Is Darwinism “completely worthless to science”?

_{Denyse O'Leary

August 14, 2018

Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design}

Share: Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Flipboard; Print; Email

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor doesn’t mince words:

I despise Darwinism. It is, in my view, an utterly worthless scientific concept promulgated by a third-rate barnacle collector and hypochondriac to justify functional, if not explicit, atheism. Richard Dawkins got it right: Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. A low bar, admittedly, but “natural selection” satisfied, and still satisfies, many. Even bright Christians, regrettably.

Darwin still has some cache among design advocates — the usual trope is that he provided evidence for common descent and explained microevolution. In this I differ from some of my friends and colleagues sympathetic to ID/Thomism. Darwin’s “theory” is completely worthless to science, a degradation of philosophy, and lethal to culture.

As Jerry Fodor (an atheist philosopher) has pointed out, natural selection is an utterly empty concept. It does no work; it explains nothing. Evolution is driven by natural history and genetic and phenotypic constraint. “Natural selection” adds nothing to our understanding of the process. Of course things change and survivors survive. Any real understanding of change in populations entails understanding the natural history of the changes and the biological constraints imposed by nature. Some of this evolutionary change is best explained as accidental. Some is best explained as design, and the conjunction of accident and design is where evolutionary change takes place. “Natural selection” is meaningless junk science — dismal logic put to the service of atheism. Darwinism is the most effective engine of atheism in modern times, except perhaps for consumer culture, for which Darwin bears some responsibility. “Survival of the fittest” casts a scientific imprimatur on acquisition as a life-goal. Michael Egnor, “A Darwinian Pilgrimage” at Evolution News

Hat tip: Philip Cunningham

See also: The brain is not a “meat computer.” Dramatic recoveries from brain injury highlight the difference

and

Neurosurgeon outlines why machines can’t think: The hallmark of human thought is meaning, and the hallmark of computation is indifference to meaning.

Comments

Paolo @41:
that was my reaction to something George Castillo wrote in the preceding comment (@153):
Why don’t we just start with this: I believe this conversation began with Peter and OLV harping on the fact that eukaryotes have histones and a complex genome organization, while prokaryotes do not have histones. (see #125)

What does that have to do with what you wrote @39?
Are you referring to my comment @154?
George Castillo, Please, do me a favor: Open this website https://uncommondescent.com/ in a separate tab of your internet browser. Then slowly scroll down the front web page. What is the first reference to this current discussion thread that you see? What does it say? What does it mean to you? Thanks.

jawa_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
11:02 PM
11
11
02
PM
PDT}

(If it's not abundantly clear, subclonal selection is natural selection that occurrs at the level of cell lineages within a tumour. It is quite understandable for someone to not know this, but what sort of idiot makes the sort of comment ET does in #53 about a topic they are clearly ignorant about?)Amblyrhynchus_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
09:07 PM
9
09
07
PM
PDT}

I believe I've found a photograph of ET writing the above comment: http://i670.photobucket.com/albums/vv62/ohsnapitsnenne/DOCTOR.pngAmblyrhynchus_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
09:03 PM
9
09
03
PM
PDT}

OK the paper Ambly linked to above is about SUBCLONAL selection, not natural selection. Natural selection doesn't even appear in the paper. Yes I found the paper for free Quantification of subclonal selection in cancer from bulk sequencing dataET_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
08:47 PM
8
08
47
PM
PDT}

The Strength of Natural Selection in the Wild- to wit:
Natural selection disappears as a biological force and reappears as a statistical artifact. The change is not trivial. It is one thing to say that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution; it is quite another thing to say that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of various regression correlations between quantitative characteristics. It hardly appears obvious that if natural selection is simply a matter of correlations established between quantitative traits, that Darwin's theory has any content beyond the phenomenological, and in the most obvious sense, is no theory at all.
ET_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
08:29 PM
8
08
29
PM
PDT}

