Is There Even One Point Upon Which There is Universal Agreement?

_{Barry Arrington

April 27, 2015

Intelligent Design}

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I have a question for non-ID proponents only and it is very simple: Is there even one tenet of modern evolutionary theory that is universally agreed upon by the proponents of modern evolutionary theory?

Comments

Dionisio
FYI, in case you didn’t know this or forgot about it, most scientists are in total harmonious agreement on the major issues. Disagreement, if there’s any, might be in irrelevant minutiae.
Of course! If you disagree with more than just the minutiae then, obviously, you're not a real scientist. That's just how it works. :-)Silver Asiatic_{April 29, 2015
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Mapou: Fodor told the truth about natural selection and was attacked. Goodness! Is he okay?Zachriel_{April 29, 2015
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Silver Asiatic @ 80 & 81 FYI, in case you didn't know this or forgot about it, most scientists are in total harmonious agreement on the major issues. Disagreement, if there's any, might be in irrelevant minutiae. You may want to read this carefully: http://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/ ;-) PS. Here's a serious scientist who works on the real stuff, hence apparently doesn't have much spare time left to squander on senseless OOL debates: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/mystery-at-the-heart-of-life/#comment-561160Dionisio_{April 29, 2015
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I'm not aware of any disagreement among evolutionary biologists on the following: - All of modern life shares common ancestry, HGT and orphan genes notwithstanding. - The following mechanisms of genetic change cause change in lineages, with a bias against reversal: Mutation (point, indel, duplication and rearrangement) Gene Conversion Recombination (several mechanisms including HGT) - A parallel process of concentration/dilution of such variant alleles occurs (concentration of one is inevitably dilution of the other), by both sample error (drift) and systematic bias (selection). - Only frequency-dependent selection can oppose the progress of such an allele through to the fixation of one variant and elimination of the other. This is rare, so origin-fixation is the norm, long-term. - Iterated occurrences of such fixations inevitably change lineages. - Isolated gene pools diverge. - Species differences are fundamentally due to the tendency of this divergence to proceed beyond the point of interfertility (isolation through prezygotic and postzygotic mechanisms). - Higher taxa result from ongoing divergences of historic species. - Transition-transversion biases in substitution are due to a biochemical tendency increasing yields of one product over the other. - Codon position biases occur and are due to the relative effects of selection and drift on synonymous vs nonsynonymous sites.Hangonasec_{April 29, 2015
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We can see how dissent is tolerated within Darwinism right on this thread. I point to Stanley Salthe as an evolutionary biologist who doesn't think selection is important. wd400 replies:
Salthe signed the disco ‘tutes ‘dissent’ petition, so it’s pretty obvious he’s not a fan of modern evolution biology.
I gave wd400 that lame argument myself. "If you don't agree that selection is important, then you're not a proponent of modern evolutionary biology". So, by default, even if only a handful agreed, then there would still be 100% agreement. Nobody bothered to point out to wd400 that he doesn't get to define what "modern evolutionary biology" is. Self-organizationalists like Salthe, who take a radically different position are arguably even more 'modern' than Darwin's disciples from the 19th century. Then of course, all of the biologists who signed the Dissent Against Darwin list are excluded from 'evolutionary biology'. It might surprise wd400 but nobody owns the term 'evolution' and it's clear that it is virtually meaningless. Just about every creationist in the world is an 'evolutionist'. ID itself is a 'modern evolutionary theory' if you want to call it that. But the Darwinian enterprise doesn't allow for such things. Supposedly, they own biology and they own whatever 'evolutionary theory' is supposed to mean. The obvious dissent and enormous cracks in the facade are covered over by the lying pretense of "100% agreement". Even the dissenters are afraid to admit that they basically rejected Darwin. When pushed, even after claiming that Darwinism is dead (as Margulis did), they will assert the Darwinian party-line. That kind of duplicity is very easy to see - it's been around for decades. S.J. Gould did the same thing. He ridiculed Darwinism and then in the same breath insisted that he supported it fully.
