Is Darwinism “completely worthless to science”?

_{Denyse O'Leary

August 14, 2018

Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design}

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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

Nonlin.org Thanks. "we only know if and organism was selected if it survives and reproduces" What about fixation of traits? "Best adapted" does not just mean survival. It means reproductive success. A differential in phenotypes leads to a differential in reproductive rates. The best adapted individuals possessing a trait will tend to leave most offspring. At some point, theoretically, all the population will have that trait, which is the fixation point. In practice, there is drift that eliminates beneficial mutations. So the real problem of Darwinian model is to get over the statistical barriers of visibility. In actual environments, for Darwinian process to kick off the percent of the population possessing the trait in question must be statistically significant. That is the real problem of the Darwin's model, not that it has something ill defined or tautological. I do not understand your problem with this. Maybe I am missing something. "Chihuahua and Poodle have no superior survivability to common dog or wolf, but happened anyway because humans worked hard to make them possible." Agreed. It is an artificially controlled telic process. "Selection" is the wrong word, I agree. "Rocks do not select each other" Chemists could say otherwise ;) Again, "selection" is a misnomer, but bubbles go up and dust settles down. It is this regularities that all amount to minimization of total potential energy that evolutionists try to employ. I do not believe in the power of chemical "selection" on the prebiotic stage at all (because I do not see the principle for selection on the prebiotic stage, is it stability or instability or what?), but I have to be a chemist to defend my disbelief professionally. Evolution is a random walk in the parameter space and, as such, faces all the troubles random walk can face in astronomically large configuration spaces. It means that occasionally, it can climb a hill (and it will, if all the relevant conditions are met). However, on average it does not do well. Another reason why this is so is because biologically meaningful configurations in that space may be confined to relatively small and sparsely scattered islands. E.g. recently an estimate of the sparseness of functional polypeptides in the space of possible polypeptides was worked out to be 1 in 10^77. Sparseness of function and the vanishingly small fraction of the astronomical configuration space that evolution could have ever visited by random walk are the two real problems of biological evolution. "but will never create any new designs" Absolutely! I also agree with you point against Darwinian gradualism. Overall, in my estimation, your arguments are sound except the one about tautology ;)Eugene S_{August 15, 2018
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No one uses blind watchmaker evolution for anything. It is a useless and worthless heuristic.ET_{August 15, 2018
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In addition to Egnor and Fodor's observation that, “natural selection is an utterly empty concept. It does no work; it explains nothing.”,,,
“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.”
In addition to that, Fodor also observed that, “The conclusion here is inescapable, that the driving force for these invariant scaling laws cannot have been natural selection. It’s inconceivable that so many different organisms, spanning different kingdoms and phyla, may have blindly ‘tried’ all sorts of power laws and that only those that have by chance ‘discovered’ the one-quarter power law reproduced and thrived.”
Post-Darwinist – Denyse O’Leary – Dec. 2010 Excerpt: They quote West et al. (1999), “Although living things occupy a three-dimensional space, their internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional. Quarter-power scaling laws are perhaps as universal and as uniquely biological as the biochemical pathways of metabolism, the structure and function of the genetic code and the process of natural selection.” They comment, “In the words of these authors, natural selection has exploited variations on this fractal theme to produce the incredible variety of biological form and function’, but there were severe geometric and physical constraints on metabolic processes.” “The conclusion here is inescapable, that the driving force for these invariant scaling laws cannot have been natural selection. It’s inconceivable that so many different organisms, spanning different kingdoms and phyla, may have blindly ‘tried’ all sorts of power laws and that only those that have by chance ‘discovered’ the one-quarter power law reproduced and thrived.” Quotations from Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, What Darwin Got Wrong (London: Profile Books, 2010), p. 78-79. https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/16037/
That is to say that although the 'utterly empty concept' of natural selection is suppose to work on the '3-Dimensional' level when supposedly selecting an organism, “their internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional". And again, as usual, Darwinists have no clue why these things should be as they are:
