Evolution is a Big Word, Part 2: Diving Deeper into the Theories of Evolution

_{Jonathan Bartlett

February 6, 2012

Intelligent Design}

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In the article Evolution is a Big Word, I cover several issues. In our last installment, we discussed what the multiplicity of theories means for the claims of a consensus opinion about evolution. In this installment, I wanted to talk about the theories themselves. There are several questions I would like to propose to our readers:

Of the theories listed, which ones do you think have the best evidence?
Of the theories listed, which one is your favorite?
What theories did I miss? (If you list a theory, please provide a link to a paper or book describing the theory)
Which theories of evolution are consonant and/or dissonant with Intelligent Design?
What are the theological and political corollaries of the different theories? I should note that many of the founders of the different theories espouse theological or political corollaries for them (including Darwin). (NOTE TO ALL – the goal of this is not to engage in a religious shouting match, but rather engage the ideas themselves on a deeper level)
How does the given theory interact with other biological theories? I am specifically thinking about the origin of life, taxonomy, and common ancestry, but I would also enjoy any other theory for discussion.
What other sources should be included in the list? I tried to list sources which were generally interesting to both educated laymen and experts. What other works should I have included?

I numbered the questions, so if you just want to respond to one or two of them, just list the number and your answer.

Comments

Additional note as to the scope, and breadth, of the 'First Mover' argument as laid out by Aquinas:
Jerry Coyne and Aquinas' First Way - Michael Egnor September 9, 2009 Excerpt: ‘The First Mover is necessary for change occurring at each moment. The argument is unrelated to the Big Bang; as noted, Aquinas assumed (for the sake of the First Way) that there was no temporal beginning of the universe. The argument works irrespective of whether or not the universe had a beginning in time. The only way to explain change in the natural world is to posit the existence of an unmoved First Mover. Aquinas goes on (in Summa Contra Gentiles and Summa Theologica) to draw out in meticulous detail the necessary attributes of the First Mover, and he demonstrates that it is logically necessary that the First Mover have many attributes (simplicity, omnipotence, etc) that are traditionally attributed to God as understood in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Argument from Motion is rigorous, and I have merely summarized its salient points, but it is straightforward once the premises are established. It is a very powerful argument.’ - Michael Egnor – Aquinas’ First Way http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/09/jerry_coyne_and_aquinas_first024951.html
Verse and Music:
Acts 17:28 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' FFH - One of These Days http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHdSgQVIb5c
bornagain77_{February 9, 2012
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Dr REC:
I think many theists believe proof of the existence of God can come from evidence.
We are talking about THEISTIC EVOLUTIONISTS, not just theists.Joe_{February 9, 2012
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Joe, you’re forgetting your own talking point about how deleterious most mutations are, and how few helpful ones there are.
Reference please.
Scientists sequence parents and offspring for several generations, or related species, or populations, sequence their genomes and determine the pattern of mutations an transpositions.
Pattern? Who said that directed mutations would form a pattern?
Scientists study the mechanisms behind mutations and recombinations.
They don't know the mechanisms behind them. THAT is the point, duh.
These studies show genetic variation is random.
