intelligently designed.

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The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

...even if the question and answer period was not.

I'm curious to know just what would evidence for intelligent design actually consist of? Note that pointing at something and saying that it looks designed isn't actually evidence.

Of course; by the mind of the observing scientist interacting at a Quantum level with the DNA of the organism.


(Slinks off, hoping reference is understood.)

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No, but it's the only evidence they've got.

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Maybe a fossilized 400 million year old genetics lab would be evidence? Or perhaps a signed confession from a Denebulan saying, "It's a fair cop. I'm the one what done it."

I'm reading a very interesting book by Sean Carroll, called "Endless forms, Most beautiful" about evo devo. Its very good and explains in very understandbale way the gene toolkit responsible for the body part development of all embryos across ALL animal kingdoms. The idea that the same genes are responsible for developing a huge diversity of biological anatomy is quite incredible, but well explained by Carroll.

It certainly de-mystified much of evolutionary development from my perspective.

Yes, and I wager an important thing that comes from considering a book like that is that, although species typically evolve on million-year timescales, which seems pretty rapid, the basic genetic toolkit they draw from had more like billions of years to develop. I think a lot of the ID arguments seem to suggest that all the functioning elements of any animal had to evolve with that animal, rather than seeing that the elements often evolved independently over much longer timescales and were then incorporated into that animal as it selected from that pre-existing biomolecular toolkit.

Ken G,

I must admit i dont know much about the ID argument. I read a small portion of a book called "Darwin's black box" and in that book which i believe advocates ID, the author was arguing that the "eye" would have had to evolve in each species independently of the others. Or something like that.

But it seems the science on the toolkit genes we all share with all animals is pretty hefty evidence against the idea of the same complex body parts spontaneously evolving in thousands of species.

That nature only invents the wheel once, but then keeps improving on the original model makes logical sense from an efficiency perspective.

In Carroll's excellent book he describes how genes engineer the embryo, by mapping them out and marking areas at which the correct appendages of bodily hemispheres will grow. They appear to do this with sort of longitude and latitude lines in the form of a matrix or grapgh. I have to admit feeling a lot closer to the animal kingdom than i did before i started reading this book.

Whats also facinating is how the toolkit genes are all grouped together in the genome and in a linear order according to the linear placement of body parts and appendages; so like from head ---) toes. At least nature works in an understandable and logical fashion. Since we are the product of such mechanics then i guess it makes sense that it "appears" logical to us.

However, there does still appear to be some mystery regarding how and when nature stumbled across these toolkit genes. I suppose ID "could" be responsible for the originals but then why do the original genes start out so primitive? Surely if the gene toolkit was pre-made or designed by some intelligence it could have made a much more sophisticated toolkit from the outset. Why design a toolkit that would take billions of years before it evolved a human-type species?

The eye in its entirety would, yes, insofar as each eye is unique in some way, but look instead at the similarities of say, a human eye and the eye of a hawk. The differences require explanation based on the different survival pressures on a human versus a hawk, but the similarities point to something other than two completely separate processes that somehow converged. If you look at the molecular structures used in the eye, and trace back where that genetic information came from, my guess is you will be looking back long long before there was anything on Earth remotely close to a hawk or a human. I think the process of evolving the substructures that many species use, you are looking at a wholly different, and much longer, process than the evolution of the species themselves.
Exactly, the genetic similarities speak to that common origin where those subsystems were being generated. It's the usual false argument of ID about the "mousetrap"-- that it would have to appear all at once or it would be no good at catching mice. But the individual components of a mousetrap were around long before there were mousetraps, and for a host of very different reasons. The evolution of the substructural components of a mousetrap is a very different, and longer, story than the story of the invention of a mousetrap. Why the ID camp doesn't see that is kind of perplexing, it really seems like they just don't want to.
That's an interesting point-- that perhaps nature affords an illusion of being intelligently designed because it, in a sense, built our intelligence in the image of nature. So when we look back at what built our minds, we say, "hey, that shows a complex structure that really resonates with the working of a mind, it couldn't be purely natural", forgetting that if the mind itself is purely natural, it would make perfect sense for that resonance to be there.
But you see, there wasn't billions of years in their book-- only a few thousand. So the simplistic ones were designed at the same time as the advanced ones, perhaps there were a team of designers with different levels of expertise. Santa's elves perhaps?

Eyes did evolve from eyelessness several times over, it seems: first in the arthropods, and then separately in five other phyla, according to Andrew Parker.
One of the nice things about the cephalopod eye, when compared to the chordate eye, is that it is built the "right" way round: the nerves run behind the receptors in cephalopods, whereas they run on top of the receptors in chordates, necessitating that awkward "blind spot" where the nerves come together and passes out of the eye through the receptor layer.
It's a problematic situation for ID proponents, since a bright eight-year-old could design a better layout for the chordate eye than the one that is actually in use.

Grant Hutchison

Well, you see, you've just put your finger on the answer.

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Ken G,

"If you look at the molecular structures used in the eye, and trace back where that genetic information came from, my guess is you will be looking back long long before there was anything on Earth remotely close to a hawk or a human. I think the process of evolving the substructures that many species use, you are looking at a wholly different, and much longer, process than the evolution of the species themselves."

Its interesting about the eye. Perhaps it just started out as some really primitive sensor on a microrganism. Yes indeed one cannot help notice how similar most animal eyes are, and even insects are pretty similar just a lot smaller.

"So when we look back at what built our minds, we say, "hey, that shows a complex structure that really resonates with the working of a mind, it couldn't be purely natural", forgetting that if the mind itself is purely natural, it would make perfect sense for that resonance to be there"

Ya i dont understand the ID thing. I think theres enough mystery before the big bang for plenty of speculation about those things if one is inclined :-)

As usual, the real scoop is interesting to bear in mind. I didn't mean to suggest it was only once-- merely that it was not once per species with eyes.
The designer has a flair for the original?

Well no, actually insect eyes are very different from our own. And compared to our own they're kind of lousy. I guess the intelligent designer just didn't like insects all that much.

Perhaps, although I would use a different word than original.

Just so you know, the majority of IDers do actually believe in what they call micro-evolution. So, I don't really see the problem with one of them admitting to having observed it in the lab.

This thread sounds a bit like what a thread on godlikeproductions would sound like if someone had a video clip of Jay Utah saying that sometimes governments lie. "HA HA! THEY GOT CAUGHT ADMITTNG IT! HA HA!" But wait, Jay has never said that governments don't lie, simply that this isn't proof of an apollo hoax. IDers have never said that bacteria don't evolve resistance, simply that this isn't proof that all life evolved.

It's always a good idea to know the actual opinions of people before you try to argue with them. Otherwise, you'll end up accidentally arguing straw men - as seems to be the case in this thread.

The OP was about their own reaction to it.

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