The Biotic Message. (Walter Remine) (2).

Was
Darwin
Wrong?

part I part II

MESSAGE THEORY

Remarkable for a book with the title The Biotic Message. Evolution versus message theory,

"Therefore the designer had to use odd and curious design."

Walter Remine.

there isn't a single chapter devoted exclusively to the message theory. Message theory appears throughout the book almost as footnotes to problems in evolution theory, however the index of the book is helpful to find them.
The message theory says that life was intentionally created to look unlike evolution. A few examples show message theory in action:

"the biomessage sender was out to destroy phylogeney"
"life's designer scrupulously avoided a transposition pattern"
"The broad absence of Lamarkian inheritance is a straightforward prediction of message theory."
"the designer was constrained from using the same design again indiscriminately"
"re-use would be acceptable design practice.."
"the designer does not send hidden or encrypted messages"
"the message is not intended solely for high-tech civilizations"
"A biomessage sender is constrained against using only perfect engineering designs."
"We expect an ordinary designer to use the same design. A biomessage sender is no ordinary designer"
"Perfect design would look like the result of many designers acting separately"
"Therefore the designer had to use odd and curious design. ... This solves the argument from imperfection."

In stead of arguing against all statements individually, I formulate a number of general methodological objections to Remine's 'message theory'. But not before having emphasised that Remine's message is by no means intended metaphorically. It is intended as a literal message.

Why is there a message at all? Remine offers no methodology to establish the existence of a message. And it is not an easy task, because:
The message is not expressed in a language but in a 'pattern'. Human messages are expressed in a language, not in a pattern of objects. Is it justified to speak of a message at all?
How can one be sure where the message starts and ends? If the message is not expressed in a language and the very existence of the message has not yet been established, how does one find out which objects belong and which objects do not belong to the pattern? Why is the message biotic? Why would a designer not create life through evolution as theistic evolutionists claim? There could be a message in the fact of evolution, or there could be a message in the absence of evolution.
Message theory is 'designer psychology'. No message without intentions. No message without motives. Remine is digging in the mind of the designer. In other words: message theory is designer psychology. Remine claims to know the message and the intentions.
Remine offers no methodology to detect the number of designers from the pattern of life. Remine objects to 'too much' diversity in life that it would look like the work of more designers, as if he could determine the number of designers based on a measure of diversity. Obviously and unsurprisingly he prefers one designer. But how much diversity is too much for one designer? And how much unity is too much for multiple designers? How are unity and diversity defined? From the existence of Five Biological Kingdoms (5), it could be concluded that there are Five Designer-Kings.
The question if life looks like evolution can be solved without a message theory. Therefore message theory is redundant. Whatever the existence of a message, first one needs to establish the fact (or non-fact) of evolution.
Message theory is not a biological theory. It is not about biological species or properties of life. Biology can study patterns of life, or songs of birds, or even a 'message' in DNA, but not Remine's kind of message. Remine's 'designer' cannot be brought under laboratory control, nor can an action of a 'designer' be observed in the field, nor does a mathematical model of the designer exist. That's why biology is justified in excluding Remine's designer from scientific practice.

