Tales from the quote mine: Leading Darwinists believe, with or without evidence – and why it matters

_{Denyse O'Leary

November 9, 2011

Culture, Darwinism, News}

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Churning through the quote mine, we note that Richard Dawkins wrote,

Instead of examining the evidence for and against rival theories, I shall adopt a more armchair approach. My argument will be that Darwinism is the only known theory that is in principle capable of explaining certain aspects of life. If I am right it means that, even if there were no actual evidence in favour of the Darwinian theory (there is, of course) we should still be justified in preferring it over all rival theories – p. 287, Blind Watchmaker

The structure of the current punditocracy prevents anyone from coming to a logical conclusion about what this means, while remaining a favourite of hair model TV. But in In the Beginning, Granville Sewell reminds us (p. 104) that it is hardly an unusual stance:

Olan Hyndman, in The Origin of Life and the Evolution of Living Things , [Hyndman 1952], calls Darwinism “the most irrational and illogical explanation of natural phenomena extant.” Yet he says “I have one strong faith, that scientific phenomena are invariable… any exception is as unthinkable as to maintain that thunderbolts are tossed at us by a man-like god named Zeus,” and he goes on to develop an alternative – and even more illogical – theory (Lamarckian, basically) of the causes of evolution. Jean Rostand [Rostand 1956], quoted in previous chapters, says “However obscure the causes of evolution appear to me to be, I do not doubt for a moment that they are entirely natural.” Hans Gaffron [Gaffron 1960], in a paper presented at the 1959 University of Chicago Centennial Congress Evolution After Darwin, presents a theory on the origin of life, but admits, “no shred of evidence, no single fact whatever, forces us to believe in it. What exists is only the scientists’ wish not to admit a discontinuity in nature and not to assume a creative act forever beyond comprehension.”

We’ve said it before: Darwinism is not a theory in science, it is a mood, in both elite and popular culture.

Elite culture know it is true without evidence, and popular culture feels it is true without evidence – which is why so much beyond-parody evolutionary psychology rolls through the pop science press unchallenged.

