Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Do You Believe in Magic? How Evolution Creates Evolution

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New research is suggesting yet another twist on how evolution creates itself. The research tells us more about epigenetics, so first we need to review how epigenetics has already falsified much of evolutionary theory. I’ve written this before but it bears repeating. The adaptation of species to environmental pressures would seem like obvious evidence for evolution. But in recent years we have begun to understand the enormous complexity of adaptation. It is not a story of natural selection acting on undirected biological variations (that is, variations that are blind to environmental pressures). This sort of undirected process has been the evolutionary dogma for the past century. In what was known as the Modern Synthesis, biological adaptation was described as resulting from blind variations resulting, for instance, from genetic rearrangements or unguided mutations. No thanks to evolution we are now beginning to understand the real version of biological adaptation. What we are seeing is an incredibly complex adaptation machine that tweaks the designs of organisms in response to environmental pressures.  Read more

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Scot.David, Front-loading would/ could use a targeted search genetic algorithm.Joseph
February 10, 2010
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A convergence denier? No sir, not at all! I think the Designer front-loaded it all. But don't ask me how He did it, I think that's why they call Him the Designer.Scot.David
February 6, 2010
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So evolution plans for future adaptation through a process of DNA methylation? Interesting. So... what process existed before this mechanism developed through chance and necessity that allowed evolution to plan its future adaptation? After all, such an adaptation must have been pre-planned, no? How magical evolution is. It doesn't plan anything, but through chance and necessity, it regulates the future planning and intention of unplanned adaptations. Now I'm really confused. Why not simplify this and call it design?CannuckianYankee
February 6, 2010
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#1: Not sure what you mean, are you a convergence denier?Cornelius Hunter
February 6, 2010
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Thank you for this....and thank you for your blog...I read it regularly. I believe chance is an intellectually bankrupt explanation for anything, much less for complex adaptations. yet ToE requires it. But now that it's not panning out for them they're forced to move the goalposts and claim that the seemingly intelligent, purposeful, goal-oriented mechanisms that adapt organisms came about by chance. Storytelling at its finest.van
February 6, 2010
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Great ideas Dr. Hunter. The evolutionists may scream about it, but to me and all of the other design advocates, it seems eerily simlar to how the thalycine and wolf resemble each other, as if they were almost mirror images.Scot.David
February 6, 2010
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