The predominance of quarter-power (4-D) scaling in biology Excerpt: Many fundamental characteristics of organisms scale with body size as power laws of the form: Y = Yo M^b, where Y is some characteristic such as metabolic rate, stride length or life span, Yo is a normalization constant, M is body mass and b is the allometric scaling exponent. A longstanding puzzle in biology is why the exponent b is usually some simple multiple of 1/4 (4-Dimensional scaling) rather than a multiple of 1/3, as would be expected from Euclidean (3-Dimensional) scaling. http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/~drewa/pubs/savage_v_2004_f18_257.pdf Of Life's Laws And Unity - May 11, 2016 Excerpt: Life obeys certain allometric scaling laws that seem to reveal a sort of overarching design principle at work. We don't know what this principle is, although it's probably related to optimization: What's the best shape for the least amount of energy consumption? A famous allometric law is known as Kleiber's Law, where the metabolic rate of an animal grows as its mass to the 3/4 power. (The metabolic rate can be measured in terms of the rate at which an animal consumes oxygen, for example.) Although there are small variations (due to motion, disease, aging), the relation holds over a wide range of masses. (There are disputes for very small animals without a circulatory system.) Geoffrey West, Brian Enquist and James Brown proposed a model based on blood flow to explain this and a few other general allometric scaling laws with body weight observed in animals (for a review paper see this): Apart from Kleiber's Law mentioned above, life span scales as 1/4 power (so take two square roots of the mass), and heart rate as -1/4 power. Put together, these two laws explain why all species have a similar amount of heartbeats, 1.5 billion, over their life spans. Pause for amazement. The laws are not absolutely precise but do indicate a common trend across an enormous variety of living creatures. On Monday night, I was on a panel on Complexity with Geoffrey West at the New York Academy of Sciences. At some point, I asked West whether alien life, if it exists, would follow the same sort of unifying allometric laws. With a twinkle in his eye, West replied, a big smile on his face: "Well, I can only speculate here, but it seems plausible that this sort of design principle for life does have universal characteristics." It would be amazing if life as we don't know it is, after all, life as we do know it. http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/05/11/477607869/of-life-s-laws-and-unity
The reason why these 'universal' and 'uniquely biological' ’4-Dimensional’ quarter power scaling laws are impossible for Darwinian evolution to explain is that Natural Selection operates at the 3-Dimensional level of the organism and the ’4-Dimensional’ quarter power scaling law are simply ‘invisible’ to natural selection. The reason why 4-Dimensional things are, for all practical purposes, completely invisible to 3-Dimensional things is best illustrated by ‘flatland’:
Dr Quantum - Flatland - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWyTxCsIXE4
And the reason why living things operate as if they were 4-Dimensional, instead of operating as if they were 3-Dimensional, is because, contrary to the materialistic framework upon which Darwinism sits, it is ‘physically real information’ which is foundational to life and it is not matter and energy that are foundational to life as is presupposed in the materialistic foundation of Darwinian evolution. Here are a few notes on the physical reality of ‘immaterial’ information:
Information is Physical (but not how Rolf Landauer meant) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H35I83y5Uro Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology - video https://youtu.be/LHdD2Am1g5Y Darwinism vs Biological Form - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNzNPgjM4w
As Talbott observes, it is readily apparent that it must be this 'information' that is keeping us alive "precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer"
The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings – Stephen L. Talbott – 2010 Excerpt: Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary. ,,, the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? Despite the countless processes going on in the cell, and despite the fact that each process might be expected to “go its own way” according to the myriad factors impinging on it from all directions, the actual result is quite different. Rather than becoming progressively disordered in their mutual relations (as indeed happens after death, when the whole dissolves into separate fragments), the processes hold together in a larger unity. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-unbearable-wholeness-of-beings
This higher dimensional information that is keeping us alive for 'precisely a lifetime and not a moment longer', also provides evidence that we do indeed possess a soul that is capable of living beyond the death of out temporal, material, bodies, As Stuart Hameroff stated.
“Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.” – Stuart Hameroff – Quantum Entangled Consciousness – Life After Death – video (5:00 minute mark) https://youtu.be/jjpEc98o_Oo?t=300
Verses:
James 2:26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. Matthew 16:26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
bornagain77_{August 15, 2018
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BA "As Michael Ruse honestly confessed..." Impressive!Eugene S_{August 15, 2018
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Eugene S @12
To my estimation, it [natural selection] is not ridiculous or tautological. The Darwinian model does have feedback from environment to phenotype to adjust the system parameters to make sure there takes place fixation of traits. It is just that this feedback is too weak to lead to anything non-trivial in practice.
