White Tigers and Darwin's Irreducible Complexity

NOTE: I am well aware of the Dover trial and I address this. Anyone who immediately responds with references to that can be assumed to have not read even the first lines of text. This is about animal breeding, not flagella or such.

Darwin Quote:

Anyone involving themselves in the Evolution debates should know what Charles Darwin said about Irreducible Complexity.

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
-Charles Darwin, Origin of Species

Focus on Single Celled Organisms:

Darwin got much of his inspiration from animal breeding. Unfortunately, far too many debates about Darwinian evolution focus on single celled organisms. The Dover trial involving Behe has been claimed by many as having disproved Irreducible Complexity, yet that trial has been ridiculed as being a case of Straw Man attacks and citation bluffs. Some evolutionary scientists have said it was an embarrassment to legitimate evolution research.

www.discovery.org... "The NCSE, Judge Jones, and Citation Bluffs About the Origin of New Functional Genetic Information"

Hereditary Traits:

Any complex multicellular organism that reproduces sexually is governed by hereditary traits. An organism that has a trait that is not shared by the general population that then breeds with the general population will produce hybrids, provided the variation in genetics is not great enough to prevent viable offspring, and will eventually see that trait "bred out of the line". We see this effect in White Tigers. To preserve the trait that gives them their coloration, they must be in-bred, which has been declared inhumane and banned in most countries. If they are bred with the general population, they produce off colored hybrids and the next few generations see the trait suppressed / eliminated.

There are those that will argue about "dominant genes". However, gene dominance does not cover any and all mutations and does not eliminate hereditary traits from being a factor.

There will also be arguments that everything can be explained as "small steps". However, there are many instances that have lead researchers to look for ways that an organism can experience larger "leaps" in evolution. Those explanations often try to establish some way that several of a species within an area can experience the same mutation simultaneously, so that there are enough in an area that share the trait that in-breeding is not an issue.

www.sciencedaily.com...

"Summary: Most evolutionary changes happen in tiny increments. But when it comes to traits like the number of wings on an insect, or limbs on a primate, there is no middle ground. How are these sorts of large evolutionary leaps made? According to new research, such changes may at least sometimes be the result of random fluctuations, or noise (nongenetic variations), working alongside a phenomenon known as partial penetrance."

Media Misinformation

There is still quite a bit of confusion in the general media and among some media icons about this. Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted, "Just to settle it once and for all: Which came first the Chicken or the Egg? The Egg -- laid by a bird that was not a Chicken". To which several of us replied that you cannot breed a not-a-chicken with a chicken, so there would be no way to produce offspring. If you were to have an almost-a-chicken and breed it with a chicken, you'd still get hybrids, which could result in the new traits being bred out of the line.

a reply to: Trihalo42

First off, don't forget the rest of Darwin's quote - "But I can find no such case."

Now, just to ask... are you actually trying to convey somethign here? 'Cuase it seems like you're going from one thing to another pretty rapidly. Is there a thesis in this post?

you've put together a very interesting thread and some great links to back up your info.

To comment on your last paragraph in reference to the chicken or the egg conundrum, I did have a thought.

you cannot breed a not-a-chicken with a chicken... If you were to have an almost-a-chicken and it breed with a chicken, you'd still get hybrids,"

This made me think of the talks about bring the wooly mammoth back to life by injecting its DNA into a modern day African or Indian elephants egg. I was under the impression that the undeveloped organism would take on the traits of a mammoth but after reading your thread I see that it would be a mammoth-elephant hybrid. I still hope they bring some sort of mammoth creature back to life either way. Again, great thread- thank you.

originally posted by: Trihalo42
There is still quite a bit of confusion in the general media and among some media icons about this. Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted, "Just to settle it once and for all: ....

His credentials are not in biology, anthropology or evolutionary sciences. He's really not a scientific expert in these matters, just a cheerleader.

a reply to: Trihalo42

Can you prove that any trait in any organism ever is irreducibly complex?

I don't think you can. Aside from that I'm not really sure what you are even trying to debate?

There is still quite a bit of confusion in the general media and among some media icons about this. Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted, "Just to settle it once and for all: Which came first the Chicken or the Egg? The Egg -- laid by a bird that was not a Chicken". To which several of us replied that you cannot breed a not-a-chicken with a chicken, so there would be no way to produce offspring. If you were to have an almost-a-chicken and breed it with a chicken, you'd still get hybrids, which could result in the new traits being bred out of the line.

It's not all or nothing. Whatever the ancestor was, they slowly changed over time. Each egg they laid was very slightly different from the egg they came from. I think you are confused about hybrids. In the case with chickens, humans actually engineered them from jungle fowl, so you have the jungle fowl laying an egg that became a chicken (obviously over thousands of years). You can draw the species line where ever you want, but don't get hung up on it as if it either has to be pure 100% chicken or a hybrid. It doesn't work like that. Every creature that exists is a hybrid of its parents, but by definition one species cannot breed with another.

a reply to: Trihalo42

Looks like you may have an incomplete understanding of autosomal inheritance and penetrance. As to Neil deGrasse Tyson's tweet about the chicken and the egg — his answer is sort of meh but he's a cosmologist.

