From Fred Reed, an “evolution skeptic” at UNZ:
Recently I wrote a column about the theory of Intelligent Design, which holds that that life, both in its origins and its changes over time, are the result of design instead of chance. Several hundred comments and emails arrived, more than I could read. This was not surprising as there seems to be considerable public interest in the question, while a virulent political correctness prevents discussion in most forums. In particular the major media prevent mention of Intelligent Design except in derogatory terms.
Interesting to me at any rate was that the tone of response was much more civil and thoughtful than it was say, a decade ago.
That may partly be because so many conundrums of evolution are now being discussed in the science literature that being a troll bawling up a storm somewhere isn’t a credential anymore. (See links below.)
To judge by my mail, I suspect that many people, thanks to popular television, think of mutations as major changes that just happen, such perhaps as the rhino’s horn appearing all at once . In fact mutations are changes in the nucleotide sequence of DNA that may produce a new protein. The mathematical likelihood of getting multiple mutations that just happen to engender a complex result is essentially zero. The mathematics is clear but not easily explained to a television audience, no matter how intelligent.
In many years of writing columns, I have learned that the tenacity of attachment to emotionally important ideas is nearly infinite. This is as true of evolutionists as it is of Christians, the politically ardent, or the rabidly patriotic. Things that do not fit the belief are just ignored, forbidden, or explained away by wishful thinking. More.
But eventually, we need a serious discussion.
Hat tip: Ken Francis
See also: Replication failures of Darwinian sexual selection openly discussed at The Scientist. It’s as if evolutionary biologists are beginning to take some of the problems of Darwinism seriously enough to discuss them openly, as failures in research. In this case, the failure of claims for sexual selection (females drive evolution by choosing the fittest mates) is openly publicized. This is neck and neck with the Nature review of The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, one wonders, are the staff at The Scientist competing with the staff at Nature to be first out of Darwin’s collapsing house of cards?
and
At Nature: New evolution book represents a “radical” new perspective. Including things you didn’t know about Archaea discoverer, Carl Woese. It’s true. Woese, the first to recognize the kingdom of life, the Archaea, was not a Darwinist and thought there is a deity. Prediction: Soon only cranks will be Darwinists.
The only uncivil participants in the debate were Darwinists. Now that they’ve lost, they decided to tone it down a little.
I’m sure ET will be along any moment to back you up, SA.
as to this comment:
Indeed mathematics has not been kind to Darwinists in the least.
In fact, besides mathematics showing Darwinian evolution to be virtually impossible, Darwinian evolution and the world of mathematics are also completely incompatible with each other.
Darwinian evolution is based on a naturalistic and/or materialistic view of reality, called methodological naturalism, which holds that all possible scientific explanations for reality in general, and for biology in particular, are exhausted by purely natural and/or material explanations.
Yet, completely contrary to that presupposition of Darwinian thought, Mathematics itself exists in a transcendent, beyond space and time, realm which is not reducible any possible material explanation. This transcendent mathematical realm has been referred to as a Platonic mathematical world.
Simply put, Mathematics itself, contrary to the materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists, does not need the physical world in order to exist. And yet Darwinists, although they deny that anything beyond nature exists, need this transcendent world of mathematics in order for their theory to be considered scientific in the first place. The predicament that Darwinists find themselves in regards to denying the reality of this transcendent, immaterial, world of mathematics, and yet needing validation from this transcendent, immaterial, world of mathematics in order to be considered scientific, should be the very definition of self-refuting.
And as David Berlinski states, “There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time….”
Therefore, besides Darwinian evolution already being shown to be mathematically impossible, (by Sanford, Dembski, Marks, Axe, Behe, Durston etc.. etc..), Darwinian evolution is further falsified by mathematics as being a scientific theory since Darwinism denies the very reality of one the thing it most needs, i.e. mathematics, in order to be considered scientific in the first place.
Bob – you think IDists have been the primary source of incivility in this debate?
I wonder if the changing internet landscape has something to do with this?
I literally _never_ discuss my opinions about ID, evolution, creation, or religion with anyone in real life. Some of the internet venues that used to host in-depth debates on ID/evolution/creation no longer exist. This site is the only one I visit these days.
Perhaps debating these issues is just not as popular as it once was, and therefore people just don’t get as worked up about it as they did ~10 years ago? Or maybe they “spend” their incivility elsewhere.
Perhaps people realize no one is going to change their mind. Or that ID isn’t just the same as Young Earth Creationism.
Mung,
Yes, those too.
One thing I didn’t mention explicitly: I gather young-ish adults spend quite a bit of time binge-watching shows, facebooking, instagramming, and whatever else. 10–20 years ago, there wasn’t as much “content” of that sort to consume. That leaves less time for things such as internet debates.
daveS,
True. It would be interesting to see the age distribution on sites and forums like this. But we’d probably need something to compare it to.
daveS
Good points – I agree.
The clash between atheists and creationists was very heated 10 years ago. The two groups had never come into that kind of close contact before.
Agreed also about the difference with youngish adults.
A lot of the argumentation of the past came from pre-internet adults who were more “literate” – in a book culture, than today. There are “debates” of sorts in the comment areas of Amazon.com or YouTube or news sites. There’s still a lot of hostility from pro and anti-ID/Evolution sides.
Perhaps evolutionists will say that ID, as a threat, was exaggerated. They’ve dismissed us.
We say something similar – that evolution is dying.
I think back to Kitzmiller v. Dover, 13 years ago.