http://www.arn.org/ftissues/ft9801/opinion/johnson.html The difficulty of saying whether Gould really is a Darwinist or not stems from his habit of combining radically anti-Darwinian statements with qualifications that preserve a line of retreat. When Gould loudly proclaimed "the return of the hopeful monster," for example, he seemed to be endorsing the geneticist Richard Goldschmidt’s view that large mutations create new kinds of organisms in single-generation jumps—a heresy which Darwinists consider to be only a little better than outright creationism. If you read the fine print carefully, however, you’ll find that Gould surrounded his claims with qualifications that allow him to insist that he is at least somewhere in the neighborhood of orthodoxy. Even when Gould bluntly announced that neo-Darwinism is "effectively dead," it turns out that he only meant . . . well, nobody seems to know what he meant, but certainly not that neo-Darwinism is effectively dead.
Silver Asiatic_{April 29, 2015
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wd400: Evolutionary biologists agree selection is an important {force|phenomenon|effect|pattern} in the evolution of populations and lineages. Mung: Well, which is it? Is natural selection the cause or the effect? Yet another area where the anti-ID crowd just can’t get their act together. One says it’s the cause. Another says it’s the effect. Yet a third claims it’s both the cause and the effect.
Excellent insight, Mung. I just noticed that. In the very attempt to supposedly explain more clearly what selection really is, wd400 says it's both a cause (force) and effect (pattern).Silver Asiatic_{April 29, 2015
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wd400 @ 57
If you can’t admit you were wrong that selection is agreed to be important that’s fine, but I’m not going to waste any more time of the derailment tactics.
The point of the OP is about disagreements within what is claimed to be evolutionary theory. You are very insistent that "selection is agreed to be important" -- to the point that you feel your position will be validated when I "admit that I'm wrong". But you really added nothing to the discussion. It's clear that there is widespread disagreement on the relative importance of selection. You avoided this entirely and put all your efforts into holding to the trivial point that everyone agrees selection is "important".Silver Asiatic_{April 29, 2015
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Map:
Biologists and others must all pay homage to the great gods of Darwinism and materialism. Otherwise, they won’t have much of a career within academia or as a researcher anywhere. All textbooks must show allegiance to the same gods.
IOW, Darwinism is rigidly enforced within the academy (you know, “profs” and all), as well as within the scientific community, with no tolerance for dissent. The UD narrative. Lip-sync courtesy of Mapou.Reciprocating Bill_{April 29, 2015
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By 'within Darwinism', I meant 'within academia'. Biologists and others must all pay homage to the great gods of Darwinism and materialism. Otherwise, they won't have much of a career within academia or as a researcher anywhere. All textbooks must show allegiance to the same gods. It's fascism of our enlightened "superiors" who use our money to tell us what to believe in. It will soon be time to bring down this band of cretins and usurpers.Mapou_{April 28, 2015
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Reciprocating Bill:
Mapou: There is no dissent within Darwinism against the stupid dogma that everything evolved all by itself. There may be squabbles concerning mechanisms but nobody is allowed to talk about design or creation.
Of course, anyone maintaining that view would not be “within Darwinism.” No, Nay! People in the rest of society can respectfully acknowledge alternative perspectives, and still hold the view. It is totally consistent to hold to a darwinist view and respectfully say that others find this view to have inadequacy. Within biological mainstream, however, design is a taboo. Some like "thethirdwayofevolution.org" plaster the taboo on their front page:
One way is Creationism that depends upon intervention by a divine Creator. That is clearly unscientific because it brings an arbitrary supernatural force into the evolution process.