Amblyrhynchus, "fitness is either defined metaphorically, or defined only relative to the particular model or system used. It is fair to say that due to this lack, there is still no real agreement on what exactly the process of natural selection is."
Where is the purposelessness of evolution? – 23 March 2012 Excerpt: John O. Reiss also make the following interesting remark: “The rigor of this approach, however, is lessened because there is as yet no universally agreed upon measure of fitness; fitness is either defined metaphorically, or defined only relative to the particular model or system used. It is fair to say that due to this lack, there is still no real agreement on what exactly the process of natural selection is. This is clearly a problem.” Without a proper definition of fitness, we can’t really say what natural selection is in the first place. Also, without a proper definition of fitness we can’t really make any sense of how variation can be random relative to fitness in the first place. Still, evolutionary biologists would like to see evolution as “random, purposeless variation acted on by blind, purposeless natural selection”. https://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Where-is-the-purposelessness-of-evolution-20120322
Further notes on the inadequacy of Darwinian evolution as a scientific theory:
The Fate of Darwinism: Evolution After the Modern Synthesis - David J. Depew and Bruce H. Weber - 2011 Excerpt: We trace the history of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, and of genetic Darwinism generally, with a view to showing why, even in its current versions, it can no longer serve as a general framework for evolutionary theory. The main reason is empirical. Genetical Darwinism cannot accommodate the role of development (and of genes in development) in many evolutionary processes.,,, http://www.springerlink.com/content/845x02v03g3t7002/ With a Startling Candor, Oxford Scientist Admits a Gaping Hole in Evolutionary Theory - November 2011 Excerpt: As of now, we have no good theory of how to read [genetic] networks, how to model them mathematically or how one network meshes with another; worse, we have no obvious experimental lines of investigation for studying these areas. There is a great deal for systems biology to do in order to produce a full explanation of how genotypes generate phenotypes,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/11/with_a_startling_candor_oxford052821.html Not Junk After All—Conclusion - August 29, 2013 Excerpt: Many scientists have pointed out that the relationship between the genome and the organism — the genotype-phenotype mapping — cannot be reduced to a genetic program encoded in DNA sequences. Atlan and Koppel wrote in 1990 that advances in artificial intelligence showed that cellular operations are not controlled by a linear sequence of instructions in DNA but by a “distributed multilayer network” [150]. According to Denton and his co-workers, protein folding appears to involve formal causes that transcend material mechanisms [151], and according to Sternberg this is even more evident at higher levels of the genotype-phenotype mapping [152] https://uncommondescent.com/junk-dna/open-mike-cornell-obi-conference-chapter-11-not-junk-after-all-conclusion/ The Fairyland of Evolutionary Modeling - May 7, 2013 Excerpt: Salazar-Ciudad and Marín-Riera have shown that not only are suboptimal dead ends an evolutionary possibility, but they are also exceedingly likely to occur in real, developmentally complex structures when fitness is determined by the exact form of the phenotype. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/05/the_fantasy_wor071901.html The next evolutionary synthesis: from Lamarck and Darwin to genomic variation and systems biology – Bard - 2011 Excerpt: If more than about three genes (nature unspecified) underpin a phenotype, the mathematics of population genetics, while qualitatively analyzable, requires too many unknown parameters to make quantitatively testable predictions [6]. The inadequacy of this approach is demonstrated by illustrations of the molecular pathways that generates traits [7]: the network underpinning something as simple as growth may have forty or fifty participating proteins whose production involves perhaps twice as many DNA sequences, if one includes enhancers, splice variants etc. Theoretical genetics simply cannot handle this level of complexity, let alone analyse the effects of mutation.. http://www.biosignaling.com/content/pdf/1478-811X-9-30.pdf Gene previously linked to obesity is unrelated - June 29, 2015 Excerpt: … in the real world of careful analysis, scientists are just not finding the “genes” that the headline writers need. British geneticist Steve Jones points out that most human traits are influenced by so many genes that there is no likely systematic cause and effect: "We know of more than 50 different genes associated with height … That has not percolated into the public mind, as the Google search for “scientists find the gene for” shows. The three letter word for — the gene FOR something — is the most dangerous word in genetics." And the craze is not harmless, he warns. … https://uncommondescent.com/genetics/gene-previously-linked-to-obesity-is-unrelated/ Theory Suggests That All Genes Affect Every Complex Trait - June 20, 2018 Excerpt: Mutations of a single gene are behind sickle cell anemia, for instance, and mutations in another are behind cystic fibrosis. But unfortunately for those who like things simple, these conditions are the exceptions. The roots of many traits, from how tall you are to your susceptibility to schizophrenia, are far more tangled. In fact, they may be so complex that almost the entire genome may be involved in some way,,, One very early genetic mapping study in 1999 suggested that “a large number of loci (perhaps > than 15)” might contribute to autism risk, recalled Jonathan Pritchard, now a geneticist at Stanford University. “That’s a lot!” he remembered thinking when the paper came out. Over the years, however, what scientists might consider “a lot” in this context has quietly inflated. Last June, Pritchard and his Stanford colleagues Evan Boyle and Yang Li (now at the University of Chicago) published a paper about this in Cell that immediately sparked controversy, although it also had many people nodding in cautious agreement. The authors described what they called the “omnigenic” model of complex traits. Drawing on GWAS analyses of three diseases, they concluded that in the cell types that are relevant to a disease, it appears that not 15, not 100, but essentially all genes contribute to the condition. The authors suggested that for some traits, “multiple” loci could mean more than 100,000. https://www.quantamagazine.org/omnigenic-model-suggests-that-all-genes-affect-every-complex-trait-20180620/
bornagain77_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
08:28 PM
8
08
28
PM
PDT}

