no evidence for evolution

[Lanakila]

Did your wife tell you about my science background, because you seem to spend a lot of your message to me trying to explain evolution to me? I am currently a PhD student studying evolution and population genetics, and I did my undergrad work in both Genetics and Latin. I just think you should understand who your audience is. Although, the way these message boards work, I am probably not your only audience.


Is this supposed to intimidate my hubby and I? If so you failed Rufus. I am not intimdated, and neither is hubby. Your arguments back are basically semantics and you haven't proven that this arguement is wrong by your statements. I will respond to each of your questions and complaints at a later time.

 

[seebs]

I'd be interested in seeing your thesis when it's done. How are you doing on it? What's your thesis statement, or is it a bit early for that?

 

[RufusAtticus]

Originally posted by Lanakila
Is this supposed to intimidate my hubby and I? If so you failed Rufus. I am not intimdated, and neither is hubby.

It is not meant to intimidate. Just to inform you of my background so you don't waist your time addressing topics that you don't need to. A similar situation would be me explaining to you the reasons for total immersion Baptism. If the post is intended for a wider audience than me it's fine. But I just got the feeling that Alan was underestimating my background.

Your arguments back are basically semantics and you haven't proven that this arguement is wrong by your statements. I will respond to each of your questions and complaints at a later time.

Semantics? I'm not arguing semantics if I point out factual errors in the argument, i.e. there are more than three types of mutation and two types of evolutionary mechanisms. In other words, the post didn't address known types of mutation that can add length to genome and can conceivably been involved in increasing “information.” However, it is difficult to say what causes “loss” or “gain,” since the argument provided no way to measure information.

I will be awaiting your response.

 

[seebs]

I still say information theory is the only reasonable way to evaluate "amount of information in a genome".

 

[Morat]

By the rather strict definitions of information theory, information is added to a genome rather often. But then again, I rarely see Shannon invoked when discussing information and biology.

My personal feeling is that "information" is the new "thermodynamics" argument.

The 2nd Law argument was an excellent one for uninformed audiences. It appealed to common sense and basic (if incorrect) notions of how thermodynamics worked. It took a lot more effort to explain the flaws (obvious as they were to anyone with an inkling of thermo) then to make the claim.

However, it's fallen into disfavor because it's flaws can be made obvious to even an audience of laymen, if given time (such as on a forum like this). Information theory, on the other hand, is far more complex and nebulous a term.

To explain the error in "Evolution can't add information" you must explain to your audience what information is, how it's defined, and how it's used (it is, after all a mathematical concept these days. Shannon and all), and why the claim that evolution can't add it is refuted by something as simple as a mutation that duplicates a section of DNA.

Especially if you want to play by the strict rules of information. After all, which has more information a random string or a string (of equal length) of Shakespeare?

 

[Lanakila]

I am not trying to teach you evolution. I am only trying to remind you of the elementary concepts of genetic theory, relative to this argument. You have not answered the 2 stock issue questions regarding the fact of the immutable information loss via natural selection and genetic mutation.

Yes, the mechanisms are more complex, but those are the two mechanisms. Genetic drift and migration are essential parts of natural selection, not separate mechanisms though. It sounds to me like you like to argue semantics because you really do not have the evidence to prove my statements incorrect.

The claim that there are more than 3 variations of genetic mutation phenomena is “wrong-headed”. That is, these three are intended to be “general descriptions”, not an elaborate description of every constituent implementation of the same. Replication, for example, is merely a dislocation of “pre-existing” information in another place in the gene—rearrangement. The point here is that, like it or not, such does not—and cannot—“create” anything not previously existing in the informational corpus of the DNA, it only loses information!

Dr Francis Crick and Dr Watson the discoverers of DNA realized this problem I am presenting to you and came up with another source of the information corpus. Direct and indirect Panspermia, are their theories of where this information has come. Stephen Gould also recognizes the same problem and came up with punctuated equilibrium as a result.

 

[Jerry Smith]

I hope I will be excused for jumping in to the middle of this, but I have a few remarks to make myself.

Originally posted by Lanakila
I am not trying to teach you evolution. I am only trying to remind you of the elementary concepts of genetic theory, relative to this argument. You have not answered the 2 stock issue questions regarding the fact of the immutable information loss via natural selection and genetic mutation.