I think the trial and results would be quite a lot different now.
daveS, since the atheistic worldview denies that any real meaning, purpose and value, exists for life,,,
,,, since the atheistic worldview denies that any real meaning, purpose and value, exists for life,,, I’ve often wondered why militant atheists, such as yourself, are so motivated to promote their atheistic worldview to the rest of us and/or to trash Christianity in particular. Exactly what is the purpose of you, and other atheists, to devote so much of your blogging time on the internet, to something that, according to your very own worldview, does not really even matter in the end?
I can see where Christianity can ground such motivation to spread the ‘good news’ to people that life is not an accident and that life does not end at the grave, but I can find no such motivation within atheism to spread the ‘bad news’ that life is purposeless and meaningless. Perhaps you can help me understand, what is the payoff for you personally to continue, so fervently, to promote your ‘meaningless’ atheism to the rest of us?
Verse:
The problem is that the internet has been taken over by trolls who are not very intelligent, well informed nor ethically or intellectually honest. How can you reason with such people? I can’t, which is why I engage them as little as possible. That’s not civility; that’s giving in and giving up because of frustration.
And exactly how do you tell which side of an argument has the people who are “not very intelligent, well informed nor ethically or intellectually honest.”?
jdk,
If you don’t have an objective moral standard (the “golden rule’) that’s a problem.
Lots of people accept the golden rule as a principle worth living by – I certainly do. However, I don’t think that is necessarily correlated with intelligence or knowledge.
SA @ 4 – I know there are a lot of people on both side who are uncivil, and that’s been the case for as long as I’ve been following the debates. Certainly on this site, my impression is that most of the incivility has come from the ID side (we can go back to some of the comments of DaveScot, for example), but it was very different on Pharyngula.
Bob – but just in terms of sheer quantity, I’d think evolutionists outnumber IDists. So even if there were equal proportions of the uncivil in each group – the total numbers would be heavily weighted to evolution having the majority of uncivil behaviors.
This site alone is not a good place to measure the whole debate. The same is probably true for Pharyngula or Panda’s Thumb, etc.
Having discussions that are “much more civil” is not necessarily a good thing by itself. The old days may have been more honest and open.
Retreating to echo-chambers can lead to complacency.
Peace at all costs is not the goal.
We should be interested in the truth, and we should pursue it continually, and change ourselves to accept it, regardless of how difficult that may be.
There cannot be peace between blind-evolution and design. Conversations can be civil, and that is good, but not if it covers over differences and reaches compromises (as theistic evolution attempts).
jdk
Here is a rule I go by:
“Being intelligent means doing smart things.
Being unintelligent means doing stupid things.”
With that in mind, I’d say acceptance and attempting to live by, the golden rule, is correlated with intelligence.
Then I am intelligent! 🙂
This is one of the most mind-blowing things I’ve read here. The key question in the Dover trial was whether ID was science that could be uncoupled from creationism. Since Dover the ID-as-a-science claim has all but died. The movements potemkin journal has published only a little more than one paper per year, about the productivity you’d expect from a PhD student in evolutionary biology.
So, it’s fairly staggering to imagine someone has watched all this happen and thinks things have got better for ID over that time.
BO’H: I think you seriously need to take a look at the penumbra of attack sites. KF
BA77, Berlinski’s comment goes to the heart of the matter as it brings out the logic of being and the import that we necessarily have a world of abstract entities. KF
Ambly, the design inference on empirically tested, reliable sign is scientific or else “scientific” has been reduced to being a meaningless ideological term assigned by power of might and manipulation. And, beyond reasonable dispute, the Dover decision that the design inference on sign was stealth creationism was a kangaroo court imposition by way of a slightly modified copy-paste from ideologically driven parties without due regard to facts and merits. That the deceitful, disgraceful film Inherit the Wind seemed to have influenced the judge just multiplies the long-term discredit that marks that seemingly cheap victory for atheistical evolutionary materialistic scientism and its enablers or fellow travellers. Also, if you imply that naturalism [= a priori evolutionary materialism] obtains by default, delimiting reality, you have begged worldview level questions that it is no business of science to beg. KF
PS: Let us not forget that Cases White and Yellow led Hitler and OKW to imagine that Russia could be a pushover. Big mistake. A word to those imagining that evolutionary materialistic scientism has become invincible.
I guess I really shocked you with that.
If by “died” you mean “rendered illegal” or “opposed with irrational hostility and threats” then yes. Dead indeed. Congratulations.
But nobody has refuted Behe’s or Meyer’s work.
We just saw a prominent scientist from Germany become an advocate of ID. That wasn’t supposed to happen, remember? ID is just an American phenomenon for Bible creationists, supposedly.
How about “distinguished Finnish bioengineer Matti Leisola” – just published a book this year advocating “ID as science”.
So, if by “dead” you mean “attracting competent and respected scientists” and “being confirmed continually with failures in evolutionary claims”, then yes again. You’re quite right.
I mean… you are talking about two people. At the time of Dover Dembski was talking evolutionary simply not existing in 10 years. 10 years late you can name two new followers and producing papers (in a hosue-journal…) at the rate you’d expect for a PhD student. And you think things ahve got better in that time?
The DI has a list of scientists. More than two. I hadn’t checked it in a long time – includes scientists now from 14 countries which is a dozen more than 10 years ago.
Peer reviewed papers – the quantity has increased. I believe at Dover it was claimed that there were none.
I think he was proven right about that.
Earth to Amblky- There isn’t anything in peer-review that supports blind watchmaker evolution. The evos lied at the Dover trial and the ignorant judge was fooled by a literature bluff
Bob O’H is confused. It is always the evos that start the belligerence, nonsense and lies. Always. And I am more than happy to mix it up with them because bullies only understand one way.
Over on Joshua Swamidass’s new forum it is all civil and thoughtful as long as you agree with their blatant misrepresentations of ID, caricatures of IC and a cartoon version of evolution.