Comments

GinoB,
But if you say no such evidence exists anywhere, I guess we should believe you over those tens of thousands of scientists and millions of research papers.
I don't care if you have a billion research papers if none of them is about anything more substantial than these treehoppers you keep reminding us of. I responded in detail. Perhaps you thought that after a day or two you could just mention them again and pretend I hadn't. You never responded. You just bring it up again a few days later and pretend it hadn't been dismissed. And if I haven't said it a thousand times, a phylogenetic tree can no more depict evolutionary mechanisms such as selection then a family tree diagram can identify why your great-great-great grandfather married your great-great-great grandmother. Why do you continually post one link after another without attempting to reason on any of it in your own words or even indicate that you've read them yourselves?ScottAndrews2_{November 9, 2011
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Mr. Gibson, besides all the other evidence, materialistic neo-Darwinism is now falsified of a coherent foundation in reality (and thus science) since transcendent quantum information is now found in molecular biology on a massive scale. To put it simply, it is impossible for the within space-time material processes of neo-Darwinism to be the cause of the outside of space-time effect of quantum entanglement/information in molecular biology;
Falsification Of Neo-Darwinism by Quantum Entanglement/Information https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p8AQgqFqiRQwyaF8t1_CKTPQ9duN8FHU9-pV4oBDOVs/edit?hl=en_US
bornagain77_{November 9, 2011
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Mr. Gibson, Many times neo-Darwinists will appeal to a 'consensus of experts' to support their belief that evolution is true, yet this is just a smoke screen for the fact that they have extremely shallow evidence:
Let’s be clear: The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period. . (From a lecture delivered by the late Michael Crichton at the California Institute of Technology) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122603134258207975.html?mod=djemEditorialPage
bornagain77_{November 9, 2011
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But if you say no such evidence exists anywhere, I guess we should believe you over those tens of thousands of scientists and millions of research papers.
You have forgotten the "law of confirmation bias" which holds that anything not ratifying, or even anything refuting, a foregone conclusion simply does not count as evidence. As people here have been saying in different ways but quite incessantly, mainstream science simply ignores the obvious role played by a creator by the simple expedient of ruling out any indication of that role as "not constituting evidence." So we understand that it works both ways.David W. Gibson_{November 9, 2011
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What aspect of ID disagrees with that? I’ve never heard anyone propose magic. Are you sure you’ve been reading about the same ID?
Perhaps I have not. My reading of the original post was that biologists would prefer to extrapolate an understood process back through the advent of what might be considered living, rather than posit some sudden discontinuity of process. Evolutionary processes (that is, replication with variation) could have, and probably did, precede life as we know it by millions of years.
When someone says that there is 50 years of evidence supporting abiogenesis, the rest is called into question.
Maybe this is missed communication. I regard the abiogenesis research being done as highly indicative, productive, and informative. And to me, this is supportive. I don't arbitrarily say "if they created life, that counts; if they didn't, all else is worthless." Even if they DO end up producing life, this is only "proof of concept", not any indication of how it actually happened.
As for evolution, I’ll repeat myself because I’m lazy. There is no account, observed or hypothetical, of any evolutionary event beyond the micro variety, described in terms of proposed mechanisms of evolution.
I wouldn't disagree with this at all. My understanding of current theory is, ALL evolution occurs in tiny increments. There is only micro...and Deep Time. In fact, my reading of the theory is that "macro" is either disallowed altogether, or allowed only as a generalization covering countless tiny steps.
Any documented cases of evolution described in terms of evolutionary mechanisms will be limited to such trivial instances of microevolution as fish changing color or variations no greater than between breeds of dogs.
I quite agree with this as well. The evolutionary mechanisms so far identified all produce very tiny incremental changes over extended periods of time. For changes of this magnitude to become cumulatively significant to our eyes, requires a very large number of tiny changes. If each change requires a long time, we can't avoid noticing that evolution as a process makes glaciers look like racecars. On the proposed (and measured in the fossil record, to the extent it's possible) evolutionary timescale, very little cumulative evolution occurs during the lifespan of any single species, since most species persist only for a few million years, an eyeblink in evolutionary terms. So 100 years of observation is about 5 orders of magnitude too small for the sort of "macro" changes you are requesting.David W. Gibson_{November 9, 2011