Ie, creationism (small c) provides the best explanation of the data, but it is taboo, therefore it is wrong.bFast_{April 28, 2015
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RC @75, I answered your question. You were being disingenuous by suggesting that UD claims there are no disagreements (not dissent) within Darwinism. That's not it. UD's claim is that there is no dissent against Darwinism. Slight difference. But why do I even bother and who am I kidding? This crap is inconsequential.Mapou_{April 28, 2015
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Mapou:
There is no dissent within Darwinism against the stupid dogma that everything evolved all by itself. There may be squabbles concerning mechanisms but nobody is allowed to talk about design or creation.
Of course, anyone maintaining that view would not be "within Darwinism." It's a sharp observation, though. Similarly, it has always bothered me that there are no red things that are green. (I wonder: how do they enforce that so effectively?) But your answer doesn't go to my question. Are you saying that, “Darwinism is rigidly enforced within the academy, as well as within the scientific community, with no tolerance for dissent” is NOT a prominent theme in the UD narrative?Reciprocating Bill_{April 28, 2015
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There is absolutely one point on which there is universal agreement -- it is all the result of natural causes.bFast_{April 28, 2015
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RC:
So, “Darwinism is rigidly enforced within the academy, as well as within the scientific community, with no tolerance for dissent” is not a prominent theme in the UD narrative?
There is no dissent within Darwinism against the stupid dogma that everything evolved all by itself. There may be squabbles concerning mechanisms but nobody is allowed to talk about design or creation. That is forbidden. Since all Darwinists are a bunch of gutless wussies, they cannot rebel against their own stupidity even if they wanted to. LOL
(Gosh, I would have sworn that was UD.)
You're lying, obviously.Mapou_{April 28, 2015
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So, “Darwinism is rigidly enforced within the academy, as well as within the scientific community, with no tolerance for dissent” is not a prominent theme in the UD narrative?
How are you defining "dissent"? Fodor told the truth about natural selection and was attacked.Joe_{April 28, 2015
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Mapou:
The UD narrative is that the Darwinists have taken over education and will not allow competing hypotheses.
So, “Darwinism is rigidly enforced within the academy, as well as within the scientific community, with no tolerance for dissent” is not a prominent theme in the UD narrative? (Gosh, I would have sworn that was UD.)Reciprocating Bill_{April 28, 2015
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wd400:
Evolutionary biologists know precisely what is meant by selection (differential reproductive success, especially of heritable variations).
ok, so natural differential reproductive success. Cause or effect?Mung_{April 28, 2015
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Evolutionary biologists agree selection is an important {force|phenomenon|effect|pattern} in the evolution of populations and lineages.
Well, which is it? Is natural selection the cause or the effect? Yet another area where the anti-ID crowd just can't get their act together. One says it's the cause. Another says it's the effect. Yet a third claims it's both the cause and the effect.Mung_{April 28, 2015
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RC @67, stop being so blatantly disingenuous. UD frequently publishes disagreements amongst Darwinists. We love it. The UD narrative is that the Darwinists have taken over education and will not allow competing hypotheses. Specifically, one is not allowed to suggest that life was designed and that there is plenty of evidence for ID. IOW, it's good old totalitarianism hiding within a democratic society and in plain sight. But not for long.Mapou_{April 28, 2015
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I thought the UD narrative was that Darwinism is rigidly enforced within the academy (you know, “profs” and all), as well as within the scientific community, with no tolerance for dissent. Now a diversity of views on a variety of topics within evolutionary theory is a problem?Reciprocating Bill_{April 28, 2015
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Andre - we agree that the real living world is big and complicated, so simple theories are unlikely to explain everything. We'd all wish biology was simple, but alas it's not.Bob O'H_{April 28, 2015
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Silver Asiatic: Stanley Salthe, Lynn Margulis, Jerry Fodor, Stuart Kauffman and others disagree that selection is important. Fodor is not a biologist. Margulis is a self-described Darwinist. Kauffman recognizes natural selection as an important mechanism, but proposes that self-organization is also important.Zachriel_{April 28, 2015
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Amazing if it's drift it's Darwinian evolution. Selection is important but not really... Punk Eek is also Darwinism. What do you lot agree on? Everything is Darwinian evolution rightly or wrongly.Andre_{April 28, 2015
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Box @19 - Others have responded to point 1, but to the others
Bob: 2. Punk eek just means that the rate of accumulation sometimes changes drastically, so it’s still covered.