Only ignorance sez genetic variation is "random" in any sense of the word. What you are saying is like having a computer scientist taking an ocsilloscope and looking at one data bus line and seeing a scramble of 1s and 0s and concluding they are random.Joe_{February 9, 2012
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Thus the ‘necessary consciousness’ that is collapsing the wave packet to each central point of unique conscious observation in the universe, is found to be a ‘infinite dimensional consciousness’ which possesses the attribute of control over infinite information. i.e. God Further notes:
Centrality of Each Individual Observer In The Universe and Christ’s Very Credible Reconciliation Of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics https://docs.google.com/document/d/17SDgYPHPcrl1XX39EXhaQzk7M0zmANKdYIetpZ-WB5Y/edit?hl=en_US Falsification Of Neo-Darwinism by Quantum Entanglement/Information https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p8AQgqFqiRQwyaF8t1_CKTPQ9duN8FHU9-pV4oBDOVs/edit?hl=en_US Does Quantum Biology Support A Quantum Soul? – Stuart Hameroff – video (notes in description) http://vimeo.com/29895068
Verse and Music:
Psalm 100:3 Know that the LORD Himself is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves;,,, Steven Curtis Chapman – God is God (Original Version) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz94NQ5HRyk
bornagain77_{February 8, 2012
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Here is the key experiment that led Wigner to his Nobel Prize winning work on quantum symmetries:
Eugene Wigner Excerpt: To express this basic experience in a more direct way: the world does not have a privileged center, there is no absolute rest, preferred direction, unique origin of calendar time, even left and right seem to be rather symmetric. The interference of electrons, photons, neutrons has indicated that the state of a particle can be described by a vector possessing a certain number of components. As the observer is replaced by another observer (working elsewhere, looking at a different direction, using another clock, perhaps being left-handed), the state of the very same particle is described by another vector, obtained from the previous vector by multiplying it with a matrix. This matrix transfers from one observer to another. http://www.reak.bme.hu/Wigner_Course/WignerBio/wb1.htm
i.e. In the experiment the ‘world’ (i.e. the universe) does not have a ‘privileged center’. Yet strangely, the conscious observer does exhibit a ‘privileged center’. This is since the ‘matrix’, which determines which vector will be used to describe the particle in the experiment, is ‘observer-centric’ in its origination! Thus explaining Wigner’s dramatic statement, “It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.”
Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness – Richard Conn Henry – Professor of Physics – John Hopkins University Excerpt: It is more than 80 years since the discovery of quantum mechanics gave us the most fundamental insight ever into our nature: the overturning of the Copernican Revolution, and the restoration of us human beings to centrality in the Universe. And yet, have you ever before read a sentence having meaning similar to that of my preceding sentence? Likely you have not, and the reason you have not is, in my opinion, that physicists are in a state of denial… https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-quantum-enigma-of-consciousness-and-the-identity-of-the-designer/ What drives materialists crazy is that consciousness cannot be seen, tasted, smelled, touched, heard, or studied in a laboratory. But how could it be otherwise? Consciousness is the very thing that is DOING the seeing, the tasting, the smelling, etc… We define material objects by their effect upon our senses – how they feel in our hands, how they appear to our eyes. But we know consciousness simply by BEING it! APM - UD Blogger https://uncommondescent.com/neuroscience/another-atheist-checks-out-of-no-consciousnessno-free-will/comment-page-1/#comment-411601
Moreover, The argument for God from consciousness can be framed like this:
1. Consciousness either preceded all of material reality or is a ‘epi-phenomena’ of material reality. 2. If consciousness is a ‘epi-phenomena’ of material reality then consciousness will be found to have no special position within material reality. Whereas conversely, if consciousness precedes material reality then consciousness will be found to have a special position within material reality. 3. Consciousness is found to have a special, even central, position within material reality. 4. Therefore, consciousness is found to precede material reality.
It is also interesting to note that materialists, instead of honestly dealing with the obvious theistic implications of quantum wave collapse in quantum mechanics, will many times try to invoke something along the lines of Everett’s Many Worlds interpretation when dealing with quantum mechanics, in which the quantum wave is held to be abstract instead of real.
Quantum mechanics Excerpt: The Everett many-worlds interpretation, formulated in 1956, holds that all the possibilities described by quantum theory simultaneously occur in a multiverse composed of mostly independent parallel universes.[39] This is not accomplished by introducing some new axiom to quantum mechanics, but on the contrary by removing the axiom of the collapse of the wave packet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics
Yet the ‘quantum wave packet’ is shown to be real, not abstract in the following; It is important to note that the following experiment actually encoded information into a photon while it was in its quantum wave state, thus destroying the notion, held by many, that the wave function was not ‘physically real’ but was merely ‘abstract’. i.e. How can information possibly be encoded into something that is not physically real but merely abstract?