You have given neither a program for measuring information, nor a cogent argument that the measure of information that is important to you is something that can only be decreased by means of genetic mutations. I think given that you have not satisfied even the minimum burden of explanation and evidence in presenting your argument it is only to be expected that no answer for it is forthcoming.

Yes, the mechanisms are more complex, but those are the two mechanisms. Genetic drift and migration are essential parts of natural selection, not separate mechanisms though.

Actually, they are different mechanisms, which work in conjunction with natural selection oftimes, but do not bear on your genetic argument. I think this was just a simple correction of a tangential matter of fact.

It sounds to me like you like to argue semantics because you really do not have the evidence to prove my statements incorrect.

You have failed to prove your statements are correct, or to even define the terms quantitatively so their strength or weakness can be determined. We have no reason to accept your statements at this point.

The claim that there are more than 3 variations of genetic mutation phenomena is “wrong-headed”. That is, these three are intended to be “general descriptions”, not an elaborate description of every constituent implementation of the same. Replication, for example, is merely a dislocation of “pre-existing” information in another place in the gene—rearrangement. The point here is that, like it or not, such does not—and cannot—“create” anything not previously existing in the informational corpus of the DNA, it only loses information!

Gene duplication is not merely a dislocation of a gene and re-placement - that is actually called "transposition". Gene duplication is actually an insertion of an extra copy of a gene into the genome. Rufus knows much more about it than I do, but if you have one gene, then 2 genes and then (by some other mutation in one of the genes) 2 different genes, it hardly matters how you quantify "information" - by any reasonable method you must say it has been increased.

Dr Francis Crick and Dr Watson the discoverers of DNA realized this problem I am presenting to you and came up with another source of the information corpus. Direct and indirect Panspermia, are their theories of where this information has come.

If I'm not mistaken (and I may be) only Crick advocates Panserpmia, but not as a solution to this "problem" of evolution, but as a solution to a similar "problem" of abiogenesis.

Stephen Gould also recognizes the same problem and came up with punctuated equilibrium as a result.

Punctuated equilibrium has absolutely nothing to do with the "problem" of "information" increasing in the genome. It is a theory about fossil distribution. Your statement here is just false.

 

[Lanakila]

you have one gene, then 2 genes and then (by some other mutation in one of the genes) 2 different genes, it hardly matters how you quantify "information" - by any reasonable method you must say it has been increased.


Oh really. How so? I have explained my use of the term information repeatedly. Why you guys seem to have a problem with it, I don't understand. Information in the DNA of the organism. This information is passed on from parent to offspring by means of heredity. Gitt is the proponent of Information Theory in his book: In the Beginning was information.
What you are saying when you say macroevolution is true genetically, is that every organism since the first supposed single celled organism contains all the genetic information for every other organism. This is just not true. To evolve it would have to be true because nothing new has been added. Do you see what I mean?


Gitt, Werner. In the Beginning Was Information. Vielefeld, Germany: CLV, 2000.

 

[RufusAtticus]

Originally posted by Lanakila
I am not trying to teach you evolution. I am only trying to remind you of the elementary concepts of genetic theory, relative to this argument.

That's fine. If anything, it gives me an idea of your knowledge about genetics and evolution.

You have not answered the 2 stock issue questions regarding the fact of the immutable information loss via natural selection and genetic mutation.

I have, by pointing out that the argument does not relate to actual biology. For example, how do you measure the information content of a gene pool?

Yes, the mechanisms are more complex, but those are the two mechanisms. Genetic drift and migration are essential parts of natural selection, not separate mechanisms though.

Wrong, genetic drift and migration are separate mechanisms from selection.

Selection involves inherent differences in the ability of genes to be passed on to the next generation. This ability is measured as "fitness," the value of which depends on the nature of the environment, individual interactions, and other things.

Drift refers to random fluctuations of allele frequencies relating to sampling errors when reproduction occurs.

Migration refers to change in the gene pool caused by emigration or immigration.

The latter two are clearly not subsets of selection.

It sounds to me like you like to argue semantics because you really do not have the evidence to prove my statements incorrect.

It sounds to me that you would like to claim that I am only arguing semantics because you haven’t attempted to address the problems inherent in your (or your husband’s) argument.

The claim that there are more than 3 variations of genetic mutation phenomena is “wrong-headed”. That is, these three are intended to be “general descriptions”, not an elaborate description of every constituent implementation of the same.