Punk eek says that differences among related lineages can accumulated over a few generations. That’s the opposite of what’s been said in 2, Bob.
No, it says that big differences can accumulate rapidly, but on a geologic time scale. It'll still be over many generations. What do you mean by "a few"?
Bob: 3. This can be formalised, and I think there’s a term in the Price equation that an include a Lamarckian component, so it doesn’t exclude it.
Or does it? See what I mean, by “vague” ?
Err, no. I checked, and I was right - the second term in the price equation (E(w_i \Delta z_i)) would be the effect of Lamarckian evolution: \Delta z_i is the Lamarckian inheritance (i.e. the change in phenotype over a full generation from parent to offspring).
Bob: 4. “Neutralists” acknowledge the importance of selection, and “selectionists” can hardly deny the existence of drift.
PZMeyers: This does not in any way imply that selection is unimportant, but only that most molecular differences will not be a product of adaptive, selective changes. That’s just about the opposite of what’s being said in 4,5,6,7 Bob.
Huh? It says the same as 5 and 7 (i.e. selection is important, or not unimportant), and says nothing about 4 or 6. And it aligns perfectly with what I wrote: both selection and drift are acknowledged as affecting evolution.Bob O'H_{April 28, 2015
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here are some more supplemental comments/quips as to neutral theory: Majestic Ascent: Berlinski on Darwin on Trial – David Berlinski – November 2011 Excerpt: The publication in 1983 of Motoo Kimura’s The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution consolidated ideas that Kimura had introduced in the late 1960s. On the molecular level, evolution is entirely stochastic, and if it proceeds at all, it proceeds by drift along a leaves-and-current model. Kimura’s theories left the emergence of complex biological structures an enigma, but they played an important role in the local economy of belief. They allowed biologists to affirm that they welcomed responsible criticism. “A critique of neo-Darwinism,” the Dutch biologist Gert Korthof boasted, “can be incorporated into neo-Darwinism if there is evidence and a good theory, which contributes to the progress of science.” By this standard, if the Archangel Gabriel were to accept personal responsibility for the Cambrian explosion, his views would be widely described as neo-Darwinian. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....53171.html Ann Gauger on genetic drift – August 2012 Excerpt: The idea that evolution is driven by drift has led to a way of retrospectively estimating past genetic lineages. Called coalescent theory, it is based on one very simple assumption — that the vast majority of mutations are neutral and have no effect on an organism’s survival. (For a review go here.) According to this theory, actual genetic history is presumed not to matter. Our genomes are full of randomly accumulating neutral changes. When generating a genealogy for those changes, their order of appearance doesn’t matter. Trees can be drawn and mutations assigned to them without regard to an evolutionary sequence of genotypes, since genotypes don’t matter. https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/ann-gauger-on-genetic-drift/ Here is a Completely Different Way of Doing Science – Cornelius Hunter PhD. – April 2012 Excerpt: But how then could evolution proceed if mutations were just neutral? The idea was that neutral mutations would accrue until finally an earthquake, comet, volcano or some such would cause a major environmental shift which suddenly could make use of all those neutral mutations. Suddenly, those old mutations went from goat-to-hero, providing just the designs that were needed to cope with the new environmental challenge. It was another example of the incredible serendipity that evolutionists call upon. Too good to be true? Not for evolutionists. The neutral theory became quite popular in the literature. The idea that mutations were not brimming with cool innovations but were mostly bad or at best neutral, for some, went from an anathema to orthodoxy. And the idea that those neutral mutations would later magically provide the needed innovations became another evolutionary just-so story, told with conviction as though it was a scientific finding. Another problem with the theory of neutral molecular evolution is that it made even more obvious the awkward question of where these genes came from in the first place. