“Gold of the gaps”, the Discovery Institute, and Intelligent Design

This from Matt Young on pandasthumb:

Gold of the gaps

Does gold have a purpose? asks an unnamed author in Evolution News & Science Today. The author goes on to observe that there is more gold on earth than astrophysicists can account for and also that gold has risen to the surface of the earth faster than might be expected. They go on to note the “availability of many essential elements at the surface of the earth …” and also discuss the use of gold in medicine. They are somewhat breathless at the discovery that the body can metabolize gold:

Gold nanoparticles, which are supposed to be stable in biological environments, can be degraded inside cells, [boldface in original]

even though, as they note, gold salts have been used for decades in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.

At any rate, the article stresses the “mystery of biological gold” and claims several hints why gold may have a purpose: its abundance and seemingly unlikely transport to the surface of the earth, the ability of cells to “metabolize” [sic] gold, the fact that gold persists in the body, and the usefulness of gold for therapeutics. The conclusion of the article is

Behe demolishes Darwin (yet again!)

Michael Behe has a new book coming out, Darwin Devolves, which according to the mendaciously mislabelled Evolution News “Topples Foundational Claim of Evolutionary Theory.” I am unlikely to be sent a review copy, so I am relying on the Evolution News summary.

In brief, Behe continues to assert the existence of irreducible complexity in animal organs, while maintaining that

Darwinian evolution proceeds mainly by damaging or breaking genes, which, counter-intuitively, sometimes helps survival. In other words, the mechanism is powerfully de-volutionary. It promotes the rapid loss of genetic information.

and encapsulates this conclusion in what he calls the First Rule of Adaptive Evolution:

Break or blunt any gene whose loss would increase the number of offspring.

I reviewed Behe’s earlier statement of this Rule some years ago, in PandasThumb, and friends have suggested that I repost it. So here it is. (I am proud to say that it has already been reposted by Peaceful Science.

Since this First Rule of Adaptive Evolution, the pinnacle of Behe’s argument, was already spelt out in the earlier work, there is little that I need add to my original review below, beyond pointing out that even this puny statement of the obvious came with a debilitating disclaimer

It is called a “rule” in the sense of being a rule of thumb. It is a heuristic, useful generalization, rather than a strict law; other circumstances being equal, this is what is usually to be expected in adaptive evolution

and reminding Behe that he is himself the product of a massive increase in genetic complexity, the doubling and redoubling of the genome that separates him from his early notochord ancestors.  The original review follows [note: in that review I referred to “E.Coli acquiring the ability to metabolise citrate under anaerobic conditions”; that should be “aerobic conditions, in the absence of a reducing agent”. h/t Monica Lewis. this does not, however, affect the logic of the argument]:

Behe’s review in context, or what’s the point?