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Author Topic:   Does the Intelligent Deisgner Favour Genes Over 'Individuals'?
happy_atheist
Member (Idle past 4913 days)
Posts: 326
Joined: 08-21-2004


Message 1 of 4 (407225)
06-25-2007 7:18 AM


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.

Replies to this message:
 Message 2 by AdminWounded, posted 06-25-2007 8:25 AM happy_atheist has replied

  
AdminWounded
Inactive Member


Message 2 of 4 (407231)
06-25-2007 8:25 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by happy_atheist
06-25-2007 7:18 AM


I'm not sure to what extent this really differs from many of the other arguments against some exceptional elegance of design, i.e. arguments from vestigial features or sub-optimal features. Be that as it may the topic itself is interesting, lets see what the punters think.
TTFN,
AW
P.S. Looking up 'Meiotic drive' or 'segregation distortion' on google or pubmed should provide some more specific examples of these sort of phenomena.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by happy_atheist, posted 06-25-2007 7:18 AM happy_atheist has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 3 by happy_atheist, posted 06-25-2007 9:01 AM AdminWounded has not replied

  
happy_atheist
Member (Idle past 4913 days)
Posts: 326
Joined: 08-21-2004


Message 3 of 4 (407237)
06-25-2007 9:01 AM
Reply to: Message 2 by AdminWounded
06-25-2007 8:25 AM


AdminWounded writes:
I'm not sure to what extent this really differs from many of the other arguments against some exceptional elegance of design, i.e. arguments from vestigial features or sub-optimal features. Be that as it may the topic itself is interesting, lets see what the punters think.
My thread isn't really an attack on ID as such. I'm not trying to assert sub-optimal design in the sense of vestigal organs. I'm instead proposing that if there is evidence of encouraged inheritence of sub-obtimal features at the individual/population level then this is evidence that the intent of a designer is not to create the perfect individual, but is rather much more concerned with the perfect gene. I'm interested in how this evidence will be taken by ID proponents. Is it acceptable to claim that the individual is unimportant in the Intelligent Designers eyes?
AdminWounded writes:
P.S. Looking up 'Meiotic drive' or 'segregation distortion' on google or pubmed should provide some more specific examples of these sort of phenomena.
Thanks for the terms. It's always difficult to search for these concepts when I don't know the accurate terms used by the researchers!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 2 by AdminWounded, posted 06-25-2007 8:25 AM AdminWounded has not replied

  
AdminWounded
Inactive Member


Message 4 of 4 (407244)
06-25-2007 10:09 AM


Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

  
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