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2012/04/here-is-completely-different-way-of.html as to drift Thou Shalt Not Put Evolutionary Theory to a Test – Douglas Axe – July 18, 2012 Excerpt: “For example, McBride criticizes me for not mentioning genetic drift in my discussion of human origins, apparently without realizing that the result of Durrett and Schmidt rules drift out. Each and every specific genetic change needed to produce humans from apes would have to have conferred a significant selective advantage in order for humans to have appeared in the available time (i.e. the mutations cannot be ‘neutral’). Any aspect of the transition that requires two or more mutations to act in combination in order to increase fitness would take way too long (greater than 100 million years). My challenge to McBride, and everyone else who believes the evolutionary story of human origins, is not to provide the list of mutations that did the trick, but rather a list of mutations that can do it. Otherwise they’re in the position of insisting that something is a scientific fact without having the faintest idea how it even could be.” - Doug Axe PhD. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/thou_shalt_not062351.html Natural Selection Struggles to Fix Advantageous Traits in Populations – Casey Luskin – October 23, 2014 Excerpt: Michael Lynch, an evolutionary biologist at Indiana University,, writes that “random genetic drift can impose a strong barrier to the advancement of molecular refinements by adaptive processes.”2 He notes that the effect of drift is “encouraging the fixation of mildly deleterious mutations and discouraging the promotion of beneficial mutations.”3 Likewise, Eugene Koonin, a leading scientist at the National Institutes of Health, explains that genetic drift leads to “random fixation of neutral or even deleterious changes.”4 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/10/natural_selecti_3090571.htmlbornagain77_{April 28, 2015
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wd400’s understatement of the year:
“Selection can be important without applying to every variant in every genome (or, even to most of them).”
Yet, you claimed that virtually all of the supposed 15,000,000 mutations that hypothetically turned some ape-like creature into a human were 'neutrally' fixed in 6 million years because of this following fact,,,
More from Ann Gauger on why humans didn’t happen the way Darwin said – July 9, 2012 Excerpt: Each of these new features probably required multiple mutations. Getting a feature that requires six neutral mutations is the limit of what bacteria can produce. For primates (e.g., monkeys, apes and humans) the limit is much more severe. Because of much smaller effective population sizes (an estimated ten thousand for humans instead of a billion for bacteria) and longer generation times (fifteen to twenty years per generation for humans vs. a thousand generations per year for bacteria), it would take a very long time for even a single beneficial mutation to appear and become fixed in a human population. You don’t have to take my word for it. In 2007, Durrett and Schmidt estimated in the journal Genetics that for a single mutation to occur in a nucleotide-binding site and be fixed in a primate lineage would require a waiting time of six million years. The same authors later estimated it would take 216 million years for the binding site to acquire two mutations, if the first mutation was neutral in its effect. Facing Facts But six million years is the entire time allotted for the transition from our last common ancestor with chimps to us according to the standard evolutionary timescale. Two hundred and sixteen million years takes us back to the Triassic, when the very first mammals appeared. One or two mutations simply aren’t sufficient to produce the necessary changes— sixteen anatomical features—in the time available. At most, a new binding site might affect the regulation of one or two genes. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/more-from-ann-gauger-on-why-humans-didnt-happen-the-way-darwin-said/
So approx. 14,999,994 were fixed 'neutrally' without regard to selection? I would say that renders selection fairly unimportant in the scheme of things With the adoption of the ‘neutral theory’ of evolution by prominent Darwinists, and the casting under the bus of Natural Selection as a major player in evolution, William J Murray quips,,,
“One wonders what would have become of evolution had Darwin originally claimed that it was simply the accumulation of random, neutral variations that generated all of the deeply complex, organized, interdependent structures we find in biology? Would we even know his name today? What exactly is Darwin really famous for now? Advancing a really popular, disproven idea (of Natural Selection), along the lines of Luminiferous Aether? Without the erroneous but powerful meme of “survival of the fittest” to act as an opiate for the Victorian intelligentsia and as a rationale for 20th century fascism, how might history have proceeded under the influence of the less vitriolic maxim, “Survival of the Happenstance”?” - William J Murray https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/why-keith-blanchard-really-doesnt-understand-evolution/#comment-510124