Ambly:
No, natrual selection the differential survival of heritable phenotypes.
Ernst Mayr, one of the architects of the modern synthesis, says that NS is an eliminative process, which is as you say, so I don't understand your issue unless it is that you cannot think.
One way you might learn what selection has to do with cancer is reading the paper I linked to.
So that's it? A literature bluff? How do we know that you have read the paper? If you had then you should be able to make a case.ET_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
08:26 PM
8
08
26
PM
PDT}

And Seversky, just why do you, an amoral atheist, find murder to be morally offensive in the first place? After all, it is just survival of the fittest is it not? And if you are going to be, without a moral foundation, morally offended by murder rates then own up to the incomprehensible horror manifested by what Darwinian thinking has wrought when it had free reign over the government of people, instead of trying to unjustly equivocate comparatively trifling details about murder rates when compared to the wholesale slaughter of people by their own Atheistic governments.bornagain77_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
08:25 PM
8
08
25
PM
PDT}

ET
Natural selection- the elimination process that should get rid of cancer-prone genomes? What do you think natural selection is doing with respect to cancer?
No, natrual selection the differential survival of heritable phenotypes. One way you might learn what selection has to do with cancer is reading the paper I linked to. BA,
Could you please tell me exactly what the basic units of measurement are for the ‘evolutionary pressure’ of natural selection? i.e. Exactly what is natural selection measured in? I can’t seem to find anything listed in the SI units of measurement which would be applicable to Natural Selection.
We measure the strength of selection using the selection coefficient (s), which can be defined such that the fitness of a wildtype (or the mean fitness of a population) is set to 1 and the fitness of some variant is 1+s (so positive values correspond to traits that we expect to increase). Fitness is, of course, the expected contribution of a given variant to the next generation. I'm not sure why any of that should matter, but hope it helps.Amblyrhynchus_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
08:16 PM
8
08
16
PM
PDT}