Michael Behe, the author of Darwin's Black Box, said about 'designer-psychology': "Yet the reasons that a designer would or would not do anything are virtually impossible to know unless the designer tells you specifically what those reasons are." and: "The point of scientific interest is not the internal state of the designer but whether one can detect design" (13). Because Intelligent Design Theory avoids the pitfall of designer psychology, it is a more advanced theory than Remine's. It looks as if Remine himself realises the dangers of design-psychology: "not by ill-formed notions of what the designer 'may have' done." (p509) However his message theory is based entirely on designer-psychology. An example of the problems inherent in a designer concept is Remine's answer to the question 'Why should a biomessage sender choose a nested pattern over others?". Remine explains this by 'noise immunity' (p359). 'Noise' is clearly a concept from the engineering world, but not appropriate for a supernatural designer. The creator would first create noise and then create 'noise resistance systems'? The same holds for so called 'system bootup'. Of course a supernatural creator who could create a billion species out of nothing, would not be constrained by a human engineer's puzzle as system bootup. Remine really goes too far when he introduces the concept of an "unordinary designer".
All this shows that the concept of a designer is not helpful in understanding the natural world. Yes, for some it does stop further questioning, but we do not gain knowledge of the living world. In my view one cannot improve the message theory; one needs to drop it. And since a message is from a message sender, one needs to remove the concept of a 'message sender' also from science. Yet Behe accepted a designer. However for a different reason: Irreducible Complexity as a property of life. More important: Behe's Irreducible Complexity is totally independent of any 'designer-psychology'. Remarkably, it seems that Remine, an engineer, is not interested at all in the internal design of organisms. He treats organisms as black boxes. Behe opened the black boxes.

UNITY & DIVERSITY

"All organisms are linked by design, not by descent" (p324)

This is Remine's reply to "the notion that humans are in no way linked to the other animals" (Miller). 'Linked by design' is a misleading phrase because Miller meant naturally, physically and biologically linked by descent. 'Created species' are by definition not genetically linked because they have no ancestors. Those species are unlinked. The chain of life is broken. It's evolution by common descent that links all organisms genetically. In the evolutionary view there is an unbroken chain of all life forms. Inheritance establishes the links (14). That's the crucial difference between evolution and creation. Remine blurs this difference by his phrase 'linked by design'. Remine has the tendency to talk about 'linked' while believing in independent creation. Independent is not linked. Remine focusses on the morphological and palaeontological discontinuity of life, when he wants to show independent creation and exclusively focusses on universal properties of life (and 'forgets' his discontinuity) when he wants to prove one designer. But discontinuity is the opposite of 'linkage'. Discontinuity means 'no linkage'.

"If the living world has not arisen from common ancestors by means of an evolutionary process, then the fundamental unity of living things is a hoax and their diversity, a joke"
Theodosius Dobzhansky (18)

Remine's motives could be that he wants to 'explain' universals and similarities in this way.
However if one believes in independent creation one should accept the consequences of such a worldview. And that is: organisms (Remine's term "monobaramin") are created from scratch; they are not linked by descent. Directly created organisms do not inherit anything from their ancestors, because they have none. The fact that creationists feel the need to invoke supernatural creations points to the absence of natural links between all species in their worldview. Where creationists see gaps, there are no links. Surprisingly one also finds reluctance to fully accept the created worldview in his Discontinuinity Systematics. There he wants to 'de-emphasize' his 'directly created organisms' without rejecting the concept of 'directly created organisms'. As if he can't accept the consequences of his own worldview.
If species share a multitude of characteristics despite independent creation, then this needs to be explained. 'United by design' is not an explanation. First it supposes that there is only one designer and second it supposes the designer needed to create all those similarities. But why should he? There is no solid methodology in the book to explain why a designer should create the mix of unity and diversity we find in nature. Or why different designers could not produce similar designs. Of course such a methodology can not exist. Nobody can known these things. All Remine can offer is speculative design-psychology, which was even rejected by Michael Behe. This is the reason why the 'explanation' that unity results from one designer doesn't work. Inheritance does explain it and inheritance is one of the scientifically best understood phenomena in biology.

box 3

Life looks: like evolution neutral unlike evolution

Remine: Common descent of dog,wolf,coyote.
Real lineage. ??? Phylogenetic gaps.
Gaps in fossil record.
HGT
Designed for survival.

Korthof: Unnecessary universals/shared properties: genetic code, chromosomes.
Nested pattern.
Survival by nat.selection. Necessary universals:
Carbon-based-life,
Properties dependent on physical-chemical laws.
Survival (general). Horizontal Gene Transfer.
Every species its own genetic code.