If it was only a “general description,” why was the word “only” used? It was very much an absolute claim and not a general description.

Replication, for example, is merely a dislocation of “pre-existing” information in another place in the gene—rearrangement. The point here is that, like it or not, such does not—and cannot—“create” anything not previously existing in the informational corpus of the DNA, it only loses information!

The claim that it only loses information cannot be supported without a method to measure the amount of information in the gene pool. How can you tell me that information was lost, if you can’t tell my how much information was available before and how much information was available after? Furthermore, the imperfect replication found in biology is much more complicated than you make out. Your augments have neglected mutations that can increase the amount of DNA in the genome which I suspect would be important to any measurement of genetic information content.

Take the phrase “METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL.” An error in recombination can insert additional characters in to the sentence: “METHINKS IT IS LIKE A LESAE WEASEL.” Point mutations across multiple generations can then affect the insertion and change it to something else: “METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WHITE WEASEL.” Now since a new concept has been added to the sentence, it contains more information than the previous one.

That is not intended to be a proof that evolution increases information, but an example to get you to realize that you do need to address mutations which add base pairs to the genome.

Dr Francis Crick and Dr Watson the discoverers of DNA realized this problem I am presenting to you and came up with another source of the information corpus. Direct and indirect Panspermia, are their theories of where this information has come.

If they realized this “problem,” it definitely wasn’t part of their original paper. Could you please provide a scientific reference that panspermia was started to explain where “this information” came from? I haven’t seen any explanations of panspermia that refer to “information.”

Stephen Gould also recognizes the same problem and came up with punctuated equilibrium as a result.

This is an erroneous statement. None of the work on punc. eq. refers to ”information.” In fact it doesn’t deal with genetics at all. Punctuated equilibrium clarifies the universal trends in the fossil record and, using modern knowledge about how evolution occurs, explains these trends. Punctuated equilibrium does not use the fossil record to explain evolution at all. It uses the mechanisms of evolution to explain the pattern of the fossil record.

 

[Jerry Smith]

Originally posted by Lanakila
Oh really. How so? I have explained my use of the term information repeatedly. Why you guys seem to have a problem with it, I don't understand. Information in the DNA of the organism.

Information is... information. I understand the intuitive concept you are interested in, but you have yet to define information in terms that will allow us to actually measure it (and thus determine whether your hypothesis that information cannot increase from generation to generation is correct). If you could provide a measure of information, then you and/or we could empirically verify or falsify your hunch.

This information is passed on from parent to offspring by means of heredity. Gitt is the proponent of Information Theory in his book: In the Beginning was information.
What you are saying when you say macroevolution is true genetically, is that every organism since the first supposed single celled organism contains all the genetic information for every other organism. This is just not true. To evolve it would have to be true because nothing new has been added. Do you see what I mean?

Ok, I feel like this is being made harder than necessary, but I will try another approach.

This is exactly wrong because the entire premise of "nothing new has been added" is incorrect. No, the entire genome of all of life is not contained in any one cell of any living creature, just as all of the kitten genes, lion genes, tiger genes, panther genes, and genes of all of the other kinds of "cat" were not in the "cat" common ancestor. Some were, some were not.

I tried to describe to you the simplest way that a genome can increase in size (and presumably "information" content) in a few generations: a duplication event, followed by one or more mutation events. There are other ways that this is possible, and even when this occurs nothing guarantees that the larger genome will be selected for, but there it is. A single simple mechanism to increase genetic diversity. A standard college genetics textbook will explain numerous mechanisms that can have a similar impact on genetic diversity.

The (main) driving forces of evolution are:
genetic mutations which increase genetic diversity,
natural selection, which eliminates non-adaptive genetic variants.

It really is that simple. I think people like Spetner have used the mostly unrelated idea of "information" to try to muddy the waters. I guess if you can make evolution harder to understand, it is easier to convince someone that it is wrong.

 

[RufusAtticus]

Originally posted by Lanakila
I have explained my use of the term information repeatedly. Why you guys seem to have a problem with it, I don't understand. Information in the DNA of the organism. This information is passed on from parent to offspring by means of heredity.

No one is arguing that DNA doesn't contain information. We are simply pointing out that you haven't provided us with a way to measure the amount of information contained in a gene pool. With out that, "no new information" claims are baseless.