Amblyrhynchus per post 33, 36 and 37, You speak of natural selection as if it were a real thing instead of a figment of Darwinian imagination. Could you please tell me exactly what the basic units of measurement are for the 'evolutionary pressure' of natural selection? i.e. Exactly what is natural selection measured in? I can't seem to find anything listed in the SI units of measurement which would be applicable to Natural Selection.
There are seven base units in the SI system: the kilogram (kg), for mass the second (s), for time the kelvin (K), for temperature the ampere (A), for electric current the mole (mol), for the amount of a substance the candela (cd), for luminous intensity the meter (m), for distance https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-chemistry/chapter/units-of-measurement/
Nor can I find anything listed in the Table of Physical Constants
Table of Physical Constants https://cosmologist.info/teaching/Cosmology/Physical_constants.pdf
This is not a minor omission, and is the primary reason why Darwinism fails to qualify as a real science (instead of being the pseudoscience that it actually is).
“On the other hand, I disagree that Darwin’s theory is as `solid as any explanation in science.; Disagree? I regard the claim as preposterous. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to thirteen or so decimal places; so, too, general relativity. A leaf trembling in the wrong way would suffice to shatter either theory. What can Darwinian theory offer in comparison?” - David Berlinski, “A Scientific Scandal?: David Berlinski & Critics,” Commentary, July 8, 2003
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.,,,”
“There exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. Hard sciences are built on foundations of mathematics or definitive simulations. Examples include electromagnetics, Newtonian mechanics, geophysics, relativity, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, optics, and many areas in biology. Those hoping to establish Darwinian evolution as a hard science with a model have either failed or inadvertently cheated. These models contain guidance mechanisms to land the airplane squarely on the target runway despite stochastic wind gusts. Not only can the guiding assistance be specifically identified in each proposed evolution model, its contribution to the success can be measured, in bits, as active information.,,,”,,, “there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. According to our current understanding, there never will be.,,,” – Robert J. Marks II – Top Ten Questions and Objections to ‘Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics’ – June 12, 2017 https://evolutionnews.org/2017/06/top-ten-questions-and-objections-to-introduction-to-evolutionary-informatics/
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:
Laws of science 1 Conservation laws 1.1 Conservation and symmetry 1.2 Continuity and transfer 2 Laws of classical mechanics 2.1 Principle of least action 3 Laws of gravitation and relativity 3.1 Modern laws 3.2 Classical laws 4 Thermodynamics 5 Electromagnetism 6 Photonics 7 Laws of quantum mechanics 8 Radiation laws 9 Laws of chemistry 10 Geophysical laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_science
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.”
The Evolution of Ernst: Interview with Ernst Mayr – 2004 (page 2 of 14) Excerpt: biology (Darwinian Evolution) differs from the physical sciences in that in the physical sciences, all theories, I don’t know exceptions so I think it’s probably a safe statement, all theories are based somehow or other on natural laws. 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. ,,, And so that’s what I do in this book. I show that the theoretical basis, you might call it, or I prefer to call it the philosophy of biology, has a totally different basis than the theories of physics. https://www.scientificamerican.com/media/pdf/0004D8E1-178C-10EB-978C83414B7F012C.pdf
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.
WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Evolution is True – Roger Highfield – January 2014 Excerpt: If evolutionary biologists are really Seekers of the Truth, they need to focus more on finding the mathematical regularities of biology, following in the giant footsteps of Sewall Wright, JBS Haldane, Ronald Fisher and so on. ,,, Whatever the case, those universal truths—’laws’—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology. Little seems to have changed from a decade ago when the late and great John Maynard Smith wrote a chapter on evolutionary game theory for a book on the most powerful equations of science: his contribution did not include a single equation. http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25468
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.”
“It is our contention that if ‘random’ is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, 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.” Murray Eden, “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory,” Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, editors Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, June 1967, p. 109. https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/evol/compevol_files/Wistar-Eden-1.pdf
Bottom line, natural selection does not exist in the real world but only exists in the imagination of Darwinists when they try to weave their 'just so stories' in which Natural Selection plays the role of 'Designer Substitute". As Gould himself honestly admitted (and caught flak for), “When evolutionists study individual adaptations, when they try to explain form and behaviour by reconstructing history and assessing current utility, they also tell just so stories – and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.”
Sociobiology: The Art of Story Telling – Stephen Jay Gould – 1978 – New Scientist Excerpt: Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers “Just So stories”. When evolutionists study individual adaptations, when they try to explain form and behaviour by reconstructing history and assessing current utility, they also tell just so stories – and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. https://books.google.com/books?id=tRj7EyRFVqYC&pg=PA530
bornagain77_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
07:59 PM
7
07
59
PM
PDT}

