Blackadder wrote:

Wortfish wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:
Like every other creationist he fails completely to present even a single sound scientific reason.

Actually, he does. He claims that the ontogenesis of the bacterial flagellum shows that it couldn't have been built by recruiting precursor parts.

That's because he is talking out of his arse.

The flagellum is actually built not from its base but from its propeller. I think that's what he means and finds so ridicilous about the Darwinian explanation.

Just like airplanes. Start with the propeller and work back, right?

RS

theropod wrote:Just like airplanes. Start with the propeller and work back, right?

RS

But the Darwinian explanation has tried to focus on the base upwards. Also, the propeller appears useless unless it is powered by the motor.

A brain is useless if you fill it with shit, too.

The_Metatron wrote:A brain is useless if you fill it with shit, too.

No rational mind would accept the Darwinian cumulative account.

Wortfish wrote:

The_Metatron wrote:A brain is useless if you fill it with shit, too.

No rational mind would accept the Darwinian cumulative account.

You demonstrate my point perfectly. Well done.


Sent from my iPad Pro using Tapatalk.

No rational mind would accept the Darwinian cumulative account.

how would YOU know?

I’m calling Poe.

RS

So all that recent work, documenting how it's perfectly possible for the bacterial flagellum to have arisen from precursors derived from the T3SS, is something that this idiot, and for that matter, the poster who brought him here, is going to ignore?

Oh, and evolutionary biology has moved on a bit since Darwin. So the "Darwinist" jibe is nothing more than specious creationist misrepresentation.

Wortfish wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:
Wrong again. And there's no such thing as evolutionist.

It does help to think before you type: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/defin ... olutionist

"A person who believes in the theories of evolution and natural selection."

It does help not post inflammatory crap.
And evolutionist isnt an accepted term by anyone, except the creationists who fabricated it as a dismissive slur and false equivalency.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

Wortfish wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:
Wrong again. And there's no such thing as evolutionist.

It does help to think before you type: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/defin ... olutionist

"A person who believes in the theories of evolution and natural selection."

It does help not post inflammatory crap.
And evolutionist isnt an accepted term by anyone, except the creationists who fabricated it as a dismissive slur and false equivalency.

Indeed, I dealt with this shit years ago.

Wortfish wrote:German paleontologist and entomologist, Günter Bechly, is famous for his work on dragonflies in the fossil record. However, after studying the bacterial flagellum, he became convinced that Darwinism could not explain its origin. A former atheist, he has since become a Christian and has endorsed intelligent design ...

As you stress in the title of the thread, Günter Bechly is an entomologist. He has acknowledged expertise in the study of fossil dragonflies, as he says on his website here:

Günter Bechly wrote: I am a German scientist (paleo-entomologist), specialized on the fossil history and systematics of insects (esp. dragonflies), the most diverse group of animals.
I am ......working on paleontological evidence for Intelligent Design theory.

I find it striking that in the area in which he is a scientific expert, Dr Bechly accepts the scientific consensus. He accepts "the conventional explanations for the origin of the .... fossil record". Quoting again from his website here:

Günter Bechly wrote:I see neither any scientific nor theological reasons to dispute the conventional dating of the age of the universe and Earth, or the conventional explanations for the origin of the geological column and the fossil record.

His "scientific" reasons for rejecting the theory of evolution are in areas of science in which, as far as I can tell, he has no expertise, he is essentially a layman. Again from his website:

Günter Bechly wrote:My rejection of unguided evolution was not motivated by religion, but by some very convincing and still unrefuted scientific arguments from Intelligent Design proponents, based on population genetics (Richard Sternberg), microbiology (Michael Behe), and molecular biology (Douglas Axe).

To make authoritative pronouncements about the bacterial flagellum, he would need to have expertise in either microbiology (bacteria) or in molecular biology (the composition of the flagellum), and preferably both, but he makes no claim to either.

I am more impressed by the fact that, as a genuine expert, Günter Bechly thinks fossil dragonflies support the theory of evolution, than by any opinions he may have on bacterial flagella.

I hope there aren't too many potential Günter Bechly's around, whose knowledge of evolution is inadequate to see through the fallacious arguments of creationists.