Since you cannot be bothered to open the link provided and read the proofs http://nonlin.org/natural-selection/, here are just a few points with detailed explanations: ... 2. No. Natural Selection fails since survival is not directly tied to phenotype and “survival of the best adapted” is tautological. In a small farm, only organisms closely related to their wild cousins survive, but agribusinesses select for chickens with oversize breasts and research labs select for populations with specific genetic mutations requiring tight environments to survive. As shown, all these different organisms may or may not survive regardless of their phenotype. The only measure of “selection” is survival – we only know if and organism was selected if it survives and reproduces. “Best adapted” is also unknowable separate from survival. [This proof contradicts your statement, Eugene] ... 5. Plant and animal breeding is not the “artificial selection” described by Darwin and has nothing to do with any natural process. Breeding requires a desired outcome, selection (just a minor step!) and isolation of successive generations of promising individuals, active mating or artificial insemination, optimization of growth conditions for the selected individuals, and/or other genetic technologies. Without most of these active steps nothing happens. Chihuahua and Poodle have no superior survivability to common dog or wolf, but happened anyway because humans worked hard to make them possible. But no one ensures all these active steps in nature. To take only one example, how could humans have “evolved” distinctly from chimps when no one separated each and every new generation based on a teleological model? Why did the proto-human not mate back with his/her regular chimp cousins to put an end to the split? Who and how could have separately optimized conditions for both chimp and human so both lineages survived in what looks like very much similar environments? ‘Selection’ of both “artificial” and “natural” type is thus the wrong word and should be phased out. 6. Natural Selection is Intelligent Selection which is always done by an Intelligent Selector such as Darwin’s breeder which is an intelligent and willful player that takes intentional actions to reach preset goals. Predators, plants, birds, insects or bacteria, all show intelligence and the willful pursuit of predetermined goals. When interacting with the inert environment, organisms self-select rather than being selected by this environment. As soon as the organism dies and becomes part of the lifeless universe, all selection of that entity ceases. Rocks do not select each other, do not self select and are not selected by the environment. ... 12. Humans would apply the Natural Selection method if feasible, but we don’t because it isn’t. A Natural Selection software would use a random generator and a selection criteria to maximize survivability in an available niche. For instance, a family vehicle should optimize the transport function (survivability) given a set of environmental constraints (regulations) and an existing design as starting point. Random minute changes could be tested and retained if the transport function is improved. However, this method can only remove minor oversights but will never create any new designs. Any significant departure such as a new fuel, material or environment either results in a suboptimal design, or requires a cascade of changes to improve the survivability function. That is why the auto industry, like most other industries, introduces minor redesign annually and major revamps every few years. And while even the minor improvements must come in harmonized packages rather than one off (to reduce negative ramifications), in the absence of those major redesigns a firm would shortly go extinct. 13. Designs do not transform into better designs without crossing an inevitable optimization gap. Given a certain environment, once a design is optimized for a certain function, it becomes suboptimal as soon as the function, the structure, or the materials changes. Until the new design is optimized for that particular change, it remains inferior to an old design already optimized to that environment. Humans optimize new designs (with multidimensional differences from previous versions) conceptually before abruptly replacing old designs. A Darwinist biologic gradual design transition would thus be impossible hence never observed in nature. Had the compound eye been optimized first, a transition to non-compound eye would inevitably had to be suboptimal for a while and vice versa. Only if all eye designs had started from the same point, each following an independent path and at the same pace would we have so many different designs today, each optimized for its function. This however implies a coordinated original grand design incompatible with Darwinian evolution. ... Hope this helps :)Nonlin.org_{August 15, 2018
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Eugene S, Thanks for the substantive response.
Of course, not worthless. However, its benefits are indirect.
I would agree with this, especially wrt the example of EA's I suggested.
I respect Darwin’s work. Now we know that it is not a working model in general (there are some corner cases of corner cases where it works). But anyway... it does Darwin credit anyway. By the way, he was not a biologist himself, was he?
I know almost nothing about Darwin, including whether or not he actually should be called a biologist (or even a "citizen scientist", like Forrest Mims). Did he contribute anything valuable to science? I think that's a better question. But more importantly, it's clear you are able to evaluate this material dispassionately, and even give some credit where it's due. I think Egnor might have more difficulty keeping his emotions in check.
I completely agree with ET on evo algorithms. GAs model artificial selection, not natural selection and therefore the fact itself that GAs exist does not lend any support to (neo)-Darwinian claims.
I agree.