Seversky:
Yet the US, according to the faithful a Christian nation founded by Christians on Christian principles, …
False premiseET_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
07:57 PM
7
07
57
PM
PDT}

Seversky references:
‘Fitness’ to Darwin meant not those that survive, but those that could be expected to survive because of their adaptations and functional efficiency, when compared to others in the population.
Yes, and in the end it is all just contingent serendipity. That is because those adaptations and functional efficiency can be something that makes you slower, faster, less functional such that the anti-biotics no longer bind but take away the anti-biotics and you are the weakling, taller, shorter, striped, dotted, fur, no fur, translucent fur that looks white because the way the light refracts inside of it, eyes, no eyes, wings for flying, wings that don't help you fly- it all depends-> ie contingent serendipity. With a process of elimination only a small % fails to make the cut. As Ernst Mayr said in "What Evolution Is":
What Darwin called natural selection is actually a process of elimination. page 117 … Page 118: Do selection and elimination differ in their evolutionary consequences? This question never seems to have been raised in the evolutionary literature. A process of selection would have a concrete objective, the determination of the “best” or “fittest” phenotype. Only a relatively few individuals in a given generation would qualify and survive the selection procedure. That small sample would be only to be able to preserve only a small amount of the whole variance of the parent population. Such survival selection would be highly restrained. By contrast, mere elimination of the less fit might permit the survival of a rather large number of individuals because they have no obvious deficiencies in fitness. Such a large sample would provide, for instance, the needed material for the exercise of sexual selection. This also explains why survival is so uneven from season to season. The percentage of the less fit would depend on the severity of each year’s environmental conditions.
Behavioral changes are the most likely to aid in survival. They are inheritable and can effect larger portions of a population than waiting for some just-so/ right mutation to offer a variation that can help. If it ain't already in existence the wait could kill ya.ET_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
07:54 PM
7
07
54
PM
PDT}

bornagain77 @ 30
Indeed, the social consequences of the Atheistic Darwinian worldview have been devastating. Here’s what happens when Atheists/evolutionists/non-Christians take control of Government:
“169,202,000 Murdered: Summary and Conclusions [20th Century Democide] ...

Yet the US, according to the faithful a Christian nation founded by Christians on Christian principles, had a murder rate of 5.35 per 100,000 while more atheist-leaning countries such as the UK had a murder rate of 1.20 per 100,000, Sweden was at 1.08, Norway 0.51 and Iceland 0.30. Should we assume on this basis that Christian belief makes people more likely to kill one another unlawfully?Seversky_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
07:47 PM
7
07
47
PM
PDT}

Ambly:
I’m not sure what’s more Darwinian than natural selection?
Natural selection- the elimination process that should get rid of cancer-prone genomes? What do you think natural selection is doing with respect to cancer?ET_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
07:44 PM
7
07
44
PM
PDT}

For those interested in an actual discussion of the "tautology argument", you could start here :
The simple version of the so-called 'tautology argument' is this:
Natural selection is the survival of the fittest. The fittest are those that survive. Therefore, evolution by natural selection is a tautology (a circular definition).
The real significance of this argument is not the argument itself, but that it was taken seriously by any professional philosophers at all. 'Fitness' to Darwin meant not those that survive, but those that could be expected to survive because of their adaptations and functional efficiency, when compared to others in the population. This is not a tautology, or, if it is, then so is the Newtonian equation F=ma [Sober 1984, chapter 2], which is the basis for a lot of ordinary physical explanation. The phrase 'survival of the fittest' was not even Darwin's. It was urged on him by Wallace, the codiscoverer of natural selection, who hated 'natural selection' because he thought it implied that something was doing the selecting. Darwin coined the term 'natural selection' because had made an analogy with 'artificial selection' as done by breeders, an analogy Wallace hadn't made when he developed his version of the theory. The phrase 'survival of the fittest' was originally due to Herbert Spencer some years before the Origin .
Seversky_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
07:19 PM
7
07
19
PM
PDT}

jawa, that was my reaction to something George Castillo wrote in the preceding comment (@153):
Why don’t we just start with this: I believe this conversation began with Peter and OLV harping on the fact that eukaryotes have histones and a complex genome organization, while prokaryotes do not have histones. (see #125)
PaoloV_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
06:33 PM
6
06
33
PM
PDT}