What you are saying when you say macroevolution is true genetically, is that every organism since the first supposed single celled organism contains all the genetic information for every other organism. This is just not true. To evolve it would have to be true because nothing new has been added. Do you see what I mean?

No one is arguing that the first organisms did not need to contain all the DNA to code for current ones. We're just saying that you haven't proved that it is impossible biologically for mutations to add "information." In fact, you haven't even shown that an “increase in information” is necessary for speciation and macroevolution to occur.

Gitt, Werner. In the Beginning Was Information. Vielefeld, Germany: CLV, 2000.

Do you have any references to peer-reviewed literature relating to this topic?

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by RufusAtticus

I am familiar “irreducible complexity.” Neither Dembski nor Behe are experienced population biologists. If they were, they’d understand that there are known evolutionary mechanisms for generating the structures they have referred to as irreducibly complex. Their arguments rest on faulty assumptions that pieces to cellular “machinery” must have always functioned as they do now.

Like blood clotting, for example. It didn't always work the way it does now. That's why there were millions of generations of species that bled to death at birth until the proper mutations happened to all come together to make blood clotting work. That also accounts for the lack of fossils of intermediate forms -- they bled to death before they could leave behind any evidence of their existence. Yeah, that's the ticket.

 

[D. Scarlatti]

Originally posted by Lanakila
The following sources should provide interesting and informative reading for the interested researcher:

Dembski, William A.
Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology
Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1999.

This isn't science it's Christian apologetics. Look at the publisher for crying out loud.

I think you will find that naturalism is intrinsically flawed and that theism is the only viable worldview to accommodate both philosophical and scientific information relative to this issue.

"Theism," a.k.a. supernaturalism, is off limits to science, by definition.

Dembski is a huckster with a sack full of useless analogies.

 

[Lanakila]

That doesn't mean the book isn't scientific or the author isn't a scientist. Non-evolutionary books probably have a hard time finding a scientific publisher. (guessing) ICR and Answers in Genesis are started by Creation Scientists, not Christian Apologists. To write off scientific information because the publisher is a Christian organization is bias. Pot calling the kettle black, I would say.

 

[Morat]

Gitt is the proponent of Information Theory in his book: In the Beginning was information.

Gitt makes a number of strange assumptions. To begin with, he seems to think information can only originate in with Mind.

Which is, of course, poppycock. The sun shines out a great deal of information in it's spectrum. That information would be there regardless of whether anyone looked or not.

Dawkins talks at length about information.

The technical definition of "information" was introduced by the American engineer Claude Shannon in 1948. An employee of the Bell Telephone Company, Shannon was concerned to measure information as an economic commodity. It is costly to send messages along a telephone line. Much of what passes in a message is not information: it is redundant. You could save money by recoding the message to remove the redundancy. Redundancy was a second technical term introduced by Shannon, as the inverse of information. Both definitions were mathematical, but we can convey Shannon's intuitive meaning in words.

Redundancy is any part of a message that is not informative, either because the recipient already knows it (is not surprised by it) or because it duplicates other parts of the message. In the sentence "Rover is a poodle dog", the word "dog" is redundant because "poodle" already tells us that Rover is a dog. An economical telegram would omit it, thereby increasing the informative proportion of the message. "Arr JFK Fri pm pls mt BA Cncrd flt" carries the same information as the much longer, but more redundant, "I'll be arriving at John F Kennedy airport on Friday evening; please meet the British Airways Concorde flight". Obviously the brief, telegraphic message is cheaper to send (although the recipient may have to work harder to decipher it - redundancy has its virtues if we forget economics). Shannon wanted to find a mathematical way to capture the idea that any message could be broken into the information (which is worth paying for), the redundancy (which can, with economic advantage, be deleted from the message because, in effect, it can be reconstructed by the recipient) and the noise (which is just random rubbish).

"It rained in Oxford every day this week" carries relatively little information, because the receiver is not surprised by it. On the other hand, "It rained in the Sahara desert every day this week" would be a message with high information content, well worth paying extra to send. Shannon wanted to capture this sense of information content as "surprise value". It is related to the other sense - "that which is not duplicated in other parts of the message" - because repetitions lose their power to surprise. Note that Shannon's definition of the quantity of information is independent of whether it is true. The measure he came up with was ingenious and intuitively satisfying. Let's estimate, he suggested, the receiver's ignorance or uncertainty before receiving the message, and then compare it with the receiver's remaining ignorance after receiving the message. The quantity of ignorance-reduction is the information content. Shannon's unit of information is the bit, short for "binary digit". One bit is defined as the amount of information needed to halve the receiver's prior uncertainty, however great that prior uncertainty was (mathematical readers will notice that the bit is, therefore, a logarithmic measure).