It is probably fair to say that GA are inspired by, but not based on, biological processes. GAs assume perfect no noise conditions. They employ explicit fitness function and carefully constructed neighborhood operators. They measure the delta(fitness) with high accuracy, and control the search for a solution based on the deltas. In biological systems there is noise (such as drift), there is no explicitly defined fitness function, and selection filtering is very coarse grained.
Yes, I would even say it's conceivable that while GA's are effective at solving certain problems, the biological analog is completely ineffective at generating now species.daveS_{August 15, 2018
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As Egnor (and Fodor) alluded to, "natural selection is an utterly empty concept. It does no work; it explains nothing.",,,
"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."
Even the late William Provine himself admitted, "Natural selection does not act on anything, nor does it select (for or against), force, maximize, create, modify, shape, operate, drive, favor, maintain, push, or adjust. Natural selection does nothing…"
"Natural selection does not act on anything, nor does it select (for or against), force, maximize, create, modify, shape, operate, drive, favor, maintain, push, or adjust. Natural selection does nothing…. Having natural selection select is nifty because it excuses the necessity of talking about the actual causation of natural selection. Such talk was excusable for Charles Darwin, but inexcusable for evolutionists now. Creationists have discovered our empty “natural selection” language, and the “actions” of natural selection make huge, vulnerable targets." The Origin of Theoretical Population Genetics, 2001 (pp. 199-200) William Provine - Professor of Evolutionary Biology - Cornell University
Jerry Fodor (and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini) went further and stated "the theory of natural selection is internally flawed; it's not just that the data are equivocal, it's that there's a crack in the foundations."
"We'll argue presently that, quite aside from the problems it has accommodating the empirical findings, the theory of natural selection is internally flawed; it's not just that the data are equivocal, it's that there's a crack in the foundations." Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini - “What Darwin Got Wrong”
Michael Egnor explores that 'crack in the foundations' of natural selection in a bit more detail here
Natural Selection Is Empty - Michael Egnor - August 30, 2013 Excerpt: “What's essential about adaptationism, as viewed from this perspective, is precisely its claim that there is a level of evolutionary explanation. We think this claim is just plain wrong. We think that successful explanations of the fixation of phenotypic traits by ecological variables typically belong not to evolutionary theory but to natural history, and that there is just no end of the sorts of things about a natural history that can contribute to explaining the fixation of some or other feature of a creature's phenotype. Natural history isn't a theory of evolution; it's a bundle of evolutionary scenarios. That's why the explanations it offers are so often post hoc and unsystematic.” - Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini's - What Darwin Got Wrong - 2010 Natural selection is not a level of explanation. In F&P-P’s cogent phrase, natural selection is empty. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/08/natural_selecti_2075991.html
,,, simply put, despite what is falsely imagined, natural selection simply does no real work in the real world. As Adam Sedgwick originally pointed out to Charles Darwin himself about his theory of natural selection, “what is it but a secondary consequence of supposed, or known, primary facts.”
An Early Critique of Darwin Warned of a Lower Grade of Degradation - Cornelius Hunter - December 2012 Excerpt: And as for Darwin’s grand principle, natural selection, (Adam Sedgwick asked Charles Darwin) “what is it but a secondary consequence of supposed, or known, primary facts.” Yet Darwin had smuggled in teleological language to avoid the absurdity and make it acceptable. For Darwin had written of natural selection “as if it were done consciously by the selecting agent.” Yet again, this criticism is cogent today. Teleological language is rampant in the evolutionary literature. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2012/12/an-early-critique-of-darwin-warned-of.html
Since natural selection does not actually exist in the real world as a scientifically rigorous definable force of some kind,,,
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
,,, Since natural selection does not actually exist in the real world as a scientifically rigorous definable force of some kind, the primary 'work' of natural selection has never ever really been in the real world but has always been in the realm of man's imagination. 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."
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
And as Crevinfo stated, "Fodor’s beef with natural selection appears to stem from its storytelling propensity".
Hopeful Monsters and Other Tales: Evolutionists Challenge Darwin - Feb. 2010 Excerpt: Jerry Fodor, a (atheistic) philosopher at Rutgers, is angry at the dogmatic Darwinists who see natural selection as the be-all and end-all of evolutionary change.,,, Fodor’s beef with natural selection appears to stem from its storytelling propensity. Why do people have traits like hair on their heads and dark hair with dark eyes? “You can make up a story that explains why it was good to have those properties in the original environment of selection,” he said. “Do we have any reason to think that story is true? No.” Fodor co-authored the book "What Darwin Got Wrong" http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev201002.htm#20100224a
And as Masatoshi Nei stated, "If you say evolution occurs by natural selection, it looks scientific compared with saying God created everything."