of note: Your claim that most of the genome is junk is another prime example of atheistic dogma, instead of reason, driving science. The genome is fantastically complex. It is completely unhinged from reality for a person to insist, especially post ENCODE, that it is mostly junk:
Biological Information - Not Junk After All 11-29-2014 by Paul Giem - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO-7kVBA_JM In the book “Biological Information: New Perspectives” the chapter entitled “Not Junk After All: Non-Protein-Coding DNA Carries Extensive Biological Information” discusses the various functions of DNA and finds that non-functional DNA is a small minority. Podcast: Richard Sternberg PhD - ” On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? part 1 http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/11/on-human-origins-is-our-genome-full-of-junk-dna/ Podcast - Richard Sternberg PhD - On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? Part 2 (Major Differences in higher level chromosome spatial organization) http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/11/on-human-origins-is-our-genome-full-of-junk-dna-pt-2/ Podcast: Richard Sternberg PhD - ” On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? Part 3 http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2014-11-17T14_14_33-08_00 Podcast - Richard Sternberg PhD - On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? Part 4 http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/11/on-human-origins-is-our-genome-full-of-junk-dna-pt-4/ Podcast - Richard Sternberg PhD - On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? Part 5 (emphasis on ENCODE and the loss of the term ‘gene’ as a accurate description in biology and how that loss undermines the modern synthesis of neo-Darwinism) http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/11/on-human-origins-is-our-genome-full-of-junk-dna-pt-5/ What Is The Genome? It's Certainly Not Junk! - Dr. Robert Carter - video - (Notes in video description) http://www.metacafe.com/w/8905583
bornagain77_{April 28, 2015
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I really don't think this is difficult to understand. One last attempt: Selection can be important without applying to every variant in every genome (or, even to most of them). In the quoted thread Andre said that wasn't enough time for selection to fix all the differences between human and chimp. By making the assumption of nuetrality I was able to show him that you didn't even need selection to get the job done, drift alone could. As it happens, this is also a pretty good "first approximation" assumption to make. Much of the genome is junk so variants there aren't subject to selection, even in the functional regions many genetic variants are interchangeable. That doesn't detract from the importance of selection on those variants that aren't.wd400_{April 28, 2015
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wd400, if selection is so important, then why did you yourself deny its importance in the supposed evolutionary origin of humans? The only assumption in that calculation is the one I stated — that new mutaitions are selectively neutral. Positive selection of the sort discussed in your links might make more mutations fix, but the neutral rate is equal to the per-individual mutation rate. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-we-share-99-of-our-dna-with-chimps-claim-rises-again/#comment-561093bornagain77_{April 28, 2015
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Of related interest: Lakatos tipped toed around the fact that Darwinism has no demarcation criteria to separate it from pseudo-science,,,
A Philosophical Question...Does Evolution have a Hard Core ? Some Concluding Food for Thought In my research on the demarcation problem, I have noticed philosophers of science attempting to balance (usually unconsciously) a consistent demarcation criteria against the the disruptive effects that it’s application might have with regard to the academic status quo (and evolution in particular)… Few philosophers of science will even touch such matters, but (perhaps unintentionally) Imre Lakatos does offer us a peek at how one might go about balancing these schizophrenic demands (in Motterlini1999: 24) “Let us call the first school militant positivism; you will understand why later on. The problem of this school was to find certain demarcation criteria similar to those I have outlined, but these also had to satisfy certain boundary conditions, as a mathematician would say. I am referring to a definite set of people to which most scientists as well as Popper and Carnap would belong. These people think that there are goodies and baddies among scientific theories, and once you have defined a demarcation criterion. you should divide all your theories between the two groups. You would end up. for example, with a goodies list including Copernicus’s (Theory1), Galileo’s (T2), Kepler’s (T3), Newton’s (T4) … and Einstein’s (T5), along with (but this is just my supposition) Darwin’s (T6). Let me just anticipate that nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin can be described as scientific, but this is exactly what we are looking for.” So basically, the demarcation problem is a fun game philosophers enjoy playing, but when they realize the implications regarding the theory of evolution, they quickly back off… http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/cosmos/philo/hardcore_pg.htm
