While at a house clearance auction my girlfriends parents came home with a big box of interesting books. One of these books was
Plan & Purpose in Nature by George C. Williams. Not one to miss such a good oportunity I decided to read it, and came accross an interesting genetic concept I hadn't considered before, that of genetic conflict
within an individual.
One example given was that of a gene in a sexually reproductive orgranism (such as a human etc). In sexual reproduction the principal is that each gene has an equal (random) chance of making it into any particular germ cell that the organism produces.
For example take gene
A inheritied from the father and
A' from the mother. Some germ cells will contain
A and some will contain
A'. A random distribution will ensure an equal distribution of these genes in the population in the absence of natural selection. This means that natural selection will be the only factor that limits the spread of the genes, and in essence the genes that work best for the fittness of individuals (and the population as a whole) will be the ones that get propogated most. This would be
fair competition between the genes, with the 'best' ones winning (from the point of view of the population/individual).
However, what if a gene mutated (or was
designed) such that it altered its chances of being incorporated into a germ cell? No longer would there be a 50/50 chance that a given offspring would have
A or
A' Say for example a mutation to
A meant it had a 60% chance of making it into a germ cell, and
A' now only has a 40% chance. Natural selection would proceed as before, but it would be working on an
unfair distribution of genes.
Now lets assume that gene
A' generally gives a greater fittness than
A. Under a
fair distribution of genes
A' would be selected in favour of
A and would dominate by some amount (be more prevelent in the genome). However, under
unfair distribution this may not necessarily be the case. Natural selection will have to work harder to achieve the same result because even though it is selecting
A', there is also a counter force selecting
A. As long as
A is not fatal to the reproduction chances of the individual then there is
some chance it will beat
A'.
This means that there is the possibility for maladaptations to persist in the genome longer than they would under
fair conditions, and even become fixed in it at the expense of a better solution.
Now, my point of all this is...what implication does this have on the intent of an intelligent designer? Does this mean that the Intelligent Designer cares more about individual genes (or clusters of genes if they're interdependent etc) than it does about individuals/populations?
Under the premise that an Intelligent Designer cares about individuals and populations of individuals I can conceive that it might use Natural Selection/Mutation and Sexual Reproduction to come up with the optimum individuals. But if it were doing this intelligently it would use only
fair distributions of genes to do this. If the individual is important, the genes that are selected are only 'good' if they help the individual/population.
If sexual reproduction allows
unfair distribution of genes this supports the view that the Intelligent Designer is interested in creating the perfect gene, rather than the perfect individual/population. Whether or not the gene is good for the individual/population is irrelevent, only that the gene reproduces more than its competitors. If that helps the individual/population then great, if it doesn't also great because it doesn't matter.
Therefore, if
unfair gene distribution is a part of life it seems to me that any intelligent designer is not overly interested in the health/wellbeing/happiness/ of an individual or a population of individuals. It is more likely to be attempting to create the perfect gene.
My prediction is that IDists with a theological motive will reject this idea (especially if it directly contradicts their theology), but a
pure IDist should have no problem with it. If thats where the evidence points then that's where the conclusions should follow.
If anyones interested the example above is cited in
Plan and Purpose in Nature, Chapter 4 The Adaptive Body, by George C Williams
I believe George's source for this is
"Genetic Conflicts", The Quarterly Review of Biology 71 (1996)
, although I haven't had a chance to read this so I can't be certain. Its listed at that back of the book under the relevant chapter.
Now I'm aware that this thread may sink into an argument for/against the validity of ID in general, but there are plenty of other threads about that. This thread is specifically about the
intentions of any proposed intelligent designer as evidenced by the 'design', and any implications this may have for ID proponents.