Mutation, Not Natural Selection, Drives Evolution Molecular evolutionary biologist Masatoshi Nei says Darwin never proved natural selection is the driving force of evolution — because it isn't. By Gemma Tarlach|Sunday, March 16, 2014 “But among the people working on evolution, most of them still believe natural selection is the driving force. If you say evolution occurs by natural selection, it looks scientific compared with saying God created everything. Now they say natural selection created everything, but they don’t explain how. If it’s science, you have to explain every step. That’s why I was unhappy. Just a replacement of God with natural selection doesn’t change very much. You have to explain how.” - Masatoshi Nei http://discovermagazine.com/2014/march/12-mutation-not-natural-selection-drives-evolution
Here are a few more quotes along that 'designer substitute', 'story telling', line
“The Third Way” – James Shapiro, Denis Noble, and etc.. etc..,,, excerpt: “some Neo-Darwinists have elevated Natural Selection into a unique creative force that solves all the difficult evolutionary problems without a real empirical basis.” per "The Third Way" “the uncritical acceptance of natural selection as an explanatory force for all aspects of biodiversity (without any direct evidence) is not much different than invoking an intelligent designer” Michael Lynch – The Origins of Genome Architecture, p 368 “Darwinism provided an explanation for the appearance of design, and argued that there is no Designer — or, if you will, the designer is natural selection. If that’s out of the way — if that (natural selection) just does not explain the evidence — then the flip side of that is, well, things appear designed because they are designed.” Richard Sternberg – Living Waters documentary Whale Evolution vs. Population Genetics – Richard Sternberg and Paul Nelson – (excerpt from Living Waters video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0csd3M4bc0Q
Simply put, Natural Selection is ‘not even wrong’ as an explanation for the ‘apparent design’ we see pervasively throughout life:
The abject failure of Natural Selection on two levels of physical reality – video (2016) (princess and the pea paradox & quarter power scaling) https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/denis-noble-why-talk-about-replacement-of-darwinian-evolution-theory-not-extension/#comment-619802
To sum up, the primary 'work' of Natural Selection has always been in the realm of man's imagination to function as a 'designer substitute'. i.e. To function as a 'stand in' for God for people who find the idea of being personally accountable to the God, who 'designed' them, to be unpalatible. As Michael Ruse honestly confessed, "Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion a full-fledged alternative to Christianity.,, This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today."
"Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint, and Mr. Gish is but one of many to make it, the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today." Ruse, M., How evolution became a religion: creationists correct? Darwinians wrongly mix science with morality, politics, National Post, pp. B1, B3, B7 (May 13, 2000)
Basically Darwinists, with natural selection, have constructed, as the ancient pagans in the Bible constantly did, an imaginary false idol to worship instead acknowleging the true and living God who alone is worthy of our supreme worship and love.
198. What is the first commandment of God? The first commandment of God is: I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have strange gods before Me. Thou shalt not have strange Gods before me. Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. (Exodus 20:3-4) 199. What are we commanded by the first commandment? By the first commandment we are commanded to offer to God alone the supreme worship that is due Him. It is written, "The Lord thy God shalt thou worship, and him only shalt thou serve." (Luke 4:8) per Catholic city
bornagain77_{August 15, 2018
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polistra, I like your comment. Thanks.PaoloV_{August 15, 2018
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"Evolutionary algorithms" are just a software implementation of a feedback loop. The analog version was well-developed in clocks by 1500 and in steam technology by 1800. Long before Darwin. Turning it to software didn't require any contribution from Darwinism.polistra_{August 15, 2018
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Some of the main Darwinian ideas seem to be a product of our human tendency to easily read too much into things. Apparently some of those ideas resulted from a gross extrapolation of what the guy observed in some islands near Ecuador. We miss the point of what we see, read or hear. We tend to make any text to mean either less or more than what it really says. We humans also easily miss to grasp the meaning of our experiences. We all have experiences, but perhaps not many think deeply about their meaning. Then, to make things worse, we humans don't test everything to hold only what is good. We pretty much go with our emotions, preferences, desires. In the first verse of the third chapter of Genesis someone reacted to the question "Did God actually say...?" tragically wrong. We're still doing the same today. We humans communicate with one another very poorly. Communication requires that all the involved parties are similarly interested in the truth about what is being communicated. We must meet important conditions to communicate: sufficient time, same protocol and language, interest in understanding what others are trying to say and what they mean, interest