Ultra-Dense Optical Storage – on One Photon Excerpt: Researchers at the University of Rochester have made an optics breakthrough that allows them to encode an entire image’s worth of data into a photon, slow the image down for storage, and then retrieve the image intact. http://www.physorg.com/news88439430.html
The following paper mathematically corroborated the preceding experiment and cleaned up some pretty nasty probabilistic incongruities that arose from a purely statistical interpretation, i.e. it seems that stacking a ‘random infinity’, (parallel universes to explain quantum wave collapse), on top of another ‘random infinity’, to explain quantum entanglement, leads to irreconcilable mathematical absurdities within quantum mechanics:
Quantum Theory’s ‘Wavefunction’ Found to Be Real Physical Entity: Scientific American – November 2011 Excerpt: David Wallace, a philosopher of physics at the University of Oxford, UK, says that the theorem is the most important result in the foundations of quantum mechanics that he has seen in his 15-year professional career. “This strips away obscurity and shows you can’t have an interpretation of a quantum state as probabilistic,” he says. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=quantum-theorys-wavefunction The quantum (wave) state cannot be interpreted statistically – November 2011 http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/1111.3328
Further notes on the ‘quantum wave packet’;
Wave function Excerpt “wave functions form an abstract vector space”,,, This vector space is infinite-dimensional, because there is no finite set of functions which can be added together in various combinations to create every possible function. - wikipedia Quantum Computing – Stanford Encyclopedia Excerpt: Theoretically, a single qubit can store an infinite amount of information, yet when measured (and thus collapsing the Quantum Wave state) it yields only the classical result (0 or 1),,, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-quantcomp/#2.1 3D to 4D shift – Carl Sagan – video with notes Excerpt from Notes: The state-space of quantum mechanics is an infinite-dimensional function space. Some physical theories are also by nature high-dimensional, such as the 4-dimensional general relativity. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VS1mwEV9wA
bornagain77_{February 8, 2012
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I find this centuries old philosophical/logical argument, for the necessity of a ‘First Mover’ accounting for change occurring at each moment, to be validated by quantum mechanics. One line of evidence, from quantum mechanics, arises from the fact that there actually is a smallest indivisible unit of time, Planck time, which directly contradicted the seemingly common sense contention that time was continuously ‘flowing’;
Planck time Excerpt: One Planck time is the time it would take a photon travelling at the speed of light to cross a distance equal to one Planck length. Theoretically, this is the smallest time measurement that will ever be possible,[3] roughly 10^-43 seconds. Within the framework of the laws of physics as we understand them today, for times less than one Planck time apart, we can neither measure nor detect any change. As of May 2010, the smallest time interval that was directly measured was on the order of 12 attoseconds (12 × 10^-18 seconds),[4] about 10^24 times larger than the Planck time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time
The ‘first mover’ of Aquinas’s argument was further warranted to be necessary from quantum mechanics since the possibility for the universe to be considered a self-sustaining ‘closed loop’ of cause and effect was removed with the refutation of the ‘hidden variable’ argument, as first postulated by Einstein, in quantum entanglement experiments.
Quantum Measurements: Common Sense Is Not Enough, Physicists Show – July 2009 Excerpt: scientists have now proven comprehensively in an experiment for the first time that the experimentally observed phenomena cannot be described by non-contextual models with hidden variables. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090722142824.htm
(of note: hidden variables were postulated to remove the need for ‘spooky’ forces, as Einstein termed them — forces that act instantaneously at great distances, thereby breaking the most cherished rule of relativity theory, that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.) This proof was further solidified in 2010:
Physicists close two loopholes while violating local realism – November 2010 Excerpt: The latest test in quantum mechanics provides even stronger support than before for the view that nature violates local realism and is thus in contradiction with a classical worldview. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-physicists-loopholes-violating-local-realism.html
And this proof was further extended in 2011 by Anton Zeilinger, and team, to falsify local realism (reductive materialism) without even using quantum entanglement to do it, i.e. this experiment extended ‘non-local’ realism to the particles themselves, thus extending the empirical evidence to be directly in line with what was posited in Aquinas’s ‘First Mover’ argument:
‘Quantum Magic’ Without Any ‘Spooky Action at a Distance’ – June 2011 Excerpt: A team of researchers led by Anton Zeilinger at the University of Vienna and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences used a system which does not allow for entanglement, and still found results which cannot be interpreted classically. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110624111942.htm Falsification of Local Realism without using Quantum Entanglement – Anton Zeilinger http://vimeo.com/34168474
a further breakthrough in 2011 was here, showing that quantum information is ‘conserved’:
Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time – March 2011 Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.html
As well, preceding the fact that there must be a ‘First Mover’ for the movement of the particles themselves within this universe, there is now also shown to be a necessity for a sufficient ‘conscious’ cause (God/First Mover) to explain why quantum waves collapse to each unique point of conscious observation in the universe.