The cartoon version of evolution denies that modern evolution posits blind and mindless processes and includes telic processes. Show them evidence otherwise and it either gets ignored or you get a hand-wave, jedi style.
They still have no idea that ID is OK with telic evolutionary processes. And they think if they show a simple IC system evolving then all IC is refuted. Yet they don’t understand that IC is an argument against blind watchmaker evolution.
Josh’s “evidence” that chimps and humans share a common ancestor is that rats and mice share one and they are more genetically different than chimps and humans. He cannot understand how that can be even though evolution by design with recombination can easily explain the genetics. He just ignores that.
Disagree and argue against them at your own peril. And when you try to correct blatant misrepresentations and people putting words in your mouth you will be heavily moderated.
Kairosfocus:
“PS: Let us not forget that Cases White and Yellow led Hitler and OKW to imagine that Russia could be a pushover. Big mistake. A word to those imagining that evolutionary materialistic scientism has become invincible.”
Yep. Godwin’s Rule applies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law?wprov=sfla1
ET:
“Bob O’H is confused. It is always the evos that start the belligerence, nonsense and lies. Always. And I am more than happy to mix it up with them because bullies only understand one way.”
A small sample of counterfactuals (just from the last month):
https://www.martinsvillebulletin.com/accent/from-the-pulpit-here-s-a-cure-for-school-shootings/article_b331b62e-96ce-11e8-adcd-c3b4d6d4922b.html
http://www.altoonamirror.com/o.....be-denied/
http://www.dailypostathenian.c.....a24ed.html
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/western-mail-letters-saturday-july-14939904
https://www.morrowcountysentinel.com/news/20487/pastor-column-bible-tells-truth-about-dinosaurs
earth to timothta- context is important
ET:
“earth to timothta- context is important”
Yes it is. I just provided you with some.
I just got back from a conference with more than a thousand evolutionary biologists. There will probably be more than 2000 at another meeting this month. Pretty good turn out for a field of study that no longer exists, I would have thought?
per 18 and 19
So tell me jdk, are you a pro-abortion type of ‘golden rule’ atheist?
If so, your words are meaningless.
Yes, timothya, your referenced contexts has nothing to do with the topic. There wasn’t any debate
BTW there isn’t any scientific theory of evolution so there really isn’t anything to deny
Ambly:
Has any of them figured out a way to test the claims of evolution by means of blind and mindless processes?
Who is studying blind watchmaker evolution? What advances have they given us?
Amblyrhynchus, by any reasonable measure one may wish to invoke to classify something as a science, Darwinian evolution, (regardless of how many supposed ‘scientists’ support it), fails to qualify as a science!
The primary reason why Darwinian evolution lacks any of the rigor that is usually associated with the hard sciences is because Darwinian evolution has no mathematical model to test against. As Dr. Robert Marks states “Hard sciences are built on foundations of mathematics or definitive simulations. ,,, there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. According to our current understanding, there never will be.,,,”
And the primary reason why nobody has ever been able to build a realistic mathematical model for Darwinian evolution to test against is simply because there is no ‘law of evolution’ within the known physical universe for mathematicians and physicists to ever build a realistic mathematical model upon:
As Ernst Mayr himself conceded, “In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences.”
In the following article, Roger Highfield makes much the same observation as Ernst Mayr and states, ,,, Whatever the case, those universal truths—’laws’—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology.
Professor Murray Eden of MIT, in a paper entitled “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory” stated that “the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.”
And whereas Darwinian evolution has no known law of nature to appeal to so as to establish itself as a proper, testable, science, Intelligent Design does not suffer from such an embarrassing disconnect from physical reality. In other words, Intelligent Design can appeal directly to ‘the laws of conservation of information’ (Dembski, Marks, etc..) in order to establish itself as a proper, testable, and rigorous science.
And since Intelligent Design is mathematically based on the ‘law of conservation of information’, that makes Intelligent Design very much testable and potentially falsifiable, and thus makes Intelligent Design, unlike Darwinism, a rigorous science instead of a unfalsifiable pseudoscience.
In fact there is currently up to a 5 million dollar prize being offered for the first person that can “Show an example of Information that doesn’t come from a mind. All you need is one.”
ET said:
“Yes, timothya, your referenced contexts has nothing to do with the topic. There wasn’t any debate”
But this is what you said previously:
“It is always the evos that start the belligerence, nonsense and lies. Always. And I am more than happy to mix it up with them because bullies only understand one way.”
I provided a bundle of links to articles where creationists started the argument – that is to say, those articles are examples where the creationists made the first sally and thus bear on this topic’s question of whether or not the evolution debate is becoming “much more civil and thoughtful”.
I leave it to the readers to decide whether any of your nouns “belligerence, nonsense and lies” can be applied to the articles (or to the comments in reply wherever they are permitted) that I referenced.
Amblyrhynchus
Ok. Evolution is a “field of study”. Yes, a lot of people get paid to tell stories about it. Students at universities are a captive audience that have to pay to hear those stories also. So, that whole thing will live on in the future. It’s all safely protected by law also.
But I thought you were talking about evolution, as in a theory. That’s what’s dead.
SA @ 41 –
Amblyrhynchus was reponding to your comment @ 27:
The attendance at this year’s ESEB suggests he was totally wrong: there hasn’t been a “Taliban-style collapse of Darwinism”.
This, I think, is the comment from Dr. Dembski that Amblyrhynchus was referring to:
I’m not aware of any crisis of confidence having happened in evolutionary biology, so unless you have any evidence to the contrary, I think the prediction was wrong.
timotha- Dawkins started it well before your articles by calling people who disagree with evolutionism insane or wicked. Everything else is in RESPONSE to that
Bob O’H:
And yet Darwin’s ideas remain untestable and natural selection has failed as a designer mimic. No one uses blind watchmaker evolution for anything and it hasn’t added anything to our knowledge
Bob
Do you agree with Eugenie Scott’s famous line: “There are no weaknesses in evolutionary theory”?