Paolo, Yes, that's exactly. Why did you write that? What's that for? What do you expect from that exercise? It's really so off-topic for that discussion thread.jawa_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
06:27 PM
6
06
27
PM
PDT}

jawa, it's alright. You're forgiven. Are you referring to my comment @154?
George Castillo, Please, do me a favor: Open this website https://uncommondescent.com/ in a separate tab of your internet browser. Then slowly scroll down the front web page. What is the first reference to this current discussion thread that you see? What does it say? What does it mean to you? Thanks.
PaoloV_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
06:22 PM
6
06
22
PM
PDT}

Paolo, i apologize for sounding so harsh to you. it was not my intention. however, i still don't understand what you wrote here. Can you explain? thanks.jawa_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
05:54 PM
5
05
54
PM
PDT}

I'm not sure what's more Darwinian than natural selection?Amblyrhynchus_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
05:40 PM
5
05
40
PM
PDT}

Ambly:
Was reminded of this thread when I ran into this paper today. Population genetics an natural selection models being used to predict the progress of individual tumours. Evolutionary genetics approaches are now used very widely in cancer biology.
DARWINIAN evolution. This thread pertains to DARWINIAN evolution. Don't drop the meaningful adjective and act like all is well. That is called equivocation. That said, I do agree that DARWINIAN evolution can cause cancer. That is most likely the most creative thing it can accomplishET_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
05:03 PM
5
05
03
PM
PDT}

Jonathan Wells Dismantles Joshua Swamidass’s Argument for Evolution from Cancer - September 11, 2017 Excerpt: it requires a certain daring that one can’t help but admire to offer, as proof of unguided evolution’s creative prowess, something as thoroughly counterintuitive as…cancer. Think of it: the world’s most feared disease and one of its most destructive, presented as knock-down evidence for evolution’s power not to destroy — but to create! Yet this is the argument that Dr. Swamidass, a theistic evolutionist, has advanced over at the BioLogos website.,,, the cancer-proves-evolution argument seems hopeless at first glance. Building a tumor, a potentially lethal instance of unregulated cell growth, as a parallel to building all the wonderful novelties, features, and functions of animal and plant life? No one is going to buy that. What about on closer inspection, though? As biologist Jonathan Wells demonstrates in an excellent response published by Salvo Magazine, the Swamidass cancer argument is not much more plausible when you look at it in detail. What Dr. Swamidass has going for him is primarily a quirk of semantics. "[C]omputational biologist Joshua Swamidass argues that “cancer regularly innovates with proteins of novel function.”2 He calls this “neo-functionalization.” According to Swamidass, this “casts serious doubt on the ID arguments from molecular biology,” namely, that proteins cannot evolve novel functions without the aid of intelligent design. He concludes that if ID were true, “then cancer as we know it would be mathematically impossible, or regularly require the direct intervention of God to initiate and be sustained.”3" That does sound bad for the design argument, doesn’t it? If cancer “regularly innovates,” producing new if malignant functions, via “neo-functionality”?,,, Yet it all falls apart after that, as Dr. Wells goes about his work quickly and dispassionately. As you might suspect, the neo-functions aren’t really functions at all, in the sense of what Darwinian theory struggles to explain. They are functional losses or “perversions” of preexisting function:,,, ,,, As Dr. Wells concludes, originating species and originating tumors are really “polar opposites” and you can’t learn anything about the former from the latter. This really should settle the question, and I would encourage Dr. Swamidass and other writers and commenters at BioLogos to read and think about Dr. Wells’s dismantling of his case. Is cancer, then, the latest “icon of evolution,” that stands to be embraced by Darwin proponents as a rhetorical mascot for their argument, only to be knocked down by Jonathan Wells? See his books Icons of Evolution and Zombie Science. Wells does deal with the cancer argument, as innovated by Joshua Swamidass, in Zombie Science. The problem is that unlike with other icons (such as whale evolution, Darwin’s finches, or peppered moths), the feature of surface plausibility is, as I mentioned earlier, so conspicuously missing here. That is going to hamper this would-be icon from finding its way into the textbooks. https://evolutionnews.org/2017/09/jonathan-wells-dismantles-joshua-swamidasss-proof-for-evolution-from-cancer/
bornagain77_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
04:45 PM
4
04
45
PM
PDT}