in presenting one's ideas as clearly as possible, so that others can understand well the meaning of what we are trying to convey. We see examples of these problems all over. For example, just take a look at the discussions going on here in this website. Note how we talk past each other. Also we have lost the sense of wonder we had as small children. As consequence, rather than singing worship hymns and joyfully surrendering our will to our Creator, we prefer Paul Anka's hit song "My way". This is a pathetically sad situation. Unfortunately there's no natural way to get out of this mess. Why? Because "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9) The only hope is to genuinely repent and follow the One who claimed to be "The Way, The Truth and The Life" and proved it with His death on a Roman cross and His supernatural resurrection. Only He can bless us by making us poor in spirit. Then we will be humble enough to look at amazing things in awe. That will solve all these misunderstandings and miscommunications too. Being made in IMAGO DEI implies that we are the only creatures in this planet with the capacity to communicate with our Creator, who is the absolutely perfect communicator. Only God's spirit can restore us to that level of communication and understanding. Praise Adonai!PaoloV_{August 15, 2018
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Of further (humorous) note to the claim in post 1, "I can think of one contribution Darwin’s theory,, made to science,, evolutionary algorithms."
Is Natural Selection Like a Computer Algorithm? - July 23, 2014 Excerpt: The only algorithm possible for evolutionary theory is what we might dub (after Berlinski) the SDLA: the "Sheer Dumb Luck" Algorithm. Unfortunately, that algorithm is weighted heavily in favor of entropy and extinction. We would hope that Darwinists would not try to transfer their algorithm back onto the computer scientists. It may be too late for the economists. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/07/is_natural_sele088121.html
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Eugene S, I coincide with PeterA on his comment about what you wrote. Well done! Thanks.PaoloV_{August 15, 2018
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Eugene S, Excellent commentary. Definitely worth reading. Thanks.jawa_{August 15, 2018
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daveS @ 3 Evolutionary algorithms are just glorified trial and error solutions aided by computers. Nothing evolutionary there.aarceng_{August 15, 2018
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DaveS Of course, not worthless. However, its benefits are indirect. I respect Darwin's work. Now we know that it is not a working model in general (there are some corner cases of corner cases where it works). But anyway... it does Darwin credit anyway. By the way, he was not a biologist himself, was he? I completely agree with ET on evo algorithms. GAs model artificial selection, not natural selection and therefore the fact itself that GAs exist does not lend any support to (neo)-Darwinian claims. It is probably fair to say that GA are inspired by, but not based on, biological processes. GAs assume perfect no noise conditions. They employ explicit fitness function and carefully constructed neighborhood operators. They measure the delta(fitness) with high accuracy, and control the search for a solution based on the deltas. In biological systems there is noise (such as drift), there is no explicitly defined fitness function, and selection filtering is very coarse grained. Nonlin.org Too many too terse points. If you want to engage anyone in a discussion, please provide some wording to support your claims. To my estimation, it is not ridiculous or tautological. The Darwinian model does have feedback from environment to phenotype to adjust the system parameters to make sure there takes place fixation of traits. It is just that this feedback is too weak to lead to anything non-trivial in practice. It is a valid model but it cannot achieve anything in practice. That is why it has taken people time and computational resources to realize that. I agree that the word 'selection' is a misnomer and Darwin himself realized it. True, nothing is being actively selected, it is only culling that takes place. Your using of the word 'ridiculous' suggests that Darwinists are fools. Maybe some of them are, but surely not all ;) The best characterization of the Darwinian model I came across was due to David Abel. The Darwinian selection is from among available functions, not for a future function. The question is, where these available functions came from in the first place. That is the real question. The Darwinian model cannot have any means to address it other than random variation (the only "creator" of information in it). Random variation can only operate in a given functional context, but I agree, new sophisticated function cannot arise by random variation selecting away non-viable options. New sophisticated function can only arise by intelligence. The starting point for Darwinian evolution is a population of biological replicators. However, to get a biological replicator one must have a code translator. How does this translator arise? Only by intelligence since it is only intelligence that can instantiate logic relationships "A represents B" into physicality.Eugene S_{August 15, 2018
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Darwin's work on earthworms was pretty neat, though.Bob O'H_{August 14, 2018
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daves:
Darwin’s theory inspired the field of evolutionary algorithms, so it is arguably not worthless to science.
