Pharyngula

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Wednesday, December 07, 2005

At last! A hypothesis!

Ruben Bolling has finally done what no Intelligent Design proponent has accomplished: he has laid out a specific hypothesis for the evolution of the bacterial flagellum. That's Step #1. Step #2 is to devise a prediction from this hypothesis that can be tested.

image

That next step might be a little bit more difficult.


Trackback url: http://pharyngula.org/index/trackback/3525/8UoVZnJx/

Comments:
's avatar #52795: jinx — 12/07  at  11:47 PM
Don't forget: This Might Explain a Few Things.



#52804: — 12/08  at  02:24 AM
As soon as you posit a personality on the Intelligent Designer, you get specific hypotheses. For example, we might posit that God-Man looks specifically to make irreducibly complex mutations. (After all, why would He care how complex they are?)

Cool. We can handle this.

Hypotheses: Species should tend to change in irreducibly complex steps, and should largely change at times of great species-wide distress. We should not tend to observe small, gradual changes; we should not observe changes that proffer a small advantage over a neighboring species; we should not observe changes that favor one species over another arbitrarily (does God-Man prefer this bug to that bug?).

Hm. Doesn't really line up with reality. Guess that God-Man isn't the Intelligent Designer. Falsified!

Maybe it's the flying spaghetti monster.



#52839: — 12/08  at  08:41 AM
On my RSS pharyngula feed, I somehow didn't catch the name of one of my favorite comic writers, and I didn't see the comic itself, so I thought this was a post about an actual ID hypothesis. Oh well, maybe next week.

Hooray for GodMan.



#52854: Arun — 12/08  at  09:23 AM
Off-topic - can this finding be discussed a bit, please?

http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2005/12/7/2025

Analysis of 334 species of bat has turned up some interesting findings: in species with promiscuous females, males had evolved larger testicles but relatively small brains. In species where the females were were monogamous, the males had smaller testicles, but larger brains. These results are contrary to what was expected. It was predicted that in species with promiscuous females, the males would need larger brains to avoid being cuckolded.



#52859: — 12/08  at  09:36 AM
...in species with promiscuous females, males had evolved larger testicles but relatively small brains. In species where the females were were monogamous, the males had smaller testicles, but larger brains.


Hmmmm. does this imply that redneck women are more promiscuous?



#53027: — 12/08  at  10:07 PM
My wife is monogamous, and I have.... Oh no!



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