The surprising result of this discussion seems that when both creationists and evolutionists claim to predict and explain the unity of life, and survival of lifeforms, then these must be neutral properties. They are too vague to be able to discriminate between the two. However Remine did not identify the category neutral facts, which contains among others, all necessary design similarities. Remine didn't discriminate between necessary and unnecessary design properties too. Unnecessary designs or historical accidents (as the genetic code) suggest evolution.

DISCONTINUITY SYSTEMATICS:

Discontinuity is the key issue

It's no surprise that discontinuity is the key issue for Remine (p513). Discontinuity of life is part of Del Ratzsch's definition of Creationism (15). Remine wants to build a theory-free Discontinuity Systematics as seen by a neutral observer. That is: without the concepts of 'creation' or 'message theory'. "If the data indicate that organisms are credible common descendants, then they are classified as common descendants."(!) (p509). Discontinuity Systematics seeks the boundaries of common descent. These are good intentions. His Discontinuity Systematics looks like a proposal to be published in a scientific journal, but this did not happen (Remine did not mention such a publication in his own references). Despite his good intentions the supernatural/natural distinction creeps in his definitions. Remine defines boundaries where organisms cannot be linked by a naturalistic process (p448), implying that the gaps have to be filled in by supernatural creations.
box 4: Canidae. fox
The Canidae group diverged from other Carnivora 50-60 million years ago. The ancestor produced 12 genera and 34 species in less then 10 million years. Their chromosome numbers vary between 2n=36 - 78, including 36, 42, 50, 64, 66, 74, 76, and 78. A difference in chromosome number restricts hybridisation.
See: Robert K.Wayne: Molecular evolution of the dog family.
Let us look at an example of Discontinuity Systematics. Remine places dogs, wolves, coyotes, jackals and foxes in one systematic group: the Canidae "monobaramin". Remine defines "monobaramin" as "a group containing only organisms related by common descent, sharing a common ancestor." (p444). By doing this he says that dogs, wolves, coyotes, jackals and foxes have a common ancestor. This is not a trivial thing to do for someone who writes a book against evolution. Furthermore Remine does not tell his readers that his Canidae-group is at the family level, which includes 12 genera and 34 species and that is far more extensive then just some micro-evolution at the species level. Remine does not give any biological evidence for the common descent of Canidae. (As if it is not important. Human descent seems more important then that of dogs and foxes). He demands this sort of evidence from evolutionists. Remine underestimates the diversity of the group (see box 4). (He looks at the group as an amateur-biologist: they all look morphological variants of the same type. As if hair color (red fox, grey fox, grey wolf) and some hybridisation is all one needs to know). Remine seems to be unaware of the implications of his example:

acceptance that the naturalistic neo-Darwinistic processes mutation and natural selection created 34 species of the Canidae family, because only the 'proto-dog' would have to be created. So Remine implicitly accepts those 'atheistic unsupervised unguided unplanned undirected purposeless blind materialistic' random mutations!

acceptance of evolution above the species level, so more then what usually is called "micro-evolution".

box 5:
the Homonoid group

In old classification systems Homo was a separate family. In the modern classification of humans and apes, Homo sapiens, gorilla and chimpanzee are in the same family. African apes and humans diverged 4 - 8 million years ago. Homo sapiens has 2n=46 and chimpanzee, gorilla, orang-utan have 2n=48 chromosomes. There is evidence that the human chromosome 2 originated from a fusion of the chimpanzee chromosomes 12+13 which explains the difference in chromosome number.

acceptance of the fact that Canidae solved Haldane's dilemma: a group of higher vertebrates could pay the costs of substituting genes. (Remine sees Haldane's dilemma as an obstacle to evolution).
why stop at the Canidae boundary? Why not include skunk, weasel, otter? and so on.
despite any discontinuity, despite any boundaries, the dog-family and the cat-family share thousands of genes. Were all those genes created from scratch by the designer? Any discontinuity in life is linked by shared properties at the molecular level. Were they all created from scratch by the designer? An obvious violation of the principle of parsimony.
if a proto-dog could produce a family of 34 species in less then 10 million years, why should a homonoid ancestor not produce chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, orang-utan and humans in the same time? The chromosome variation within the homonoid group is much smaller than in Canidae (see box 5). If the genetic distance wolf-fox would be the same as bonobo-human, then Remine should conclude that bonobo and human have common ancestors. However one expects that creationists belief that humans 'are created by the direct action of a designer'.