And yet those same algorithms use telic processes to solve the problems they were designed to solve. So even though Darwin's ideas may have inspired them they don't use Darwin's ideas as he intended. His was design without a designer without any telic processes.ET_{August 14, 2018
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Amblyrhynchus:
The use of evolutionary principals (sic) and methods across the life sciences demonstrates this is not the case.
Nice equivocation. No one uses blind watchmaker principles for anything.ET_{August 14, 2018
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Seversky:
Whose word shall we take on the value of Charles Darwin’s contribution to the science of evolutionary biology, that of a neurosurgeon or that of biologists themselves?
What do the biologists say? Have they found any evidence for Darwin's claim about natural selection? No.
The irony is that Egnor’s professional career as a neurosurgeon is founded on a naturalistic, materialistic understanding of the brain as an immensely complex physical organ.
No, that is only your misguided opinion. Materialism is useless in trying to understand anything. Naturalism is useless when trying to understand anything. Those are both dogmas which are the antithesis of science. As if any doctor treats people by saying life arose from non-life just because. You are deluded, Seversky- deluded and clueless.ET_{August 14, 2018
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Whose word shall we take on the value of Charles Darwin's contribution to the science of evolutionary biology, that of a neurosurgeon or that of biologists themselves? What I despise is the form of religious Lysenkoism practiced by Egnor and his kind. Anything which is perceived as a threat to their beliefs and cannot be bent to conform to them is to be reviled and rejected. The irony is that Egnor's professional career as a neurosurgeon is founded on a naturalistic, materialistic understanding of the brain as an immensely complex physical organ. When he operates, I seriously doubt he puts on a helmet, lowers the "blast shield" and "reaches out" with his feelings to perform the procedure. "Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them". He would certainly lose his license if he tried. What Egnor preaches is both bad science and bad Christianity.Seversky_{August 14, 2018
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Is Darwinism “completely worthless to science”...
Well, no. The use of evolutionary principals and methods across the life sciences demonstrates this is not the case. One example that Egnor might find interesting is "fitCons", an approach to identifying potentially pathogenic mutations that relies on population and phylogenetic estiamtes of the stength of selection. It's used widely in clinical genetics.Amblyrhynchus_{August 14, 2018
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Of course "natural selection" is nonsensical. It's beyond comprehension how this guy Darwin has been fooling so many people for so long: http://nonlin.org/natural-selection/ 1. Natural Selection concept fails since phenotype does not determine survival which is also tautological with “best adapted” 2. “Blind, mindless, purposeless, natural, and process” qualifiers fail 3. Phenotype is an unstable infinite set (hence unknowable and theoretical) 4. Fitness concept is redundant since never defined independently of survival 5. “Selection” is Survival 6. The only selection is Intelligent Selection - always done by an Intelligent Selector 7. Selection is limited to a narrow set of adaptations – one cannot selected what is not there 8. Selection and Mutations lack creativity, therefore cannot explain body designs 9. We do not observe “divergence of character” but ‘limited variations around a mean’ 10. Extinct organism were not flawed and their features were not “selected away” 11. Intelligent Selection should replace Natural Selection but only if we ever transmutate organisms 12. Humans do not apply Natural Selection because it doesn’t work 13. Designs must cross an inevitable optimization gap making evolution impossible 14. Breeding is much more than “artificial selection” and unrelated to any natural process "Natural selection" proponents must answer these simple questions - pick any biologic entity including populations and give the 80/20 Pareto without too much accuracy or precision : 1. What is that biologic entity's phenotype? 2. What is its environment? 3. What is its fitness function? 4. What is the relationship between its phenotype, environment, fitness, and survival/reproductive success? The five ridiculous claims of “natural selection” 1. “Design by multiple choice” is ridiculous 2. “Multiple choice from ALL random answers” is ridiculous 3. “Designing without trying” is ridiculous 4. “Self design” is ridiculous 5. “Design by incremental optimization” is ridiculousNonlin.org_{August 14, 2018
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There is no such thing as a true 'evolutionary' algorithm. Only 'guided searches' with a fixed goal.