I’d also direct you to the list of scientists who “Dissent from Darwin” but I think you’ll dismiss it.
According to Denis Noble, there is no evolutionary theory. He’s waiting for one to be established.
Dembski talks of “Darwinian processes” working successfully at the molecular level. I think you’re saying those are fully supported by the data.
Even Larry Moran disagrees with that.
I think I’ve got evidence that there is a crisis of confidence. The mechanism and theory no longer exist. There’s no consensus on what evolution does, how it works and what it can predict.
SA @ 45 –
Eugenie Scott, members of the “Dissent from Darwin” list and Denis Noble are not members of the evolutionary biology community.
I don’t know the context of Scott’s comment, and can’t find a primary source for it. Do you have a link?
The Dissent from Darwin list in well known: few are biologists (let alone evolutionary biologists). If Denis Noble said that there is no evolutionary theory (again, do you have a source for this?), then he is wrong. ow can we build models (e.g. population genetics, phylogenetic, coalescence) without theory?
OK Bob O’H- please link to a scientific theory of evolution so we can all read what it says. Or do you mean theory in the general and not scientific sense?
Darwin said to falsify his concept we had to prove a negative all the while forgetting he never provided any supporting evidence to support his claims about natural selection.
So please just link to the theory so we can all see what it is and what is says
Here are some places to start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
https://www.britannica.com/science/evolution-scientific-theory
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_01 (I used this as the main source for the two presentations summarized belowL
http://www.kcfs.org/kcfsnews/w.....s1.ppt.pdf
http://www.kcfs.org/kcfsnews/w.....s2.ppt.pdf
Hope this helps, ET. 🙂
No, Jack, it doesn’t help at all. Wikipedia definitely doesn’t post a scientific theory.
Who was the author of the scientific theory of evolution, Jack? Tell us some of its predictions born from its posited mechanisms.
There can be a general concept of evolution without there being a scientific theory.
ET writes, “Who was the author of the scientific theory of evolution, Jack?”
That is a stupid question. The theory of evolution has been contributed to by thousands of people. Occasionally someone writes a book (or a website) summarizing the theory, but no one person is the “author”.
That was a stupid answer, Jack. But it serves to support my claim that there isn’t any scientific theory of evolution. As Giuseppe Sermonti said in “Why is A Fly Not a Horse?”:
“There never really has been a scientific “theory” of evolution.” page 11, just after quoting Jerome Lejeune who called out at the end of a meeting of scientists “There is no theory of evolution!” and no one objected.
jdk:
And not one has found evidentiary support for Darwin’s claims pertaining to natural selection replacing a designer.
No one has found a testable mechanism capable of producing eukaryotes. We can’t even test the claim that chimps and humans shared a common ancestor. Kinesiology argues against such a thing.
So what have your alleged thousands of people contributed?
A good general grad level textbook would be a considerably more thorough place to start, ET.
Hi Jack, I have read Futuyma’s 2013 textbook “Evolution”. It doesn’t help you as far as a scientific theory of evolution goes. I even read “Evolution’s Witness: How the Eye Evolved” and it didn’t even cover how eyes evolved. It just showed different vision systems from the more simple to the more complex.
For example, Futuyma’s “evidence” for the efficacy of natural selection is baldly declaring that natural selection is the only process known to create adaptations and then pointing out adaptations.
That is the extent of his science of evolution.
Bob
The models are built on the assumption that there is descent from common ancestors, which at one time meant a tree of life and now means something else. But there’s no theory that predicts what fitness will be for any organism, whether new features will evolve or an organism will become extinct.
Supposedly, visual similarity in fossils was an indication of ancestry, except that conflicts with DNA comparisons. It is then assumed that sequence similarity is evidence of ancestry but that gives us multiple-supposed species which virtually identical physical characteristics.
I’ll just offer this clip from the Berkeley evolution site that jdk posted.
I note that.
It begins by assuring us that all the available evidence supports evolutionary conclusions. And that biologists do not argue those conclusions.
Then reading down, some of the big issues include “how does evolution produce new and complex features?”
This is a question that biologists are “trying to answer”.
Ok, there is supposed to be a theory in place that already answered that.
But obviously, that’s not the case.
This site is slightly more honest than others. They do admit that they are still trying to answer the basic question that supposedly Darwin already answered.
As for Denis Noble, the evolution-friendly Wikipedia gives us this – I refer you to #10 on the list:
To the retort that he is talking about a “theory of systems biology and not evolution” – I think points 1-9 show otherwise. There is no theory for the origin of these biological systems. Noble does not accept Darwinism.
Beyond that, you make the distinction between “evolutionary biology” and some other kind of biology. Is there a biology that is “non-evolutionary”? If so, where can I find it?
Link above should be Denis Noble’s page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Noble
Re: #46,
“The dissenters are not part of the evolutionary biology community.”
I’m not sure that we would expect any different. Or that it matters in any meaningful way.
Maybe we would expect very few dissenters from within the community, but perhaps a few. And the major dissenters would be ‘kicked out’ of the community as ‘No True Scotsmen’, and the few others who did dissent publicly in a more minor way would couch it in a framework that wouldn’t rock the boat, picking at the margins or always subtly retreating to the mainstream for the sake of financial self-preservation, etc…
10 years ago Dembski though this field would collapse and no longer exist. It didn’t. In fact, now yoy think it’s live into the future. So prehaps thinks aren’t better for ID ten years later? (I’m not sure if you remember, but that was your claim to start with).