Despite the name, an evolutionary algorithm is an example of intelligent design. Also, the key feature of the evolutionary algorithm, variation of the genome, is better attributed to Mendel than Darwin. If we were to make the evolutionary algorithm Darwinian, we would have some kind of artificial life simulation with living, dying and procreating programs, and the actual problem to be solved would not be used for selection.EricMH_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
04:09 PM
4
04
09
PM
PDT}

Was reminded of this thread when I ran into this paper today. Population genetics an natural selection models being used to predict the progress of individual tumours. Evolutionary genetics approaches are now used very widely in cancer biology.Amblyrhynchus_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
04:09 PM
4
04
09
PM
PDT}

We may be missing a different take on this. I suspect that Dr. Egnor is at least partly parodying the way that Darwinists and atheists often belittle and put down ID -- giving them back a taste of their own medicine, as it were. We all know how ID is often treated in articles and Internet postings. Regardless of the truths behind his polemic, Dr. Egnor may simply be reflecting some of that diatribe back to its usual source. Just a thought.Fasteddious_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
03:30 PM
3
03
30
PM
PDT}

jawa, That was a mistake, a mental lapse. I'm sorry that happened. Apparently I was thinking about what you wrote in the "chromatin" thread, where you treated me a little harsh.PaoloV_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
02:02 PM
2
02
02
PM
PDT}