Lamarck simple?

"Lamarckian inheritance is a simple, plausible mechanism, with real benefit for evolution. Accordingly it should be everywhere, and its absence is a serious problem for evolutionists" (p115)

Lamarckian inheritance, or the inheritance of acquired characters, is by no means simple and plausible. According to what criterion is it simple? Remine doesn't tell. What makes a biological process 'simple' or not is the biochemical mechanism behind it and the mechanism is far from simple if it exists at all ! The probable cause of Remine's error is that he misreads Maynard Smith's words: "Lamarkism is not so obviously false as is sometimes made out" (16) as meaning that it is simple and plausible. However the reader who continues to read Maynard Smith notices that Lamarckian inheritance is not so obviously false, but is false nonetheless. Any knowledge of the 'Central Dogma' (17) would tell him so and would prevent misunderstanding that quote. Maynard Smith formulated it in that way because of the strong prejudices scientists have against any form of Lamarckian inheritance, not because it is true! I am not saying that Remine intentionally misinterprets Maynard Smith, but his wish to attack evolution theory made him uncritical.
Remarkably a few pages before in Remine's book (p111) Remine knows that "Lamarck's theory is falsified"! Only in Remine's fantasy is the absence of Lamarckian inheritance "a serious problem for evolutionists". "The broad absence of Lamarkian inheritance is a straightforward prediction of message theory." Here Remine, master of the art of illusions, created the double illusion that evolution theory has a problem and his theory solved it. Remine is in this matter a false guide for the reader.
An example of a weak form of the inheritance of acquired characters, which does not violate the 'central dogma', is that of the inheritance of immunological responses, which was recently published by Edward Steele et al (17). His claim was severely criticised by the scientific community. The evolutionary usefullness of these complex phenomena have not been established. Remine's claim that Lamarckian inheritance is simple, is completely unfounded. And it's also wrong that Lamarckian inheritance should be widespread in organisms, because that is based on the false assumption that Lamarckian effects are automatically adaptive. Lamarckian effects could be a burden for organisms. Remine could as well have claimed that, from an evolutionary point of view, beneficial mutations should be common, and harmful mutations should be rare, because this would be extremely beneficial for evolution.
To make Lamarckian inheritance a serious evolutionary mechanism, one needs at least: (a) environmental induced production of a new and beneficial protein and (b) a mechanism to translate it back via RNA into DNA and (c) to transport it to the germline (d) to successfully integrate it into the chromosome. These are all serious obstacles! To my knowledge there is no evidence that this strong form of Lamarckian inheritance ever occurred in nature.
Remine claims also that Lamarckian inheritance would not falsify natural selection (p113). I agree with that.

back	(to be continued)

Notes:

Michael Behe(1996), Darwin's Black Box, p 223.
Compare with Object Oriented Programming (in computer sciences): it is more efficient to inherit properties from parent objects and add properties, than to create every object from scratch.
Del Ratzsch(1996), The Battle of the Beginnings, p12.
John Maynard Smith(1989,1998), Evolutionary Genetics. Quoted on page 114 of The Biotic Message.
Edward Steele et al(1999), Lamarck's Signature.
Dobzhansky(1964) Biology, Molecular and Organismic, American Zoologist, p449.

	homepage: www.wasdarwinwrong.com	http://home.planet.nl/~gkorthof/kortho42.htm
Copyright © 1999 G.Korthof	First published: 12 Sep 1999	Updated: 14 May 2005