Quantum mind–body problem Excerpt: Parallels between quantum mechanics and mind/body dualism were first drawn by the founders of quantum mechanics including Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, Niels Bohr, and Eugene Wigner - wikipedia Dr. Quantum – Double Slit Experiment & Entanglement – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4096579 The Mental Universe – Richard Conn Henry – Professor of Physics John Hopkins University Excerpt: The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things.,,, Physicists shy away from the truth because the truth is so alien to everyday physics. A common way to evade the mental universe is to invoke “decoherence” – the notion that “the physical environment” is sufficient to create reality, independent of the human mind. Yet the idea that any irreversible act of amplification is necessary to collapse the wave function is known to be wrong: in “Renninger-type” experiments, the wave function is collapsed simply by your human mind seeing nothing. The universe is entirely mental,,,, The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy. http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/The.mental.universe.pdf Wheeler’s Classic Delayed Choice Experiment: Excerpt: Now, for many billions of years the photon is in transit in region 3. Yet we can choose (many billions of years later) which experimental set up to employ – the single wide-focus, or the two narrowly focused instruments. We have chosen whether to know which side of the galaxy the photon passed by (by choosing whether to use the two-telescope set up or not, which are the instruments that would give us the information about which side of the galaxy the photon passed). We have delayed this choice until a time long after the particles “have passed by one side of the galaxy, or the other side of the galaxy, or both sides of the galaxy,” so to speak. Yet, it seems paradoxically that our later choice of whether to obtain this information determines which side of the galaxy the light passed, so to speak, billions of years ago. So it seems that time has nothing to do with effects of quantum mechanics. And, indeed, the original thought experiment was not based on any analysis of how particles evolve and behave over time – it was based on the mathematics. This is what the mathematics predicted for a result, and this is exactly the result obtained in the laboratory. http://www.bottomlayer.com/bottom/basic_delayed_choice.htm “It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.” Eugene Wigner (1902 -1995) from his collection of essays “Symmetries and Reflections – Scientific Essays”; Eugene Wigner laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963.
bornagain77_{February 8, 2012
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Of Note to Aquinas’s, and other ancient’s, philosophical logic and the modern empirical evidence that substantiated their logic: The Theistic claim for all of reality is this;
‘God is the ultimate existence which grounds all of reality.’
To which it can honestly be asked:
‘And you know this how?’