The question of the chicken and the egg is a philosophical dilemma that dates back to antiquity and has no real value when discussing genetics or evolution. Determining what is or is not a chicken is a taxonomic question. Evolution happens on a continuum and as such, there is no abrupt transition from not-a-chicken to chicken in a single generation.

a reply to: Trihalo42

Did I miss something? What is your conclusion? I see a bunch of premises on different parts of evolution, including a quote from Darwin that is irrelevant to modern evolutionary synthesis theoretical debate as all quotes are since they aren't evidence for or against evolution. But I must have missed how you tied all the premises together to form a unified conclusion.

"rapid evolution"

scienceblogs.com...

The guppies are quick to adapt to different environments and particularly to which predators are around. The number and types of predators affect the guppies’ lifespan, how big they get and when they become sexually mature. This, in turn, affects what they eat, and that influence ripples across the entire stream.

I should elaborate.

If a group of guppies were isolated from the rest of the population some where else down the stream to never meet back with the origonol population they would meet other 'forces' to make them survive and adapt, eventually over time they might develop a certain organ to maybe swim faster, jump higher, burn a certain food quicker or slower for energy.
Another good example is people with the thrifty gene, they cannot metabolize carbohydrates like the majority of human population due to an environmental catastrophe, they store food and their pancreases are weaker, over time if these people were to isolate themselves and only breed with this gene they most likely would have a completely different diet than what us others have, their organs would change as well.

a reply to: Trihalo42

When a thread starts with a quote mine, you know it's got to be good! (tm)

Maybe you should post your quote in context, so we can see for ourselves and understand what Darwin was saying:

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case. No doubt many organs exist of which we do not know the transitional grades, more especially if we look to much-isolated species, round which, according to my theory, there has been much extinction. Or again, if we look to an organ common to all the members of a large class, for in this latter case the organ must have been first formed at an extremely remote period, since which all the many members of the class have been developed; and in order to discover the early transitional grades through which the organ has passed, we should have to look to very ancient ancestral forms, long since become extinct.

We should be extremely cautious in concluding that an organ could not have been formed by transitional gradations of some kind. Numerous cases could be given amongst the lower animals of the same organ performing at the same time wholly distinct functions; thus the alimentary canal respires, digests, and excretes in the larva of the dragon-fly and in the fish Cobites. In the Hydra, the animal may be turned inside out, and the exterior surface will then digest and the stomach respire. In such cases natural selection might easily specialise, if any advantage were thus gained, a part or organ, which had performed two functions, for one function alone, and thus wholly change its nature by insensible steps. Two distinct organs sometimes perform simultaneously the same function in the same individual; to give one instance, there are fish with gills or branchiae that breathe the air dissolved in the water, at the same time that they breathe free air in their swimbladders, this latter organ having a ductus pneumaticus for its supply, and being divided by highly vascular partitions. In these cases, one of the two organs might with ease be modified and perfected so as to perform all the work by itself, being aided during the process of modification by the other organ; and then this other organ might be modified for some other and quite distinct purpose, or be quite obliterated.

Darwin thought all evolution is a result of natural selection. A force driven by one organisms need to reproduce over a another. And by cross breeding 2 plants together, it creates a hybrid. So darwin noticed this and thought he was a GENIUS and there wouln't be very much else to it. To him, all the complexity we see i the world is a result of sex. And nothing else.

Also darwin was several decades ago. Let it go. The guy was wrong.

originally posted by: AnuTyr
Darwin thought all evolution is a result of natural selection. A force driven by one organisms need to reproduce over a another. And by cross breeding 2 plants together, it creates a hybrid. So darwin noticed this and thought he was a GENIUS and there wouln't be very much else to it. To him, all the complexity we see i the world is a result of sex. And nothing else.

This is not what natural selection is. Please try and understand topics before bashing them.

Also darwin was several decades ago. Let it go. The guy was wrong.

More like nearly 150 years ago. And he was right.

yeah kinda but not really. Micro-organisms build the complexity of the world. Not mating. lol. Enviroment forces the micro-organisms to evolve. And when those things change it causes diseases. Of course breeding is required because in such a case if there was no survivors and no breeding organisms would just go extinct.

I don't think Darwin could of imagined a whole plague could change a species in a couple generations and wouldn't exactly be *gradual* so much as a forced change. Niches are created which then breed and carry on their legacy. It's not so much the organisms wanted to change that way it's that the environment becomes hostile forcing everything to change a long with it.

How humans fit into all of this? We were not created naturally. Yes everything comes from a single celled organism. But it's always been an environment that encourages bio-diversity. The more minerals/elements available ( Nutrients) The more complex the organisms as long as there isn't much fluctuation. Darwin had it sorta right but not exactly.
he put more faith into Cross breeding than understanding how a global temperture change or drop in oxygen would shift all the life that is there. It would be to hard for his brain to come to such a realization several decades ago. I said several. I could of said Dozens i guess but 150 years isn't very long.
It's like a bat of the eye. It's like a sea turtle dying and having it's life flash before it's eyes.