Top Ten Questions and Objections to 'Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics' - Robert J. Marks II - June 12, 2017 Excerpt: There exists no (computer) model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. Period. By “model,” we mean definitive simulations or foundational mathematics required of a hard science.,,, We show that no meaningful information can arise from an evolutionary process unless that process is guided. Even when guided, the degree of evolution’s accomplishment is limited by the expertise of the guiding information source — a limit we call Basener’s ceiling. An evolutionary program whose goal is to master chess will never evolve further and offer investment advice.,,, 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.,,, Models of Darwinian evolution, Avida and EV included, are searches with a fixed goal. For EV, the goal is finding specified nucleotide binding sites. Avida’s goal is to generate an EQU logic function. Other evolution models that we examine in Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics likewise seek a prespecified goal.,,, The most celebrated attempt of an evolution model without a goal of which we’re aware is TIERRA. In an attempt to recreate something like the Cambrian explosion on a computer, the programmer created what was thought to be an information-rich environment where digital organisms would flourish and evolve. According to TIERRA’s ingenious creator, Thomas Ray, the project failed and was abandoned. There has to date been no success in open-ended evolution in the field of artificial life.5,,, We show that the probability resources of the universe and even string theory’s hypothetical multiverse are insufficient to explain the specified complexity surrounding us.,,, If a successful search requires equaling or exceeding some degree of active information, what is the chance of finding any search with as good or better performance? We call this a search-for-the-search. In Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics, we show that the search-for-the-search is exponentially more difficult than the search itself!,,, ,,,we use information theory to measure meaningful information and show there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution.,,, ,,, if the fitness continues to change, it is argued, the evolved entity can achieve greater and greater specified complexity,,, ,,, We,, dub the overall search structure 'stair step active information'. Not only is guidance required on each stair, but the next step must be carefully chosen to guide the process to the higher fitness landscape and therefore ever increasing complexity.,,, Such fine tuning is the case of any fortuitous shift in fitness landscapes and increases, not decreases, the difficulty of evolution of ever-increasing specified complexity. It supports the case there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution.,,, Turing’s landmark work has allowed researchers, most notably Roger Penrose,26 to make the case that certain of man’s attributes including creativity and understanding are beyond the capability of the computer.,,, ,,, there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. According to our current understanding, there never will be.,,, https://evolutionnews.org/2017/06/top-ten-questions-and-objections-to-introduction-to-evolutionary-informatics/ Mind Matters https://mindmatters.today/ "It is straightforward to see that zero evidence supports the view that machines will attain and ultimately exceed human intelligence. And absent such evidence, there is zero reason to worry or fear that they will. So how do we see that? We see it by understanding the nature of true intelligence, as exhibited in a fully robust human intelligence, and not letting it be confused with artificial intelligence. What has artificial intelligence actually accomplished to date? AI has, no doubt, an impressive string of accomplishments: chess playing programs, Go playing programs, Jeopardy playing programs just scratch the surface. Consider Google’s search business, Facebook’s tracking and filtering technology, and the robotics industry. Automated cars seem just around the corner. In every case, however, what one finds with a successful application of AI is a specifically adapted algorithmic solution to a well-defined and narrowly conceived problem." - William Dembski "Captcha" Breakthrough by AI (Artificial Intelligence) Illustrates Biomimetic Design - November 26, 2013 Excerpt: Since intelligent design presupposes a mental act directed toward a purpose, AI is a misnomer. It should more properly be described as "artificial execution of human-designed algorithms." This is really a story about biomimetics -- a form of intelligent-design science. The engineers looked to the way a brain solves a problem and tried to imitate it. It took human intelligent design to design the computer. It took intelligent design to write the software. It took human ID to test it, tweak it and perfect it till it succeeded. It requires human intelligence to see a good design. It takes ID to formulate a purpose. Then it requires human intelligence and will to move things in a preferred direction for that purpose. Nothing is left to unguided processes. Even selection from random trials (falsely called "Darwinian" algorithms) employs human purposeful choice. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/11/captcha_breakou079551.html etc.. etc.. etc..
bornagain77_{August 14, 2018
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BartM, I'm happy to rephrase a bit. Darwin's theory inspired the field of evolutionary algorithms, so it is arguably not worthless to science.daveS_{August 14, 2018
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The journal Nature says that evolutionary algorithms were inspired by Darwinism. That hardly qualifies as a "contribution".BartM_{August 14, 2018
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That vitriol, though. I can think of one contribution Darwin's theory (at least the modern version) made to science, even if "Darwinism" is false---evolutionary algorithms.daveS_{August 14, 2018
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