In practice, you first have to find a way of measuring the prior uncertainty - that which is reduced by the information when it comes. For particular kinds of simple message, this is easily done in terms of probabilities. An expectant father watches the Caesarian birth of his child through a window into the operating theatre. He can't see any details, so a nurse has agreed to hold up a pink card if it is a girl, blue for a boy. How much information is conveyed when, say, the nurse flourishes the pink card to the delighted father? The answer is one bit - the prior uncertainty is halved. The father knows that a baby of some kind has been born, so his uncertainty amounts to just two possibilities - boy and girl - and they are (for purposes of this discussion) equal. The pink card halves the father's prior uncertainty from two possibilities to one (girl). If there'd been no pink card but a doctor had walked out of the operating theatre, shook the father's hand and said "Congratulations old chap, I'm delighted to be the first to tell you that you have a daughter", the information conveyed by the 17 word message would still be only one bit.

and then information in biology:

DNA carries information in a very computer-like way, and we can measure the genome's capacity in bits too, if we wish. DNA doesn't use a binary code, but a quaternary one. Whereas the unit of information in the computer is a 1 or a 0, the unit in DNA can be T, A, C or G. If I tell you that a particular location in a DNA sequence is a T, how much information is conveyed from me to you? Begin by measuring the prior uncertainty. How many possibilities are open before the message "T" arrives? Four. How many possibilities remain after it has arrived? One. So you might think the information transferred is four bits, but actually it is two. Here's why (assuming that the four letters are equally probable, like the four suits in a pack of cards). Remember that Shannon's metric is concerned with the most economical way of conveying the message. Think of it as the number of yes/no questions that you'd have to ask in order to narrow down to certainty, from an initial uncertainty of four possibilities, assuming that you planned your questions in the most economical way. "Is the mystery letter before D in the alphabet?" No. That narrows it down to T or G, and now we need only one more question to clinch it. So, by this method of measuring, each "letter" of the DNA has an information capacity of 2 bits.

Whenever prior uncertainty of recipient can be expressed as a number of equiprobable alternatives N, the information content of a message which narrows those alternatives down to one is log2N (the power to which 2 must be raised in order to yield the number of alternatives N). If you pick a card, any card, from a normal pack, a statement of the identity of the card carries log252, or 5.7 bits of information. In other words, given a large number of guessing games, it would take 5.7 yes/no questions on average to guess the card, provided the questions are asked in the most economical way. The first two questions might establish the suit. (Is it red? Is it a diamond?) the remaining three or four questions would successively divide and conquer the suit (is it a 7 or higher? etc.), finally homing in on the chosen card. When the prior uncertainty is some mixture of alternatives that are not equiprobable, Shannon's formula becomes a slightly more elaborate weighted average, but it is essentially similar. By the way, Shannon's weighted average is the same formula as physicists have used, since the nineteenth century, for entropy. The point has interesting implications but I shall not pursue them here.

And then for evolution:

Information and evolution

That's enough background on information theory. It is a theory which has long held a fascination for me, and I have used it in several of my research papers over the years. Let's now think how we might use it to ask whether the information content of genomes increases in evolution. First, recall the three way distinction between total information capacity, the capacity that is actually used, and the true information content when stored in the most economical way possible. The total information capacity of the human genome is measured in gigabits. That of the common gut bacterium Escherichia coli is measured in megabits. We, like all other animals, are descended from an ancestor which, were it available for our study today, we'd classify as a bacterium. So perhaps, during the billions of years of evolution since that ancestor lived, the information capacity of our genome has gone up about three orders of magnitude (powers of ten) - about a thousandfold. This is satisfyingly plausible and comforting to human dignity. Should human dignity feel wounded, then, by the fact that the crested newt, Triturus cristatus, has a genome capacity estimated at 40 gigabits, an order of magnitude larger than the human genome? No, because, in any case, most of the capacity of the genome of any animal is not used to store useful information. There are many nonfunctional pseudogenes (see below) and lots of repetitive nonsense, useful for forensic detectives but not translated into protein in the living cells. The crested newt has a bigger "hard disc" than we have, but since the great bulk of both our hard discs is unused, we needn't feel insulted. Related species of newt have much smaller genomes.

