tgamble

"Kenneth Miller leads readers of Finding Darwin’s God into thinking such a process would be very easy. He writes, “If microevolution can redesign one gene in fewer than two hundred generations (which in this case took only thirteen days!), what principles of biochemistry or molecular biology would prevent it from redesigning dozens or hundreds of genes over a few weeks or months to produce a distinctly new species? There are no such principles of course...” (Miller 1999, 108) Well, then, why doesn’t he just take an appropriate bacterial species, knock out the genes for its flagellum, place the bacterium under selective pressure (for mobility, say), and experimentally produce a flagellum—or any equally complex system—in the laboratory? (A flagellum, after all, has only 30-40 genes, not the hundreds Miller claims would be easy for natural selection to rapidly redesign.) If he did that, my claims would be utterly falsified. But he won’t even try it because he is grossly exaggerating the prospects of success."

I was just curious to know if anything like this has been attempted. If so, not even Behe could deny it. Through I suppose he might find a way.

edited to add: i've already read Miller's articles on the subject.
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/ev...2/article.html
It's not exactly what Behe demands but it should be good enough for any reational person.

ID advocates on the other hand....

Bubba

Interesting question...

Chris

Principia

The denial is easy. They'll probably say that it is an example of artificial selection, in which placing the proper "selective pressure" is tantamount to smuggling CSI into the system and requires an intelligence.

The goal of ID is to protect the status quo of ignorance.

semyaza

Evolution is not directed, surely? There is no foresight to evolution - each selection is done in the context of a presently existing set of environmental parameters. When the environment changes, the genome changes with it, but there is no 'direction' to the change.

Getting back to the topic, the only way to do as suggested above would be to guide the process of evolution somehow - which completely defeats the purpose of the test. A better test would be to allow an organism to evolve freely by changing the environment, and then examining the result. It should be possible to find 'irreducibly complex' structures from the result - but one almost certainly wouldn't expect to find a flagellum.

Am I making sense?

Peregrine

A sweet little Lamarkian Strawman.

But this is an example of how IDiocy and Cretinism can be accepted by the rabble. With this simple strawman, the crowd reacts positive to the challenge. Biologist subsequently explain how it is a strawman and it can't be done. The crowd tunes out the biologist after 30 seconds and hearing "it can't be done", secure in the notion that Behe successfully defended IDiocy.

Grumpy

Wasn't there a computer simulation that tried to get cyber-organisms to evolve particular means of locomotion? The researchers were surprised to see unorthodox means of getting around -- like the critters forming a tall tower and then falling over, then repeating the steps.

Wish I could remember more. But the point is that I don't know how you'd configure the "selective pressure for mobility" such that a flagellum pops out. Then again, I'm not a very clever experimentalist.

Baloo

http://demo.cs.brandeis.edu/golem/

PotatoError

That Golem Project is really interesting.

I think that this stuff is the greatest evidence of evolution. Afterall this *proves* through direct observation that mutation and natural selection can evolve (creatures?).

This was fairly self evident from logic anyway but I know that *some* anti-evolutionists don't even believe that mutation and ns can create better adaption.

Principia

From here:
I wonder how the IDiots will spin this one?

RufusAtticus

Hmm, it sounds like the golem project is upset that it didn't produce complex-enough individuals. However, evolution isn't supposed to produce complex individuals. It produces individuals that can reproduce. One does not have to be highly complex to be successful. From what I remember, the golem project was only testing for individuals that could move. I suspect that if they made their environment more complex and open ended, they might see increasing complexity thresholds passed. This would be especially true if their world was structured such that niches could exist.