SA @ 56 –
I asked you 3 questions. You haven’t responded about the Genie Scott quote, your source for Noble saying that there is no theory of evolutionary biology is not him saying that there is no theory of evolutionary biology, and you don’t explain how models of evolutionary biology can be built without a theory (FWIW, your claims that “no theory that predicts what fitness will be for any organism” is wrong: Fisher pointed out that Euler provided the equation for how life history traits affect fitness, and since then there have been many other models, e.g. in the evolution of behaviour).
You also ask what other sorts of biology are there than evolutionary biology. Well, there’s all sorts: cell biology, molecular biology, ecology, genetics, biochemistry, physiology, pathology, plant pathology, epidemiology, plant epidemiology, histology, etc etc etc. Of course, they are all related to each other, but are different areas of study and ways of looking at organisms.
Ambly:
And there isn’t any such field as blind watchmaker evolution
Bob @60
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeS4hdVm318&t=133s
“You’re saying … there are no weaknesses in the theory of evolution?”
E.S. “(Yes, I am)”
What are your thoughts, Bob? Are there any weaknesses in the theory of evolution?
Some options:
“There are no weaknesses”.
“There are some weaknesses”.
“There might be some or none”.
“I don’t know what ‘weakness’ means”.
“I don’t know what ‘the theory of evolution’ means”.
“I really don’t know”.
“I don’t want to tell you”.
I think that should cover your options, but feel free to come up with another one.
Evolutionary theory has nothing to contribute and can be rejected or ignored in the study of all those kinds of biology? Or is rather that evolution the foundation and necessary component in in those fields of study?
If the latter, then it’s all evolutionary biology as opposed to non-evolutionary biology.
If the former, then evolution has really nothing to contribute to biology as a whole, but only its own narrow sphere.
Bob
He said there is no theory of biology.
If you’re saying that evolution is not the theory of the origin and development of all life forms on earth (and thus the theory of all biological development) that would be interesting.
Scott’s answer here (which is not well summarized by the paraphrase above) is very good.
I am very glad that SA found a video of Genie’s response at the Texas Board meeting.
I am, however, a bit appalled (although unfortunately not surprised) at how badly Genie’s answer was misrepresented in the posts above. Genie did NOT say, “There are no weaknesses in evolutionary theory”.
When asked if there were weaknesses by Texas Board member Mercer in the context of a discussion about putting a statement about “strengths and weaknesses” into state high school science standards, the conversation went as follows:
Mercer says, “You are saying there are no weaknesses in evolution.”
Genie replies, “Not in the sense that the term weaknesses is used in this rarified environment.”
Notice, she does not say “yes”.
She then goes on to explain that critics of evolution search the literature for anomalies (matters of detail subject to some uncertainty and further investigation) and then use those to claim that the whole notion of evolution as descent by modification and common ancestry is invalid, which is, as she says, “not how science is done.”
To claim that Genie said “There are no weaknesses in evolutionary theory” is intellectually dishonest.
Bob O’Hara:
“The Dissent from Darwin list in [sic] well known: few are biologists (let alone evolutionary biologists).”
What is that supposed to mean? That only the specialists known as “evolutionary biologists” are qualified to talk about evolution? If that’s the case, then some of the leading loudmouths in the public debate about evolution, for example, Ken Miller, cell biologist, Kathryn Applegate, cell biologist, Deb Haarsma, astronomer, Karl Giberson, physicist, Eugenie Scott, anthropologist, Sam Harris, psychologist, Christopher Hitchens, political/social commentator, Bill Nye, popular science educator sans Ph.D. in anything, Steven Weinberg, cosmologist, P.Z. Myers, some sort of biologist (but not an evolutionary biologist), Elizabeth Liddle, cellist, architect, and neuroscientist, Daniel Dennett, philosopher, and many others aren’t qualified to talk about evolution. Yet all these people do talk about evolution, with great confidence, often swaggering confidence; and you’ve never scorned their aid and assistance, have you?
Or even if you allow anyone called “biologist” at the table, that still leaves out Larry Moran (biochemist, not biologist; many anti-ID folks used to argue that Michael Behe had no right to talk about evolution because he’s only a biochemist, not a biologist), and several other biochemists, including Denis Alexander, the big British propagandist for Darwinism, and it still leaves out the aforementioned exclusions.
Even if you widen the definition of “biologist” to include biochemists like Moran and anthropologists like Eugenie Scott, you would still be leaving out Dennett, Harris, Weinberg, a huge number of BioLogos and ASA scientists who are pro-Darwin, etc. So if you are going to exclude the scores of scientists on the Dissent from Darwin list who aren’t “biologists” in whatever sense you mean the term, you are going to have to scratch off Dennett, Harris, Weinberg, and some of the other culture-war leaders on your side. Are you prepared to be consistent to that extent?
How about the pro-Darwinian, anti-ID people who control all the articles about evolution and ID on Wikipedia? None of them will even give their real names, so it’s impossible to verify their qualifications, but it’s clear that none of them have graduate-level training in any branch of biology, let alone a specialty such as evolutionary biology. Their thought is entirely derivative; they merely repeat tropes from Ken Miller, Eugenie Scott, Jerry Coyne, etc., without any scientific understanding of their own. Are you prepared to grant that the Wikipedia editors have no business in the public debates over evolution, on the grounds that they aren’t evolutionary biologists or even biologists, and are too cowardly to reveal their names and qualifications?
You seem to be advocating a “gatekeeper” approach, whereby one needs a certain union card in order to deserve a hearing. That would be fine if you applied it consistently, but I don’t think you are doing that.
Either the criterion is formal training and/or publications in evolutionary theory (which cuts out a whole mess of the best-known popular advocates for Darwinism), or the criterion is knowledge of evolutionary theory, however acquired, even if one is formally in another field (which allows not only the aforementioned people but lots of other people you won’t like so much).