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My point wasn't that complicated. It was, to put it simply, that when 99% of the professionals in a field disagree with one's conclusions, it's considered honorable to mention this, even if every one of them is considered wrong. If nearly every educational degree granted in a field teaches, is based on, and extends what one claims doesn't exist in the first place, it's at least polite to point out that every notable university in the world does so, even if every one of them is dead wrong. I understand that this site exists to advocate for a particular viewpoint, and that one technique for doing so is to simply ignore, dismiss, or omit mention of the opposition. My personal reaction is that the way to vanquish an inferior opponent is in direct combat, not by decreeing that the opponent shall not be permitted to enter the field of battle! I'm reminded of the comment someone made when Nixon was elected, to the effect that "I just can't understand how Nixon won. I don't know a single person who voted for him!" There is a strong sense here of people very very carefully restricting their research to material confirming their preferences, and that their chosen sources are doing exactly the same thing. And as commonly happens with inbreeding, you get some unfortunate side-effects. Dawkins does the same thing, and when his preferences are different from yours, this technique becomes both obvious and odious. Dispute resolution procedures apply the same rules to both sides for a reason.David W. Gibson_{November 9, 2011
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ScottAndrews2
As for evolution, I’ll repeat myself because I’m lazy. There is no account, observed or hypothetical, of any evolutionary event beyond the micro variety, described in terms of proposed mechanisms of evolution. In other words, there is not a single case in which anyone says, “Here is what happened,” or even, “Here is what we think might have happened,” unless they omit the actual specifics of how evolution occurs, such as specific variations and specific causes for selection. Any documented cases of evolution described in terms of evolutionary mechanisms will be limited to such trivial instances of microevolution as fish changing color or variations no greater than between breeds of dogs. If you don’t believe me, try to find the exception.
(Cough cough) treehoppers. Evidence for the evolution of a completely new body part in treehoppers Evidence for the evolution of mimicry in treehoppers And as far as dogs go, I'd still love to hear your explanation for the canid genetic data. Figure 10: Phylogeny of canid species. But if you say no such evidence exists anywhere, I guess we should believe you over those tens of thousands of scientists and millions of research papers.GinoB_{November 9, 2011
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The research is like a big, black storm cloud. It looks formidable from a distance, but the closer you get to it it starts to turn gray and look a lot more harmless. There are more thousands of research papers than I can imagine. From time to time someone comes up with a "best of" compilation that's supposed to be extremely impressive. Most commonly they detail genetic or regulatory differences between organisms A and B. The implication is that, having identified the difference, they can now identify how A might have transitioned to B. The funny part is that we already knew that A and B were related and likely possess some common genes. We also knew that they were different, and therefore have differing genes. Such papers focus on one, maybe two such phenotypic differences, such as varying forelimb lengths between rodents and bats. They almost never attempt to explain a series of incremental changes, or any of other differences as between rodents and bats (behavior, echolocation, other variations necessary for flight.) And selection is always missing, or added on after the fact as a guess. I can't read them all. But whenever someone decides to throw down the gauntlet and post links to research papers, it's always more of the same. Sure, there's a mountain of it. So what?ScottAndrews2_{November 9, 2011
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further notes:
Falsification Of Neo-Darwinism by Quantum Entanglement/Information https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p8AQgqFqiRQwyaF8t1_CKTPQ9duN8FHU9-pV4oBDOVs/edit?hl=en_US A few comments on ‘non-local’ epigenetic information implicated in 3-D spatial organization of Body Plans: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1iNy78O6ZpU8wpFIgkILi85TvhC9mSqzUSE_jzbksoHY Does Quantum Biology Support A Quantum Soul? – Stuart Hameroff - video (notes in description) http://vimeo.com/29895068
Verse and Music:
Romans 1:20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 4-Him - Can't Get Past The Evidence http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiRQxEOWdDw
bornagain77_{November 9, 2011
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Well Mr. Gibson, not being the least bit impressed with consensus to establish scientific fact, I will focus instead on what you state here:
this “zero evidence” fills hundreds of journals with thousands of research reports each year,,,
Really??? I would have preferred JUST ONE example to counter my claim that there is ZERO substantiating evidence for neo-Darwinism, but since you refer to the entire breadth of neo-Darwinian research, let's look there for our substantiating evidence: notes: Where's the substantiating evidence for neo-Darwinism? One very fishy thing about neo-Darwinism is that the vast majority of mutagenesis experiments have shut down:
Many of these researchers also raise the question (among others), why — even after inducing literally billions of induced mutations and (further) chromosome rearrangements — all the important mutation breeding programs have come to an end in the Western World instead of eliciting a revolution in plant breeding, either by successive rounds of selective “micromutations” (cumulative selection in the sense of the modern synthesis), or by “larger mutations” … and why the law of recurrent variation is endlessly corroborated by the almost infinite repetition of the spectra of mutant phenotypes in each and any new extensive mutagenesis experiment (as predicted) instead of regularly producing a range of new systematic species… (Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, “Mutagenesis in Physalis pubescens L. ssp. floridana: Some Further Research on Dollo’s Law and the Law of Recurrent Variation,” Floriculture and Ornamental Biotechnology Vol. 4 (Special Issue 1): 1-21 (December 2010).) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/12/peer-reviewed_research_paper_o042191.html
Four decades worth of lab results are surveyed here:
“The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain – Michael Behe – December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/