Lakatos, although he tipped toed around the failure of Darwinism to have a rigid demarcation criteria, he was brave enough to state that a good scientific theory will make successful predictions in science and a bad theory will generate ‘epicycle theories’ to cover up embarrassing failed predictions:
Science and Pseudoscience (transcript) - “In degenerating programmes, however, theories are fabricated only in order to accommodate known facts” – Imre Lakatos (November 9, 1922 – February 2, 1974) a philosopher of mathematics and science, , quote as stated in 1973 LSE Scientific Method Lecture http://www2.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/about/lakatos/scienceandpseudosciencetranscript.aspx Here’s the audio: Science and Pseudoscience – Lakatos – audio lecture http://richmedia.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/2002_LakatosScienceAndPseudoscience128.mp3 In his 1973 LSE Scientific Method Lecture 1[12] he also claimed that “nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin can be described as scientific”. Almost 20 years after Lakatos's 1973 challenge to the scientificity of Darwin, in her 1991 The Ant and the Peacock, LSE lecturer and ex-colleague of Lakatos, Helena Cronin, attempted to establish that Darwinian theory was empirically scientific in respect of at least being supported by evidence of likeness in the diversity of life forms in the world, explained by descent with modification. She wrote that “our usual idea of corroboration as requiring the successful prediction of novel facts...Darwinian theory was not strong on temporally novel predictions.” ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos#Darwin.27s_theory
Dr. Hunter comments here on the fact that Darwinism is a bad scientific theory that generates 'epicycle theories' to cover up embarrassing failed predictions:
"Being an evolutionist means there is no bad news. If new species appear abruptly in the fossil record, that just means evolution operates in spurts. If species then persist for eons with little modification, that just means evolution takes long breaks. If clever mechanisms are discovered in biology, that just means evolution is smarter than we imagined. If strikingly similar designs are found in distant species, that just means evolution repeats itself. If significant differences are found in allied species, that just means evolution sometimes introduces new designs rapidly. If no likely mechanism can be found for the large-scale change evolution requires, that just means evolution is mysterious. If adaptation responds to environmental signals, that just means evolution has more foresight than was thought. If major predictions of evolution are found to be false, that just means evolution is more complex than we thought." ~ Cornelius Hunter "When their expectations turn out to be false, evolutionists respond by adding more epicycles to their theory that the species arose spontaneously from chance events. But that doesn’t mean the science has confirmed evolution as Velasco suggests. True, evolutionists have remained steadfast in their certainty, but that says more about evolutionists than about the empirical science." ~ Cornelius Hunter Here’s That Algae Study That Decouples Phylogeny and Competition - June 17, 2014 Excerpt: "With each new absurdity another new complicated just-so story is woven into evolutionary theory. As Lakatos explained, some theories simply are not falsifiable. But as a result they sacrifice realism and parsimony." - Cornelius Hunter http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2014/06/heres-that-algae-study-that-decouples.html audio: Darwin's (Many Failed) Predictions: An Interview with Cornelius Hunter, Part I and II http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/06/darwins_failed_predictions_an021311.html http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/06/darwins_failed_predictions_an_1021321.html
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Evolutionary biologists know precisely what is meant by selection (differential reproductive success, especially of heritable variations). If you can't admit you were wrong that selection is agreed to be important that's fine, but I'm not going to waste any more time of the derailment tactics.wd400_{April 28, 2015
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