Calilasseia wrote:So all that recent work, documenting how it's perfectly possible for the bacterial flagellum to have arisen from precursors derived from the T3SS, is something that this idiot, and for that matter, the poster who brought him here, is going to ignore?

If you bothered to actually watch the video, Bechly destroys the T3SS precursor hypothesis for the flagellar base:

1. The Type-3 secretory system, by all modern phylogenetic accounts, evolved AFTER the bacterial flagellum.

2. The T3SS appears to actually be a degenerate flagellar motor that evolved from the latter structure.
The non-flagellar type III secretion system evolved from the bacterial flagellum and diversified into host-cell adapted systems.: http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/a ... en.1002983

3. The critical aspects of the flagellar system, namely the motor,drive, hook and propeller are not explained by any cooption. The hook, in particular, serves no purpose other than as a universal joint. It transmits the torque, produced by the motor located in the cell membrane, to the filament that acts like a propeller.
Complete structure of the bacterial flagellar hook reveals extensive set of stabilizing interactions: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13425

4. The ontogenesis of the bacterial flagellum shows that it is the filament/propeller that gets built first, and not the base, which puts the final nail in the coffin of the hypothesis.

So, you see, when we actually do science, the data points in only one direction......purposeful design.

Oh, and evolutionary biology has moved on a bit since Darwin. So the "Darwinist" jibe is nothing more than specious creationist misrepresentation.

So why do many evolutionary biologists call themselves Darwinists and Neo-Darwinists?

Wortfish wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:
Like every other creationist he fails completely to present even a single sound scientific reason.

Actually, he does. He claims that the ontogenesis of the bacterial flagellum shows that it couldn't have been built by recruiting precursor parts.

Yes he claims this. Those claims fail.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:
It does help not post inflammatory crap.
And evolutionist isnt an accepted term by anyone, except the creationists who fabricated it as a dismissive slur and false equivalency.

Once again, I'm calling out your lack of knowledge in this matter. It was Darwin himself who coined the term "evolutionist", and not any creationist: http://quotes.yourdictionary.com/author ... win/154031

It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent theist and an evolutionist.

As the dictionary definition states, to be an "evolutionist" is to believe in the principles of evolution by natural selection.

Wortfish wrote:3. The critical aspects of the flagellar system, namely the motor, drive, hook and propeller are not explained by any cooption.

Of course they are.

Here's such an explanation from cootion: They could have been coopted from other proteins, which were originally different and performed other functions, into a pre-flagellar molecular complex that had another function than to serve as a flagellum.

Wortfish wrote:The hook, in particular, serves no purpose other than as a universal joint. It transmits the torque, produced by the motor located in the cell membrane, to the filament that acts like a propeller.

So what? That does not mean it could not have been coopted from other proteins. Nor does it mean it had to first function as a universal joint when it first evolved.

Wortfish wrote:German paleontologist and entomologist, Günter Bechly, is famous for his work on dragonflies in the fossil record. However, after studying the bacterial flagellum, he became convinced that Darwinism could not explain its origin. A former atheist, he has since become a Christian and has endorsed intelligent design:

Heh, this happens so rarely it's news-worthy in creationist circles.

It's usually the other way around, once people understand evolution, they reject their ID-creationism and either become theistic or atheistic evolutionists.

I remember Nick Matzke warning years ago against inferring that the flagellum evolved from the type-III secretion system. That hypothesis (besides being contradicted by evidence) is really not necessary in order to infer the evolutionary history of the flagellum.

Rumraket wrote:
Of course they are.
Here's such an explanation from cootion: They could have been coopted from other proteins, which were originally different and performed other functions, into a pre-flagellar molecular complex that had another function than to serve as a flagellum.

The actual proteins used in these components could have been recruited from elsewhere, but explaining the actual structures in terms of some stepwise process of exaptation is wishful thinking.

So what? That does not mean it could not have been coopted from other proteins. Nor does it mean it had to first function as a universal joint when it first evolved.

Yes, we know that's what the Darwinist "explanation" is. But it is ridiculous and there is no evidence for this. Although other components, like the base or the filament, could conceivably have had another use, the hook is acting as a joint between the motor and the propeller. In the absence of either it is useless.