Michael Behe talks about the preceding paper in this following podcast:
Michael Behe: Challenging Darwin, One Peer-Reviewed Paper at a Time – December 2010 http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/player/web/2010-12-23T11_53_46-08_00
How about the oft cited example for neo-Darwinism of antibiotic resistance, surely they have substantiating evidence there, shouldn't they??
List Of Degraded Molecular Abilities Of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria: Excerpt: Resistance to antibiotics and other antimicrobials is often claimed to be a clear demonstration of “evolution in a Petri dish.” ,,, all known examples of antibiotic resistance via mutation are inconsistent with the genetic requirements of evolution. These mutations result in the loss of pre-existing cellular systems/activities, such as porins and other transport systems, regulatory systems, enzyme activity, and protein binding. http://www.trueorigin.org/bacteria01.asp
That doesn't seem to be helping! Hey, how about we look really, really, close at very sensitive growth rates of bacteria and see if we can catch almighty evolution in action???
Unexpectedly small effects of mutations in bacteria bring new perspectives – November 2010 Excerpt: Most mutations in the genes of the Salmonella bacterium have a surprisingly small negative impact on bacterial fitness. And this is the case regardless whether they lead to changes in the bacterial proteins or not.,,, using extremely sensitive growth measurements, doctoral candidate Peter Lind showed that most mutations reduced the rate of growth of bacteria by only 0.500 percent. No mutations completely disabled the function of the proteins, and very few had no impact at all. Even more surprising was the fact that mutations that do not change the protein sequence had negative effects similar to those of mutations that led to substitution of amino acids. A possible explanation is that most mutations may have their negative effect by altering mRNA structure, not proteins, as is commonly assumed. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-unexpectedly-small-effects-mutations-bacteria.html
Shoot,, that doesn't seem to be helping either! Perhaps we just got to give the almighty power of neo-Darwinism ‘room to breathe’? How about we ‘open the floodgates’ to the almighty power of Darwinian Evolution and look at Lenski’s Long Term Evolution Experiment and see what we can find after 50,000 generations, which is equivalent to somewhere around 1,000,000 years of human evolution???
Richard Lenski’s Long-Term Evolution Experiments with E. coli and the Origin of New Biological Information – September 2011 Excerpt: The results of future work aside, so far, during the course of the longest, most open-ended, and most extensive laboratory investigation of bacterial evolution, a number of adaptive mutations have been identified that endow the bacterial strain with greater fitness compared to that of the ancestral strain in the particular growth medium. The goal of Lenski’s research was not to analyze adaptive mutations in terms of gain or loss of function, as is the focus here, but rather to address other longstanding evolutionary questions. Nonetheless, all of the mutations identified to date can readily be classified as either modification-of-function or loss-of-FCT. (Michael J. Behe, “Experimental Evolution, Loss-of-Function Mutations and ‘The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution’,” Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 85(4) (December, 2010).) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/09/richard_lenskis_long_term_evol051051.html
Now that just can’t be right!! Man, we should really start to be seeing some neo-Darwinian fireworks by 50,000 generations!?! Hey I know what we can do! How about we see what happened when the ‘top five’ mutations from Lenski’s experiment were combined??? Surely now the Darwinian magic will start flowing!!!
Mutations : when benefits level off – June 2011 – (Lenski’s e-coli after 50,000 generations) Excerpt: After having identified the first five beneficial mutations combined successively and spontaneously in the bacterial population, the scientists generated, from the ancestral bacterial strain, 32 mutant strains exhibiting all of the possible combinations of each of these five mutations. They then noted that the benefit linked to the simultaneous presence of five mutations was less than the sum of the individual benefits conferred by each mutation individually. http://www2.cnrs.fr/en/1867.htm?theme1=7
Now something is going terribly wrong here!!! Tell you what, let’s just forget trying to observe evolution in the lab, I mean it really is kind of cramped in the lab you know, and now let’s REALLY open the floodgates and let’s see what the almighty power of neo-Darwinian evolution can do with the ENTIRE WORLD at its disposal??? Surely now almighty neo-Darwinian evolution will flex its awesomely powerful muscles and forever make those IDiots, who believe in Intelligent Design, cower in terror!!!
A review of The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism The numbers of Plasmodium and HIV in the last 50 years greatly exceeds the total number of mammals since their supposed evolutionary origin (several hundred million years ago), yet little has been achieved by evolution. This suggests that mammals could have “invented” little in their time frame. Behe: ‘Our experience with HIV gives good reason to think that Darwinism doesn’t do much—even with billions of years and all the cells in that world at its disposal’ (p. 155). http://creation.com/review-michael-behe-edge-of-evolution Michael Behe, The Edge of Evolution, pg. 162 Swine Flu, Viruses, and the Edge of Evolution “Indeed, the work on malaria and AIDS demonstrates that after all possible unintelligent processes in the cell–both ones we’ve discovered so far and ones we haven’t–at best extremely limited benefit, since no such process was able to do much of anything. It’s critical to notice that no artificial limitations were placed on the kinds of mutations or processes the microorganisms could undergo in nature. Nothing–neither point mutation, deletion, insertion, gene duplication, transposition, genome duplication, self-organization nor any other process yet undiscovered–was of much use.” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/05/swine_flu_viruses_and_the_edge020071.html