Before the breakthroughs of modern science in Big Bang Cosmology and Quantum Mechanics, we ‘knew’ this from logic; Here are the logical arguments, that I know of, that preceded the empirical evidence for the Big Bang;
The Creation Of The Universe (Kalam Cosmological Argument)- Lee Strobel – William Lane Craig – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3993987/ William Lane Craig – Hilbert’s Hotel – The Absurdity Of An Infinite Regress Of ‘Things’ – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3994011/ Time Cannot Be Infinite Into The Past – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg0pdUvQdi4 Aquinas and the Second Way: The second approach that Aquinas mentioned is similar to the first, but focuses on cause and effect rather than on potential motion being converted into actual motion. Every effect must have a cause, if you eliminate the cause you eliminate the effect. Once again, since an infinite series of cause and effect is irrational, the principle posits that there must be an original cause that in itself does not need a cause: hence God. Again, this does not posit the God of the Bible, or even a good and benevolent God for that matter, it only posits that a God exists who is the cause of all things and who is the effect of nothing. http://preacherwin.wordpress.com/2008/04/21/aquinas-five-ways-proofs-for-the-existence-of-god-from-general-revelation/
Here is the empirical evidence which verified those logical arguments for the ‘First Cause’ or for the ‘Uncaused Cause’:
The Scientific Evidence For The Big Bang – Michael Strauss PhD. – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4323668 Evidence Supporting the Big Bang http://www.astronomynotes.com/cosmolgy/s7.htm Beyond The Big Bang: William Lane Craig Templeton Foundation Lecture (HQ) 1/6 – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esqGaLSWgNc “Every solution to the equations of general relativity guarantees the existence of a singular boundary for space and time in the past.” (Hawking, Penrose, Ellis) – 1970 “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.” - Cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/09/jerry_coyne_and_aquinas_first024951.html
This is the logical argument that preceded our discoveries from breakthroughs in Quantum Mechanics:
Aquinas and the First Way (First Mover): Aquinas recognized that for motion to take place, there had to be something that interacts with it to cause it to move. For a ball to move, for example, it must be struck by another object, for example, the foot of a child kicking it. The ball has the potential to move, but that potential cannot reach its actuality until something else acts upon it. Aquinas argued then, that as the original object that was moved needed to have something act upon it to move, so too does the second object have something act upon it. The boy swings his leg, which moves his foot which in turn moves the ball. And the chain continues backwards from there. He also recognized that without a first mover, the chain of cause and effect must, by definition, go eternally back. Since that idea is absurd to the ordered mind and is not consistent with observable evidence, there must be a first mover upon which nothing is needed to act to cause him to move. This, in turn must be an infinite being outside of creation and hence is God. “The ‘First Mover’ is necessary for change occurring at each moment.” Michael Egnor – Aquinas’ First Way http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/09/jerry_coyne_and_aquinas_first024951.html
bornagain77_{February 8, 2012
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Of Note to Aquinas's, and other ancient's, philosophical logic and the modern empirical evidence that substantiated their logic: The Theistic claim for all of reality is this;
‘God is the ultimate existence which grounds all of reality.’
To which it can honestly be asked:
'And you know this how?'
Before the breakthroughs of modern science in Big Bang Cosmology and Quantum Mechanics, we ‘knew’ this from logic; Here are the logical arguments, that I know of, that preceded the empirical evidence for the Big Bang;
The Creation Of The Universe (Kalam Cosmological Argument)- Lee Strobel – William Lane Craig – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3993987/ William Lane Craig – Hilbert’s Hotel – The Absurdity Of An Infinite Regress Of ‘Things’ – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3994011/ Time Cannot Be Infinite Into The Past – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg0pdUvQdi4 Aquinas and the Second Way: The second approach that Aquinas mentioned is similar to the first, but focuses on cause and effect rather than on potential motion being converted into actual motion. Every effect must have a cause, if you eliminate the cause you eliminate the effect. Once again, since an infinite series of cause and effect is irrational, the principle posits that there must be an original cause that in itself does not need a cause: hence God. Again, this does not posit the God of the Bible, or even a good and benevolent God for that matter, it only posits that a God exists who is the cause of all things and who is the effect of nothing. http://preacherwin.wordpress.com/2008/04/21/aquinas-five-ways-proofs-for-the-existence-of-god-from-general-revelation/
Here is the empirical evidence which verified those logical arguments for the ‘First Cause’ or for the ‘Uncaused Cause’:
The Scientific Evidence For The Big Bang – Michael Strauss PhD. – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4323668 Evidence Supporting the Big Bang http://www.astronomynotes.com/cosmolgy/s7.htm Beyond The Big Bang: William Lane Craig Templeton Foundation Lecture (HQ) 1/6 – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esqGaLSWgNc “Every solution to the equations of general relativity guarantees the existence of a singular boundary for space and time in the past.” (Hawking, Penrose, Ellis) – 1970 “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.” - Cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/vilenkins-verdict-all-the-evidence-we-have-says-that-the-universe-had-a-beginning/
This is the logical argument that preceded our discoveries from breakthroughs in Quantum Mechanics:
Aquinas and the First Way (First Mover): Aquinas recognized that for motion to take place, there had to be something that interacts with it to cause it to move. For a ball to move, for example, it must be struck by another object, for example, the foot of a child kicking it. The ball has the potential to move, but that potential cannot reach its actuality until something else acts upon it. Aquinas argued then, that as the original object that was moved needed to have something act upon it to move, so too does the second object have something act upon it. The boy swings his leg, which moves his foot which in turn moves the ball. And the chain continues backwards from there. He also recognized that without a first mover, the chain of cause and effect must, by definition, go eternally back. Since that idea is absurd to the ordered mind and is not consistent with observable evidence, there must be a first mover upon which nothing is needed to act to cause him to move. This, in turn must be an infinite being outside of creation and hence is God. http://preacherwin.wordpress.com/2008/04/21/aquinas-five-ways-proofs-for-the-existence-of-god-from-general-revelation/ “The ‘First Mover’ is necessary for change occurring at each moment.” Michael Egnor – Aquinas’ First Way http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/09/jerry_coyne_and_aquinas_first024951.html
bornagain77_{February 8, 2012
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This is incorrect. The Luria-Delbruck and the Lederberg experiments are often used to make this point, but it has both a logical, a conceptual, and an experimental problem. Logical Problem: The selection applied during these experiments is usually very lethal. Therefore, it is unlikely even if mutations could arise in response to selection, that they would actually happen quickly enough to be noticed by these experiments. The selection is lethal enough that only the cells which already have the mutation are saved, there is not time to create the mutation. Conceptual problem: I have argued that there are many instances where, while random with respect to the *individual*, are non-random with respect to the *population*. Experimental problem: there are many experiments which demonstrate mutational mechanisms geared towards providing adaptation in response to selection. You can read about a few of them here.johnnyb_{February 8, 2012
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Good point Brent....I didn't mean to imply those would be scientific proofs. Given the overlap in content in Aquinas's proofs and ID arguments made here, it would be a litte silly to call the former philosophy, and the latter science.DrREC_{February 8, 2012
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Yes. Evidence from logic, working in the realm of metaphysics. Philosophy.Brent_{February 8, 2012
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I think many theists believe proof of the existence of God can come from evidence. Aquinas's proofs come to mind.DrREC_{February 8, 2012
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"Ya see in most cases variation aids survival" Joe, you're forgetting your own talking point about how deleterious most mutations are, and how few helpful ones there are. "But anyway the modern literature does not demonstrate that mutations, recombinations, transposons, etc., are random in any sense of the word. No one would even know how to go about making such a determination." Scientists sequence parents and offspring for several generations, or related species, or populations, sequence their genomes and determine the pattern of mutations an transpositions. Scientists study the mechanisms behind mutations and recombinations. These studies show genetic variation is random.DrREC_{February 8, 2012
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"random with respect to need" is meaningless and most often wrong. Ya see in most cases variation aids survival, mutations provide the variation, and the organisms need to survive to reproduce. But anyway the modern literature does not demonstrate that mutations, recombinations, transposons, etc., are random in any sense of the word. No one would even know how to go about making such a determination.Joe_{February 8, 2012
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1- Theistic evolution is about God, not some entity 2- There are different flavors of TE one says God got it all started and let it be, one says God guided and has a hand, ie intervenes, and one says what you did 3- Most TEs I have talked to say that we cannot know any of that, meaning there isn't any way to tell the difference between Theistic and atheistic evolution- just faith. 4- ID says we can know and understand the design and that the evidence for the designer comes from the design, not faithJoe_{February 8, 2012
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Theistic evolution is the proposal that evolution is a tool some entity uses to develop life towards some goal. Intelligent design calls that entity an intelligent designer. It is a distinction without a difference.DrREC_{February 8, 2012