If you go for the “formal training” option, then you have to deal with the fact that many critics of Darwinian theory have more than ample formal training in evolutionary biology, including James Shapiro, Richard Sternberg, Gunter Wagner, and even (at some points) Stephen Jay Gould, who mocked the tendency of Darwinians to invent “just-so” selectionist stories. Do these anti-Darwinian evolutionary theorists deserve a place at the table, in your view? Or is it only those with formal training who also pay obeisance to neo-Darwinism who count?
If you go for the “knowledge of evolutionary theory, however acquired, even if one is a philosopher of science or astronomer or physicist or geographer or something else” option, then you can’t include philosopher Dan Dennett without also including philosopher of biology Paul Nelson, whose knowledge on the technical biological side dwarfs Dennett’s (and Miller’s, and Eugenie Scott’s, and many others who claim great knowledge of evolutionary mechanisms but don’t read the current technical literature, which Nelson does voraciously).
Lots of people on the Dissent from Darwin list have knowledge of evolutionary theory, even if they aren’t “evolutionary biologists” or even “biologists”. Other scientists, historians of science, philosophers of science, often know quite a bit about evolutionary theory. As much as Dan Dennett or Sam Harris or even Ken Miller do. (Miller’s understanding of evolutionary theory is theoretically circa about 1975.) So how about offering some consistent criteria about who is qualified to have an opinion on evolution, ID, etc.?
SA @ 62 –
Thank you for that link, it’s interesting, but if anything it undermines your claim. Now can you provide one where Genie Scott says that there are no weaknesses in evolution, please.
Neither. The reality is somewhere in between, and where it is varies depending on the subject.
SA @ 63 – thank you for acknowledging you were wrong. Next time please check your facts.
To be frank, I have no idea what a single theory of biology would even look like: there are simply so many different aspects to it. Evolution is one important aspect, but (for example) a lot of ecology doesn’t invoke evolution, because ecologists are often looking at short time scales and at aspects of biology where intra-specific variation can be ignored. Thus a lot of ecological theory doesn’t depend on evolutionary biology (although other ecological theory does use evolutionary biology).
eddieunmuzzled @ 66 – I made that comment in response to the Dissent from Darwin list being used as evidence for the claim that evolutionary biology has experienced a crisis of confidence. In that specific context I think it’s only reasonable to look at evolutionary biologists.
Bob O’Hara:
You wrote:
“I made that comment in response to the Dissent from Darwin list being used as evidence for the claim that evolutionary biology has experienced a crisis of confidence. In that specific context I think it’s only reasonable to look at evolutionary biologists.”
All right; I agree that the Dissent from Darwin list is not about whether or not evolutionary biologists are confident. It expresses doubts about the adequacy of the (neo-)Darwinian theory, not about the confidence of evolutionary biologists. So against your opponent, you win on that point.
Still, I raised some serious questions about the way these debates generally go. If you have followed these debates, you will know that many people have said things along the lines of what I described. So I’m looking for your view on whether those statements are justified.
1. For example, I have read many times in different places, “Behe is not qualified to comment on evolution because he is a biochemist, not a biologist.”
Do you think the reasoning there is sound? Do you think that the subject of evolution “belongs” to biologists and that biochemists have nothing to say about it? If that reasoning is solid, then Larry Moran is not qualified to comment on evolution, either, but he comments on it at length, and seems to regard himself as one of the world’s experts on the subject. Is it in your view right to say that biochemists aren’t competent to debate evolution, but then make an exception for Moran — or for anyone?
2. I’ve known many scientists, and an almost universal characteristic of theirs is a careful avoidance of “speaking out of their field.” This goes so far that sometimes even a chemist won’t comment on the work of another chemist (“That’s not my branch of chemistry”), and I know of one case where a trained astrophysicist and department chair wouldn’t comment on some of Hawking’s work because it wasn’t in his “area” of astrophysics. Even parts of astrophysics were out of the astrophysicist’s field! But in the blogosphere, in popular books, and on the university and mass media debating circuit, where the subject is evolution, suddenly *every* biologist (whether with any serious training in evolutionary theory or not) is an expert on evolution; in fact, scores of computer programmers, physicists, astronomers, and others also regard themselves as experts on evolution, and pontificate on it, lashing out at anyone who questions their understanding of it. Can you account for why the caution and modesty normally found among scientists in everyday scientific practice gets thrown out the window when the subject is evolution? For why every scientist and his mother-in-law feels competent to set the world straight on evolution? Would you say that a little more professional restraint is in order?
jdk
So she thinks there are weaknesses in evolutionary theory then, right?
Bob O
If evolutionary theory can be dismissed in those areas of biology then Intelligent Design or Creationism could be taught to students pursuing those fields.
jdk
I think Einstein was quite concerned with mathematical detail when trying to prove his theory. Looking for areas where a theory does not line up with reality is "how science is done".
Evolution, however, seems to want to be protected from that ordinary sort of questioning.
ID also, does not claim that the whole notion of evolution is invalid.
eddieunmuzzled
The crisis of confidence was with regards to the theory. But you’re thinking it was about their own self-confidence?
Ok, yes, if Bob was thinking that the topic is discussing the personal self-confidence of biologists then yes, the Dissent from Darwin list doesn’t touch upon that.
But when a group of academics and professionals dissent against the dominant scientific and philosophical idea in the world today (which evolution is, and it must be evaluated by more than just biologists) – then it’s a sign of a crisis of confidence for the theory. That has nothing to do with whether a person feels confident in his or her own personal qualities or character or mode of life.