He did pave the wave for genetics tho. Besides that. the dude was not 100% correct.

BTW hybrids have an increased fertility issue to deal with. So after you keep cross breeding it gets to the point where as for animals. You may end up with a Mule.

And don't forget Dawins, * only the strongest will survive* mentaility. He had litte understanding in symbiotic relationships and how they build up the complexity we see today....

Such as ants protecting trees and plants. And plants altering their physical appearance as well as providing all the nutrients the ants would need to survive so the ants can defend the tree lol.

Environment drives natural selection. Natural selection drive genetic drift. Genetic drift drives evolution.

It all starts with environmental variables, with very few exceptions. And with epigenetics, you even have mechanisms to drive short term changes within a population in response to environment. Homosexuality is thought by some geneticists to be a response to crowding.

In any event, genetic drift happens because of the environment. And depending on the environment, the drift can be very slow, or almost immediate. You can have a gradually warming environment that causes a gradual drift towards coping with the warmth. Or a severe bottleneck could reduce the genetic variety. Or maybe even create truly significant change by leaving behind only certain traits that helped one survive the bottlneck.

Arguing against evolution typically only happens when there is confirmation bias, or when one just doesn't understand it very well. Which, to be honest....it is all kind of common sense once you grasp a couple of key points.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

Well im glad you agreed with me lol. Yes it's a little more complicated than simply natural selection. It is multipul driving factors. However Darwin bought up some trouble for us by making it seem like we can just slay things and the enviroment will just cope with it.

We ourselves become an enviromental factor to life we intereact with lol. And yeah temp and atmosphere composition. Back in the day oxygen levels were insainly high. High enough to the support the dinosaurs. Now the oxygen level is like 21%? I can see cutting down a lot of trees might send up back the stone age lol. Or if another asteroid impact happens that might deplete our oxygen levels a little bit more.

wouldn't it be a mind trip if humans were giants in ancient times but the oxygen levels reduced us to the size were at now? lol. Like many organisms were king kong and godzilla back then.

a reply to: AnuTyr

Darwin thought all evolution is a result of natural selection. A force driven by one organisms need to reproduce over a another. And by cross breeding 2 plants together, it creates a hybrid. So darwin noticed this and thought he was a GENIUS and there wouln't be very much else to it. To him, all the complexity we see i the world is a result of sex. And nothing else.

Also darwin was several decades ago. Let it go. The guy was wrong.

Given that evolution is based on the heritability of traits, and heritability is driven by reproduction, he wasn't far off that all of the "complexity we see in the world is a result of sex" -- he just didn't know what the mechanism for that heritability was. To say that he was wrong is like saying that Dalton's atomic theory is wrong because he didn't know about bosons.

a reply to: AnuTyr

yeah kinda but not really. Micro-organisms build the complexity of the world. Not mating. lol. Enviroment forces the micro-organisms to evolve. And when those things change it causes diseases. Of course breeding is required because in such a case if there was no survivors and no breeding organisms would just go extinct.

Right, and extinct really just means "unable to reproduce".

I don't think Darwin could of imagined a whole plague could change a species in a couple generations and wouldn't exactly be *gradual* so much as a forced change. Niches are created which then breed and carry on their legacy. It's not so much the organisms wanted to change that way it's that the environment becomes hostile forcing everything to change a long with it.

Darwin understood the concept of a "forced change" quite well. It's why he referred to natural selection, it was the opposite of the kind of breeding that livestock underwent, or artificial selection. Which is really no different that the kind of "forced change" you're referring to.

How humans fit into all of this? We were not created naturally.

How so?

He did pave the wave for genetics tho. Besides that. the dude was not 100% correct.

I've always found the parallels between Darwin and Mendel kind of fascinating -- they were born within about ten years of each other, died within a couple of years of each other, both were educated to become members of the clergy (it stuck with one, not the other), and they presented their significant work within about five years of each other which, at the time, was effectively simultaneously. But it still took us about seventy or eighty years to understand that one had come up with the basic mechanism for the heritability of traits that the other had been looking for. You can only imagine where we would be today in terms of scientific understanding if the kind of sharing of information that exists today had been around when they were doing their research.

I appreciate the responses. I will attempt to clarify.

My attempt was to reference Darwin's original concept of Irreducible Complexity, then point out that much of the debate over it reported in the media has been focused on single celled organisms (including an episode of Morgan Freeman's Through the Wormhole that spent time on Behe and flagella to illustrate IC), and finally show that Irreducible Complexity is much better illustrated through sexual reproduction. The latter part being old news to some, but I feel it needs repeating.

The conspiracy / point of debate being a promotion of "random mutations" and "natural selection" being the entirety of evolution, while side stepping hereditary traits being a limit on how random those mutations can be, as illustrated by Tyson's tweet.