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"mutation sources (whatever they were) were accidental. This has been retained into the modern literature." No, the modern literature DEMONSTRATES that mutations, recombinations, transposons, etc. strike in manners that are random with respect to need, and most often, are deleterious.DrREC_{February 8, 2012
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Chas - A few notes - it is true that Darwin was hazy about the sources of variations, but the part where he wasn't hazy (and also the part which continues today in the minds of many biologists) is that the mutation sources (whatever they were) were accidental. This has been retained into the modern literature. I appreciate your taking the time to delineate the options for ID mechanisms. Most ID critics have not thought it through that much! I mostly agree, but let me add one other option. 3) A large body of information was included in the original organism(s). Thus, one would not require either discontinuity or intelligent selection. This would be "directed mutation", but not in the sense of someone making active modifications. Think of an installer for an operating system. You have the single program (the installer) carrying information for a multiplicity of programs, which get activated at a later time. I personally have room for all three options. Some (like Behe) only go for option (3). Others favor (1) or (2). In any case, the mode of detection should be the same in all cases. Teasing out their natural history is another question! But I don't think it's undoable, just a difficult question, and one that will probably require additional tools. On a similar note, I want to add another piece of what I think should be included in the essence of all "materialist" theories of evolution - that, at least in the long view, there has been in natural history a move *from* an information-poor genome *to* an information-rich genome. It is this movement that primarily catches the ire of ID'ers. I should also note that "interference" has a bad connotation. It is correct in the sense that it is non-material, but that the material is given priority is more of an artifact of modern convention, not a necessary feature of the world. ID views the interaction of agents with the objects being modified as being more-or-less natural. What is more natural than consciousness, or choice? If these characterize the universe as we find it, then classifying the use of consciousness and choice as being "interfering" acts means that most of life is spent "interfering".johnnyb_{February 8, 2012
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DrREC:
Intelligent design is indistinguishable from theistic evolution.
Please define theistic evolutoon and Intelligent Design. I bet that you won't- most likely because you can't.Joe_{February 8, 2012
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ID doesn't require any interference and with a GA interference is not necessary. That said NS is the only non-design mechanism that has been posited to be a designer mimic. And taht means without NS all you have is sheer dumb luck, however NS also boils down to sheer dumb luck. And what kind of "theory" is base on sheer dumb luck?Joe_{February 8, 2012
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If evolution is defined as “Darwinism”
Nobody seriously defines evolution as "Darwinism". Darwin certainly didn't. Darwin's preferred mechanism was "evolution by means of Natural Selection". He also had a preference, not shared even by all his contemporaries, for sticking an implicit "gradual" in front of that sentence. That's more or less what "Darwinism" would mean - gradual change through NS. There are other mechanisms of change, not all of them gradual. He was hazy (and incorrect) about the source of his variation. Nonetheless, the essence of ALL 'materialist' theories of evolution is a genetic continuum. Evolution is the change in that continuum, and in populations within which such changes become established/are lost. DNA sequences do not arise from snapping together bases de novo like a child's pop-beads, but by means of template-based copying from a prior sequence. Separate lineages follow different trajectories, but are nonetheless commonly descended through this continuum. There seem to be two main 'options' for ID mechanism: those that involve discontinuity in that copying continuum (including 'special creation'-style restarts), and those that retain the continuum but postulate agency interference with its progress (eg directed mutation and/or 'intelligent selection').Chas D_{February 8, 2012
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"Intelligent design is indistinguishable from theistic evolution. Debate." If evolution is defined as "change over time" then the thesis is correct. If evolution is defined as "Darwinism" then the thesis is incorrect. However, I should point out that neither the ID'ers nor the non-ID'ers (such as yourself) were interested in talking through the science. So it would be silly to paint it as an ID phenomenon, when the regular posters on UD are pretty split between ID and non-ID. However, I think there is a simpler explanation - on any site, most people don't click all the way through to read the article. My post presupposes that you not just read my post, but also the article at the other end. Did you read it all the way through?johnnyb_{February 7, 2012
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2 days later, doesn't seem like anyone is interested. johnnyb, you need to realize adult scientific discussions don't play here. Try atheist or gay baiting. You'll get far more comments! Maybe I'll jumpstart this thread for you. Intelligent design is indistinguishable from theistic evolution. Debate.DrREC_{February 7, 2012
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