There are many weaknesses with evolutionism, ie the alleged theory of evolution. Here are just a few:
1- It makes untestable claims
2- It doesn’t have a mechanism capable of producing eukaryotes
3- There aren’t any predictions borne from its proposed mechanisms
4- There isn’t a scientific theory of evolution
SA @ 72 – Eh? Your logic escapes me. It doesn’t help that you twist my worlds – I didn’t way that evolution can be dismissed. I explicitly pointed out that some parts of ecology DO use evolutionary biology. The same is true for other areas of biology: evolutionary biology impinges on them, but a lot of the time it is not necessary to consider, because different questions are being asked. Your suggestion is akin suggesting that because relativity is not used in a lot of physics, we can teach those students the theory of aether instead. Why would we teach students theories that are widely rejected by the scientific community?
Earth to Bob O’H- The question is what does the blind watchmaker have to do with evolution? When you say “evolutionary biology” are you referring to “blind watchmaker evolution” or some other “evolution”?
Bob O’H
Yes, some parts do and therefore some parts do not need evolution – evolution can be dismissed (forgotten about, ignored, disregarded, rejected, etc). It is not an theory that all biological research requires. I think that’s what you were saying, right?
You said “Evolution is one important aspect, but (for example) a lot of ecology doesn’t invoke evolution …”
I understood this as “evolution is one important aspect but there are areas of biology that do not require an acceptance of it.” In other words, evolution is not a “theory of biology” as a whole since it does not explain some parts of biology. Correct? Or does evolution give the foundation and meaning to all biology?
Well, I mean for those scientists who believe ID or Creationism is true, then they could teach those ideas on the development of the biological world and it would have no impact for better or worse on that field of study.
In those “some areas of ecology” where evolution plays no role, then those students who accept Intelligent Design or Creationism could be just as effective in their field of biology as anyone who learned Darwinian theory.
Darwin, creationism, ID or any other idea on origin of species would be irrelevant to that field of biology. Correct?
Err, not quite. Evolution does not need to be used in everything, but that doesn’t mean it can be forgotten about or rejected. Probability theory isn’t used in everything either, but anyone suggesting it can thus be forgotten or dismissed would be viewed as eccentric (to say the least).
This is absurd – if evolution is irrelevant for a subject, then so is biological ID: they both try to explain the same phenomena. So why would you teach one irrelevant subject because another is irrelevant?
Bob O’H:
How are you defining “evolution”, Bob?
And ID isn’t limited to biology. That’s its beauty. It is supported by several scientific venues.
Bob O’H
If evolution is not required in that field of biology then it can be dismissed or forgotten about with no negative impact to that science.
Astrology is not required for the study of mathematics. So, astrology can be dismissed or forgotten about by anyone studying or teaching math with no negative consequences.
The same is true for evolution and some parts of biology.
That’s fine. Some biologists want to believe in evolution. Others may want to accept ID. This would have no impact on the quality of their science.
If you’re saying that biologists who work in certain aspects of ecology should not be required to know anything about evolution, then yes. There should be no requirement for those biologists to accept Darwin. Darwin would be totally irrelevant to that aspect of biology – adding nothing.
As for ID, some may want to know about Intelligent Design and they could freely adhere to that theory and be equally qualified in those same areas of biology.
In other words, there should be no opposition to IDists who work in those areas of biology. Their acceptance of ID has nothing to do with their biological qualifications.
You are getting progressively stranger as this thread wears on. You may want to step back?
In response to this latest tack…. physics and chemistry are both fundamental to all of biology. Most (but not all) ecologists won’t have to call of the prinicpals of physics or O. chem in their work. So, you could be a really great population ecologist who believed in phlogiston or ID or young each creationism. That doesn’t do much to undermine the importance of physics or evolutionary biology, it just means it’s possible to do good research in some areas with out calling on the tools and principals of those sciences.
But, more to the point, all scientists (and all people) are welcome to believe whatever they want. The ID movement was, depending on who you asked, about teaching creationism in schools or replacing evolutionary biology as a science. It has failed on both counts. That neither ID nor evolutionary biology are of vital importance to some fields of biology doesn’t change that in any way.
A
Yes, you can do great work in biology and reject Darwin at the same time.
Do you, personally, “welcome” any and all beliefs a person may have?
sure, your personal beliefs are your own.
Some people believe that they should be able to teach ID in schools without any penalty.
And they are welcome to believe that.
Amblyrhynchus:
Those people are wrong on both counts. ID is an argument against blind watchmaker evolution- the untestable idea that life’s diversity arose via blind and mindless processes, like natural selection and drift, starting from some unknown populations of prokaryotes. Intelligent Design is NOT anti-evolution. And ID is not Creationism. Creationism- YEC, OEC and Progressive- are all subsets of ID but ID is more than the subsets of Creationism.
Mike Gene, author of “The Design Matrix” had an essay about Intelligent Design that opened with:
Science 101- try to determine how whatever it is you are investigating came to be the way it is
What is Intelligent Design?:
Well before any Creationist movement of the 1960s
Bob (and weave) O’Hara tries to mislead people once again and claims,,,
Contrary to what Bob and other Darwinian atheists may believe, Darwinian evolution, and the presuppositions therein, are completely useless, even harmful, for the practice of science and medicine.
As Phillip Skell stated in an article entitled, ‘Why Do We Invoke Darwin?’, “in areas where one would expect the Darwinian paradigm to have most benefited research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I found that Darwin’s theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss.” and “Darwinian evolution – whatever its other virtues – does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology.”
Jerry Coyne himself agrees with Skell’s overall sentiment that Darwinian presuppositions are practically useless:
Michael Egnor notes that “Medical science is remarkably successful,,, all without Darwin.”
