I was suprised to see this article the other day:
Are We Reaching a Consensus that Evolution is Past its Prime?
By Doug Axe
I’m surprised at how quickly Darwinists have abandoned any claim that evolution is a powerful process at work today, retreating to the position that its power is a thing of the past. The convenience of that stance, of course, is that it enables them to insist that natural selection was a powerful mechanism without committing themselves to the more risky proposition that it still is.
Laurence Moran is among those who seem to favor this approach, at least as I interpret his recent post.
Ann Gauger and I have shown that Darwin’s mechanism cannot accomplish what appears to be one of the more favorable functional transitions among proteins. Specifically, we’ve presented experimental evidence that the protein pictured here on the left cannot evolve to perform the function of the protein shown on the right, despite their striking similarity and the generous assumptions we granted.
If natural selection is no longer at work, why do we have to get the flu shot every winter….. what about the growing problem of antibacterial resistance….
He cites Larry Moran.
Here’s what Larry Moran has to say on the subject.
“Douglas Axe on Protein Evolution and Magic Numbers
Imagine that I asked you to “prove” evolution by transforming a chimpanzee into a human. Would you recognize the fallacy that I described recently in Why Are Chimps Still Chimps?. Of course you would. Any intelligent person who understands evolution knows that chimps and humans share a common ancestor and both have evolved substantially since the two lineages diverged. In order to change a chimp into a human you would first have to “devolve” it back to the common ancestor and proceed from there. That requires a lot of changes.
Now let’s think about two enzymes that are members of the same gene family but have evolved different functions. It’s easiest to think of these as two enzymes that are now specific for similar but distinct substrates. Imagine that you were asked to “prove” evolution by changing one of those enzymes into the other? Would you recognize the same fallacy? Would you realize that the most likely evolutionary scenario is that the two different enzyme specificities evolved from an ancestral enzyme that carried out both reactions? [see: The Evolution of Enzymes from Promiscuous Precursors]
Changing one of the modern enzymes into the other would require many changes because in most cases the common ancestor dates back hundreds of millions of years. Many of the changes that have become fixed in the two lineages were not directly involved in selecting one of the substrates over the other (i.e. increasing specificity). They were neutral mutations fixed by random genetic drift after the enzyme became specialized for one or other of the substrates. Many would have to be “reversed” in order to re-create the dual specificity because they would have been detrimental in the ancestral enzyme.
Think about these facts as you watch Douglas Axe explain why his research shows that evolution is impossible [Video: Doug Axe on Protein Evolution’s Magic Number (It’s Six)].”
http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2012/10/douglas-axe-on-protein-evolution-and.html
Hi Dave, after I read your comment I went back and looked at the video again to see if I had posted anything which was “misrepresenting.” I had already read Moran’s post—it was how I found the Doug Axe video, actually. I wasn’t too concerned with it since I wasn’t sure he had actually addressed Axe’s claim, which seemed to me to be a very narrow one, summed up towards the end of the video. It was simply that, based on the number of changes that would be needed to make a protein change function (which he says is at least six)–“Once you get above the number six, you can pretty decisively rule out an evolutionary transition because it would take far more time than there is on planet earth and larger populations than there are on planet earth.” So I didn’t think Moran’s thoughts, which began with the idea that someone was being asked to change a chimp in to a human (which of course, Axe said nothing about), had any relevance to the actual video.
Moran says: “Changing one of the modern enzymes into the other would require many changes because in most cases the common ancestor dates back hundreds of millions of years.” Admittedly I am in over my head here in terms of technical knowledge, but this seems to assume that Axe didn’t allow for this time period when he made the statement quoted above. He may or may not have; I guess this is the question. But if he did allow for these “hundreds of millions of years,” then Moran has not done anything to address the very specific, mathematical claim Axe is making. That there hasn’t been enough time, and the populations aren’t large enough, for the kind of changes required to come up with what we see today.
Which is why I thought, Moran’s post not withstanding, it was still an interesting video to link to.