Irreducible complexity- minimal gene set complex
I just finished watching a debate on Youtube between a scientist and a young earth creationist.
Now, needless to say- the creationist completely lost the crowd at "dinosaurs walked with humans and still exist today deep in the rainforest..."
but he did make one point which i was wondering whether there was an answer to. on minute 16:30, the creationist, Laurence Tisdall, talks about the irreducible complexity of the single celled organism.
the claim is that even a single celled organism requires at 397 genes in order to exist- and that without those an organism cannot exist- because every cell needs basic genes in order to function. Tisdall invokes the "God of The Gaps" in order to state that there must be an intelligent design to account for the transition from 0 genes to 397, since natural selection does not occur before the first organism is created.
While this is just another attempt at sticking god in the ever shrinking gaps, I was wondering if there was a scientific answer to this- because the other guy doesn't respond to it.
and don't worry- even if there is no answer to this, it would hardly turn me theist.
I think the question of intelligent design doesn't solve anything, but rather just makes things more complicated as it raises two questions:
1. who designed the designer
2. of thousands of different proposed designers, which is it? Jehova? maybe Zeus?
Now, needless to say- the creationist completely lost the crowd at "dinosaurs walked with humans and still exist today deep in the rainforest..."
but he did make one point which i was wondering whether there was an answer to. on minute 16:30, the creationist, Laurence Tisdall, talks about the irreducible complexity of the single celled organism.
the claim is that even a single celled organism requires at 397 genes in order to exist- and that without those an organism cannot exist- because every cell needs basic genes in order to function. Tisdall invokes the "God of The Gaps" in order to state that there must be an intelligent design to account for the transition from 0 genes to 397, since natural selection does not occur before the first organism is created.
While this is just another attempt at sticking god in the ever shrinking gaps, I was wondering if there was a scientific answer to this- because the other guy doesn't respond to it.
and don't worry- even if there is no answer to this, it would hardly turn me theist.
I think the question of intelligent design doesn't solve anything, but rather just makes things more complicated as it raises two questions:
1. who designed the designer
2. of thousands of different proposed designers, which is it? Jehova? maybe Zeus?
Tags: Irreducible, complexity, creation, evolution, genes
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Nelson on -
from what i understand the reference to this minimum number of genes being 397 (i've also seen a similar claim with "proteins" substituted for "genes") is nothing more than a reference to the Mycobacterium genetalium which is, i believe still, the organism with the smallest genome we know of. what's idiotic about the claim is that, because M. genetalium is a modern organism, and because it's only the smallest we know of (not the smallest that exists necessarily), to compare it to what life was like 4bya is just stupid.
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Permalink Reply by Dave G on -
Precisely, Nelson. The 'minimal genes' argument is the smallest known genome for a modern cell. They completely ignore the possibility of older, more primitive organisms which are not around today because they cannot compete with modern, more evolved life forms.
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Permalink Reply by Wassabi on -
he put forward the analogy of the car- that you can strip it of all sorts of parts like lights and doors, but when you take away the engine- that's it.
can a cell (forget organism) even exist as a functioning whole with less than 397 genes? meaning that you need an X number of proteins to create the different components of a cell in order for it to be living, whole and self replicating- regardless of time (be it today or four billion years ago).
This is genuine curiosity talking...
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Permalink Reply by Nelson on
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that's just the point. there is no known minimum number of genes. to say that an organism must have X number of genes in order to survive, in order to be an organism at all, is just not something it's proper to say.
anyway, if the RNA World hypothesis is correct, and it looks more and more likely to be so, then the minimum number of DNA an organism has to have is actually ZERO. the fact is still that we don't know. making claims of fact either way is just saying more than we rightly can.
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Permalink Reply by Dave G on
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It's quite possible that there were self-replicating organisms before the first cell existed. Just look at a virus, no cell required.
To borrow the creationists' car analogy, he's claiming that transportation had to start with the internal combustion engine, and horse-drawn carriages, horses themselves, and walking are not forms of transportation.
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Permalink Reply by Nelson on
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not to mention that you could make a nice scrambled egg on a hot engine block even if that engine isn't installed in a car!
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Permalink Reply by Wassabi on
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the virus is a good point.
however the horse analogy is wrong because the idea of the internal combustion engine did not "evolve" from the horse or the carriage.
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Permalink Reply by Wassabi on
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of course it evolved- as all ideas do from previous ones- just not specifically from the horse
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Permalink Reply by Dave G on
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True, it was not the best of analogies, but neither was the original one. And the car did, in fact, develop from the horse-drawn carriage. (And the steam engine.)
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Permalink Reply by Wassabi on
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fire -> boiling water- > steam engine- > combustion engine
really big rock down down a slope -> wheel -> carriage -> car
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Permalink Reply by Wassabi on
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it is minor and unimportant, just that i don't see the connection between a carriage and a car other than it's a more sophisticated form of transportation.
i was referring to the fact that much like biological evolution, in the realm of ideas- no innovation comes from thin air. and to say that the car is a direct development on the carriage is wrong in the sense that the car is an innovation which came about when combining two separate concepts - the steam engine, and the carriage.
what makes a car a car is the fact that it propels itself- meaning the internal combustion engine- which did not come from the horse or carriage.
not very important though.... -
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