As the following leading Doctor admitted, his career was “at no point aided by an understanding of Darwinian evolution” and in fact “a lack of understanding of design in physiology may hinder their (a young doctor’s) performance.”
In fact, in so far as Darwinian thinking has informed medical opinions, it has led to much medical malpractice:
Moreover, testing medicines on animals is largely a huge failure precisely because of the false evolutionary assumption of common ancestry:
And let’s not forget Darwinian presuppostions misleading researchers in molecular biology, for years and years, with its false prediction of junk DNA. As Ewan Birney himself stated “This metaphor of junk isn’t that useful.”
Bob (and weave) also tried to claim that Intelligent Design was useless to biology. Yet biology is infused with teleology, (end directed goals, i.e. design thinking). In fact, “the biologist who is not investigating how the organism achieves something in a well-directed way is not yet doing biology”. Moreover, it is impossible to describe the complexities of molecular biology “in language that avoids all implication of agency, cognition, and purposiveness”.
To reiterate, Darwinian evolution, and the presuppositions therein, are completely useless, even harmful, to the practice of science and medicine.
Silver Asiatic @74:
Much as I respect the contributors to the Dissent from Darwin list, I don’t think their number (maybe 1,000) is sufficient to demonstrate that evolutionary biology is suffering a crisis of confidence. There are probably 20,000 or more Ph.D.-holding biologists in the USA, about 95% of whom accept macroevolution as established fact, and probably about 80% of whom are confident that neo-Darwinism, or neo-Darwinism touched up with a bit of drift and a bit of horizontal gene transfer etc., supplies a sufficient mechanism for evolution. I wouldn’t call such numbers indicative of a crisis of confidence among scientists regarding evolution, though they might indicate growing doubts among some biologists, especially those who specialize in evolutionary mechanisms, about the adequacy of the Modern Synthesis.
I’d say there was a crisis of confidence in “evolution” (as opposed to “Darwinian theory of evolutionary mechanism”) if, say, 20% of biologists now doubted that macroevolution even happened — but that’s not where we are at today.
What the Dissent from Darwin list shows is that doubt about Darwinian mechanisms (which is really all that it covers, not evolution itself) is now no longer the province of a few fundamentalists with shaky or no academic qualifications, but is to be found in many accomplished scientists whose credentials are not in doubt, many of whom are not only not fundamentalists but not even Christian or conventionally religious at all. That is a new development. It’s a promising development, but to call it a “crisis of confidence” is journalistic hyperbole.
If you want a metaphor for the meaning of the Dissent from Darwin list, I’d say it’s more like an increasing number of small cracks in the Darwinian dam, which might eventually lead to cracks in the larger dam of macroevolution itself. But the first step is to dethrone Darwin and neo-Darwinism. Until that is done, virtually no biologist would even consider going further to question evolution itself. And even after it is done, the materialistic majority of working biologists will rush into damage control mode to try to find some other mechanism of evolution that is equally as aimless and unguided as the neo-Darwinian one, in order to maintain their materialistic world-view.
So it’s going to be a long time yet before it will be possible for a working scientist to openly doubt the occurrence of macroevolution, and not be punished (by complete loss of scientific career) for doing so, no matter how many superb peer-reviewed papers he/she produces on biological subjects other than evolution. But the day is already here when younger and mid-career biologists are freely sassing neo-Darwinism, which in 1970 would have been almost unthinkable for anyone but a very few highly-placed biologists who were in an academic position from which they could not be fired. So there has been progress of a sort.
Set aside the local pastor writing the op-ed (see timothya @32). And set aside Ken Ham, Richard Dawkins, Eugenie Scott, Bill Nye, Duane Gish, etc…all of whom argue on the basis of religion.
Even set aside ID leaders like Meyer and Dembski.
We’ve got a post yesterday highlighting a journal article advocating panspermia from pro-evolution (non-ID, non-creationist) scientists who say that the current neo-Darwinian paradigm can’t explain the Cambrian explosion, or the origin of life, or the complexity of octopi (or any of a wide-range of complex animals).
The authors make the case against any known neo-Darwinian process being capable of evolving the Octopus. For them, frozen Octopi eggs flying in on comets 270 MYA is a more plausible, parsimonious explanation than evolution.
Almost comically, the authors retreat to safe ground and assure the readers that they are firmly part of the evolutionist tribe, even as they saw off the branch they are sitting on.
Yeah, I’d say there’s cracks in the dam.
In his book, The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins tried to argue that biology was “the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Notice that to explain away design he has to concede that there is the appearance or intuition of design. But is it merely just all appearance– just an illusion?
Notice the logic Dawkins wants us to accept. He wants us to implicitly accept his premise that that living things only have the appearance of being designed. But how do we know that premise is true? Is it self-evidently true? I think not. Why can’t it be true that living things appear to be designed for a purpose because they really have been designed for a purpose? Is that logically impossible? Metaphysically impossible? Scientifically impossible? If one cannot answer those questions then design cannot be eliminated from consideration or the discussion.
I have said this here before, the burden of proof is on those who believe that some mindless, purposeless process can “create” a planned and purposeful (teleological) self-replicating system capable of evolving further though purposeless mindless process (at least until it “creates” something purposeful, because, according to Dawkins, living things appear to be purposeful.) Frankly, this is something our regular interlocutors consistently and persistently fail to do.
In 2015 Eric Andersen wrote this post which made the same point that I am making above.
https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/how-to-trick-yourself-the-darwinian-thought-process/#comment-583530
By the way several prominent ID’ists (Denton and Behe, for example) accept common descent. But even if you accept CD that doesn’t prove or even imply that the neo-Darwinian mechanism is the cause of evolutionary change.
So Bob runs away instead of trying to clarify his equivocations.
Typical