His conclusion, which I agree with, is as follows:

Perhaps the main lesson we should learn from Pringle is that the information content of a biological system is another name for its complexity. Therefore the creationist challenge with which we began is tantamount to the standard challenge to explain how biological complexity can evolve from simpler antecedents, one that I have devoted three books to answering (The Blind Watchmaker, River Out of Eden, Climbing Mount Improbable) and I do not propose to repeat their contents here. The "information challenge" turns out to be none other than our old friend: "How could something as complex as an eye evolve?" It is just dressed up in fancy mathematical language - perhaps in an attempt to bamboozle. Or perhaps those who ask it have already bamboozled themselves, and don't realise that it is the same old - and thoroughly answered - question.

I recommend reading the article, as there is some interesting reading regardless of what you think of the conclusion.

 

[Jerry Smith]

Originally posted by npetreley


Like blood clotting, for example. It didn't always work the way it does now. That's why there were millions of generations of species that bled to death at birth until the proper mutations happened to all come together to make blood clotting work. That also accounts for the lack of fossils of intermediate forms -- they bled to death before they could leave behind any evidence of their existence. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Uhh, did it occur to you that there may have been blood clotting before blood clotting became "irreducibly complex".. no, of course not.

 

[Morat]

Like blood clotting, for example. It didn't always work the way it does now. That's why there were millions of generations of species that bled to death at birth until the proper mutations happened to all come together to make blood clotting work. That also accounts for the lack of fossils of intermediate forms -- they bled to death before they could leave behind any evidence of their existence. Yeah, that's the ticket.

You seem to have a hard time actually addressing evolution. You seem to prefer strawmen. Any reason why? If evolution was as shabby and full of holes as you claim, I see no reason why you couldn't address the actual work of biologists, instead of making things up.

 

[D. Scarlatti]

Originally posted by Lanakila
That doesn't mean the book isn't scientific or the author isn't a scientist.

Dembski has doctorates in mathematics and philosophy. This is not a science book. It's Christian apologetics, full of analogies having little or nothing to do with biological entities or phenomena, much like the rest of his pseudo-scientific scribbling and political rants.

Non-evolutionary books probably have a hard time finding a scientific publisher.

Dembski doesn't write about biology, so he has little to say about evolution, aside from criticizing a caricature of it. Dembski has stated on several occasions that he couldn't be bothered participating in the peer review process, so it's no wonder he would have a hard time finding a "scientific publisher," as you say.

(guessing) ICR and Answers in Genesis are started by Creation Scientists, not Christian Apologists.

Both ICR and AiG are populated by YECs. ICR members must sign a disclaimer pledging their unwavering adherence to a painfully literal interpretation of Genesis. They thereby exclude themselves from practicing science by doing so.

By the way, William Dembski would throw yet another hissy fit if you compared him to the YECs. He thinks it's like being compared to a "holocaust denier."

To write off scientific information because the publisher is a Christian organization is bias.

It isn't scientific information. It's Christian apologetics attempting to force a misunderstanding of science upon a priori assumptions concerning the existence of the Christian god. Dembski is a Christian propagandist, and has to date demonstrated evidence of nothing aside from from the gullibility of his followers, none of whom understand in the least what he is talking about.

Despite this Dembski has proven highly useful to the political campaign against science education.

Pot calling the kettle black, I would say.

I don't know what that's supposed to mean.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by Jerry Smith

Uhh, did it occur to you that there may have been blood clotting before blood clotting became "irreducibly complex".. no, of course not.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about the vestigal Band-Aids, which are evidence of how it worked before clotting became irreducibly complex.

 

[Jerry Smith]

Originally posted by npetreley


Oh, yeah, I forgot about the vestigal Band-Aids, which are evidence of how it worked before clotting became irreducibly complex.

I know that the correct procedure when Nick throws out one of his "stumpers" is to ooh and ahh over how clever his insightful question is. But I am going to break protocol this time and see if I can go out and find the answer....

I'm back.. that was easy! Nick, if you want to find out why primitive vertebrates with blood, but without an irreducibly complex clotting system did to survive, click and read:

http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/DI/clot/Clotting.html