Now, there is something terribly wrong here! After looking high and low and everywhere in between, we can’t seem to find the almighty power of neo-Darwinism anywhere!! Shoot we can’t even find ANY power of neo-Darwinism whatsoever!!! It is as if the whole neo-Darwinian theory, relentlessly sold to the general public as it was the gospel truth, is nothing but a big fat lie!!!bornagain77_{November 9, 2011
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DWG,
As for origin of life, the sense here is that scientists, absent any evidence, are equally uninclined to accept magic as a default “explanation”
What aspect of ID disagrees with that? I've never heard anyone propose magic. Are you sure you've been reading about the same ID?
And, as always, the a priori assumption that evidence matters has resulted in the accumulation of enormous amounts of consistent evidence in support of both evolution and abiogenesis over the last 50 years
Leaving evolution aside for the moment, to what evidence do you refer? Leading researchers such as Szostak are endeavoring to synthesize life. If they succeed at their stated goals they will have demonstrated intelligent design, and to demonstrate abiogenesis would face the daunting experience of getting a lifetime of experiments to reproduce without them. When someone says that there is 50 years of evidence supporting abiogenesis, the rest is called into question. As for evolution, I'll repeat myself because I'm lazy. There is no account, observed or hypothetical, of any evolutionary event beyond the micro variety, described in terms of proposed mechanisms of evolution. In other words, there is not a single case in which anyone says, "Here is what happened," or even, "Here is what we think might have happened," unless they omit the actual specifics of how evolution occurs, such as specific variations and specific causes for selection. Any documented cases of evolution described in terms of evolutionary mechanisms will be limited to such trivial instances of microevolution as fish changing color or variations no greater than between breeds of dogs. If you don't believe me, try to find the exception.ScottAndrews2_{November 9, 2011
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elephant hurling.bbigej_{November 9, 2011
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Dawkins made the argument that evolution, EVEN IF there were no such evidence, would be preferable because it is CAPABLE of generating and evaluating evidence, whereas competing explanations are inherently incapable of evidential support.
Well...Dawkins was completely wrong, and he was motivated by his ideology to present his claim the way he did - me against nothing, I win. However, the remainder of the thinking planet of people (biologist or not) are not constrained by Richard Dawkins or his ideological limits. The simple fact is that the entire biological world is singularly dependent on semiotic information. Richard Dawkins, nor his ideological bretheren, have any explanation for this, so they make statements like "inherently incapable of evidential support." But that is blatantly incorrect Yet, it does serve the purpose. does it not, Mr Gibson?Upright BiPed_{November 9, 2011
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You might be polite enough to mention that your claim is resoundingly rejected by tens of thousands of practicing biologists, over the course of a century and a half. Or that this "zero evidence" fills hundreds of journals with thousands of research reports each year. Or that predictions based on this "zero evidence" are ratified with thumping consistency each day. When there are disagreements, and well over 99% of the recognized experts in the subject area are on one side of the issue, don't you think it's misleading to pretend none of them exist? They might all be wrong, but they are numerous enough, and armed with enough of what they regard as valid evidence, to at least merit a mention!David W. Gibson_{November 9, 2011
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as to:
a theory for which the evidence is mind-bogglingly extensive and consistent is therefore without evidence!
Save for the fact that there is ZERO substantiating evidence for neo-Darwinism, I guess what you said could be true; :)bornagain77_{November 9, 2011
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of note: Prof. Granville Sewell on Evolution: In The Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHOnqDNJ0Bcbornagain77_{November 9, 2011
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Uh, there's a touch of bait-and-switch here. It's one thing to say that there are logical reasons to accept one evidence-free explanation over another evidence-free explanation. It's quite another thing to say that because this is true, a theory for which the evidence is mind-bogglingly extensive and consistent is therefore without evidence! Dawkins made the argument that evolution, EVEN IF there were no such evidence, would be preferable because it is CAPABLE of generating and evaluating evidence, whereas competing explanations are inherently incapable of evidential support. Dawkins then goes on to show that, in fact, the evidence on the ground is almost unimaginably extensive anyway. So the distinction here is between explanations that can or can NOT find and rest on evidence. As for origin of life, the sense here is that scientists, absent any evidence, are equally uninclined to accept magic as a default "explanation", and uninclined to simply give up and decide evidence will forever be unavailable (or forever meaningless). Of course, scientists will prefer to look for the sorts of explanations science as an enterprise is constructed to find. (And, as always, the a priori assumption that evidence matters has resulted in the accumulation of enormous amounts of consistent evidence in support of both evolution and abiogenesis over the last 50 years since this quote was mined, and the process continues.) What scientists take "on faith" is that whether or not you know if something exists, you're more likely to find it if you look for it.David W. Gibson_{November 9, 2011
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