at 28 Nonlin.org states:
"Jerry Fodor is useless"
Yet aside from the fact that Jerry Fodor was in fact "useful" for teaching me and many others that “natural selection is an utterly empty concept. It does no work; it explains nothing” (even if he has not yet fully embraced the fact that life is "Intelligently Designed"), Jerry Fodor is not now, nor has ever been, intrinsically 'useless'. Only under a Atheistic Darwinian worldview are people intrinsically and completely "useless". Perhaps the greatest proof that Darwinism is "an utterly worthless scientific concept" is the fact that Darwinism and/or Atheistic materialism renders humanity itself "utterly worthless" since our lives, under Darwinism, truly are utterly meaningless. As Adam Sedgwick warned Charles Darwin of the dire consequences of his theory, (and as testified to by abortion, euthanasia, concentration camps, gulags, etc..,,), "humanity in my mind, would suffer a damage that might brutalize it—& sink the human race into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen since its written records tell us of its history."
"There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical A man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly Tis the crown & glory of organic science that it does thro’ final cause , link material to moral; & yet does not allow us to mingle them in our first conception of laws, & our classification of such laws whether we consider one side of nature or the other— You have ignored this link; &, if I do not mistake your meaning, you have done your best in one or two pregnant cases to break it. Were it possible (which thank God it is not) to break it, humanity in my mind, would suffer a damage that might brutalize it—& sink the human race into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen since its written records tell us of its history." Letter from Adam Sedgwick to Charles Darwin - 24 November 1859 - Cambridge https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2548.xml
Indeed, the social consequences of the Atheistic Darwinian worldview have been devastating. Here's what happens when Atheists/evolutionists/non-Christians take control of Government:
“169,202,000 Murdered: Summary and Conclusions [20th Century Democide] I BACKGROUND 2. The New Concept of Democide [Definition of Democide] 3. Over 133,147,000 Murdered: Pre-Twentieth Century Democide II 128,168,000 VICTIMS: THE DEKA-MEGAMURDERERS 4. 61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State 5. 35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill 6. 20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State 7. 10,214,000 Murdered: The Depraved Nationalist Regime III 19,178,000 VICTIMS: THE LESSER MEGA-MURDERERS 8. 5,964,000 Murdered: Japan’s Savage Military 9. 2,035,000 Murdered: The Khmer Rouge Hell State 10. 1,883,000 Murdered: Turkey’s Genocidal Purges 11. 1,670,000 Murdered: The Vietnamese War State 12. 1,585,000 Murdered: Poland’s Ethnic Cleansing 13. 1,503,000 Murdered: The Pakistani Cutthroat State 14. 1,072,000 Murdered: Tito’s Slaughterhouse IV 4,145,000 VICTIMS: SUSPECTED MEGAMURDERERS 15. 1,663,000 Murdered? Orwellian North Korea 16. 1,417,000 Murdered? Barbarous Mexico 17. 1,066,000 Murdered? Feudal Russia” This is, in reality, probably just a drop in the bucket. Who knows how many undocumented murders there were. It also doesn’t count all the millions of abortions from around the world. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM Atheist Myth: “No One Has Ever Killed in the Name of Atheism” - Nov. 2016 Excerpt" "where are the army of atheists humanitarian traipsing about Africa and Asia giving hope to the poor and disadvantaged? Certainly none of the famous atheist polemicists have ever done so. Christopher Hitchens was asked on multiply occasions if he or other atheists who similarly had a poor opinion of St. Mother Teresa have actually gone to India and rolled up their sleeves to bathe lepers. I've asked many atheists including P.Z. Myers, Patricia Churchland and Christopher Hitchens and none have responded in the positive. Madalyn O'Hair never mentioned having done so. Mao and Stalin were busy killing tens of millions of their compatriots by engineering famines in their respective countries so it's hard to imagine they also helped poor people. When I volunteered at Mother Teresa's street clinics in Calcutta, I never met an atheist doing the same work but I routinely met Catholics doing so." http://www.ncregister.com/blog/astagnaro/atheist-myth-no-one-has-ever-killed-in-the-name-of-atheism
And here are a few quotes, out of many quotes I could list, that reveal their depressing, "useless", view of humanity.
“The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can’t believe the whole universe exists for our benefit.,,,” – Stephen Hawking – 1995 TV show, Reality on the Rocks: Beyond Our Ken, "Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear — and these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either." - William B. Provine “The law of selection exists in the world, and the stronger and healthier has received from nature the right to live. Woe to anyone who is weak, who does not stand his ground! He may not expect help from anyone.” - Adolf Hitler http://www.wnd.com/2014/09/charles-darwin-and-world-war-i/
Fortunately, we now have abundant scientific evidence that strongly indicates that man is not nearly as "useless" and/or "worthless" as atheists have presupposed us to be
Atheistic Materialism vs Meaning, Value, and Purpose in Our Lives - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqUxBSbFhog
Verse:
1 Samuel 2:8 He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor. "For the foundations of the earth are the LORD's; on them he has set the world.
bornagain77_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
12:40 PM
12
12
40
PM
PDT}

Eugene S @26 My "survives and reproduces" means "reproductive success". One has to survive to reproductive age to reproduce. How can you not see the tautology? Survival of descendants is the ONLY thing out there, not "fit", not "best adapted", not "selection", not "beneficial mutations". To see this, imagine an experiment where you want to determine one of those four without any information whatsoever about survival of descendants. Can you? No way! Even the improperly called "artificial selection" does not become effective until survival is affected. Until then it's just an empty declaration of intent. Interesting challenge, but "bubbles go up and dust settles down" and chemicals react with particular other chemicals because something else causes that, not because they "select" each other.Nonlin.org_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
09:29 AM
9
09
29
AM
PDT}

BA, Egnor, News, Jerry Fodor is useless. Yes, he denies NS, but he still thinks incoherently that "evolution" is true.Nonlin.org_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
08:48 AM
8
08
48
AM
PDT}

Paolo, Give me a break! First you posted a misleading comment referring to me as PeterA, but soon after that you wrote a long sermon on miscommunication. Can you explain?jawa_{August 15, 2018
August
08
Aug
15
15
2018
08:27 AM
8
08
27
AM
PDT}

Prev 1 2 3 4 Next

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Leave a Reply