Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Modular Evolution: All of The Benefits, None of the Risk

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

You have probably heard that evolution has difficulty explaining the origin of amazingly complex designs. It turns out that evolutionists have quietly solved the problem while we weren’t paying attention. With little fanfare, they have rolled out modular evolution. This new kind of evolution is truly astonishing. What it does is, well, it creates complexity just like that. Evolutionists once thought that biology’s miracles evolved more or less one step at a time. But such staid ideas about evolution have long since become, as J. D. Hooker probably would say if he were around today, “old stick-in-the-mud doctrines.” If bankers can liven things up then why not evolutionists?  Read more

Comments
"Modular evolution" is just so much made-up miracles and just-so stories — completely different from the rigorous hypothesis that complexity happened because someone wanted it to happen.Lenoxus
February 3, 2010
February
02
Feb
3
03
2010
08:31 AM
8
08
31
AM
PDT
This modular thoery of evolution is actually beneficial to ID so long as we applaud the effort while rejecting it's intentions. What it is essentially trying to do is take an outdated theory of evolution - the simply and purposless Darwinian model that excludes any intelligent direction or intervention- and replace it with a theory that actually may account for the evidence. However they are indeed still playing the smae old game of leaving out the necessary question of intelligence- as usual. This modular theory basically attempts to explain how specified complexity can come about since SC is so darn impossible to explain via reduction to natural redundant like laws of physics and random chance. Hence, it appears that modular evolutionists are conceding that the origin of species is at least more than naturally predictable laws of nature and random pointless chance. Maybe they are taking one step nearer the truth. However I do not think that simply appealing to the notion of modularity- or any simplistic dimensional model of "expanding" informtion will be adequate to account for all of the evidence. Complexity of life is just one issue hence this article http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://blog.timesunion.com/tablehopping/files/2007/09/pinot-noir-grapes.jpg&imgrefurl=http://blog.timesunion.com/tablehopping/date/2007/09/&usg=___dq503Zte_YFSfrV6CNA3KVb3oE=&h=400&w=600&sz=80&hl=en&start=1&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=4TO6bfwtj7cpxM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpinot%2Bnoir%2Bgrapes%26hl%3Den%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox%26rlz%3D1I7ADFA_en%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1 which points out that the Pinot Noir grape has MORE genes (hence complexity) than human beings- but on the other hand Pinot Noirs cannot build space ships either. The issue of specification- or what religion might call "purpose" is still a mystery even under a perfected theory of modularity- what is needed is deeper principles to appeal to which can some how shed light on and explain the ORIGIN of the specified complexity in nature that constitutes the novelty in species. Modularity's forgone conclusion is that it will fall short of a satisfying explanation of how SC can originate and or get started. For to say that something "just does" happen is no explanation of it at all. However, that does not mean the theory cannot open up new questions and discussions itself. ID in fact has some proponents who seek to explain it through a theory of modularity as well. Bottom line- there is something inherently more intelligent about a theory which appeals to symmetry of physical quadratics (a theory which considers "abstract" mathematical relationships as a primary component) than one that merely appeals to purely redundant patterns, time and chance. We can safly entertain this theory as a speculative effort- but should as always remind it's proponents that you cannot purchase SC without intelligence. There is no free lunch- even in the alternative reality of modularity.Frost122585
February 2, 2010
February
02
Feb
2
02
2010
12:09 PM
12
12
09
PM
PDT
A "transitional" fossil, but look at the nature of the fossil: a leap of ingenuity, not a gradation. I might as well call an iphone transitional for being "half-and-half". Intermediate, perhaps. Modern banking: the exchange of abstract promissory notes that accumulate the appearance of value, due to excessive hubris, while actually based on nothing of substance ... needs government intervention to prevent meltdown. A very apt comparison. :-)andyjones
February 2, 2010
February
02
Feb
2
02
2010
11:32 AM
11
11
32
AM
PDT
Dr Hunter, Are you going to change your tag line to "Evolution is banking, and it matters"? :) Hmmm, a new transitional fossil? Yes that is very theoretical. Very banking related. Actually, you've touched on something Darwin and Dawkins would heartily agree with by comparing evolution and banking - compound interest. The theory of evolution is just the banker's concept of compound interest applied to biology.Nakashima
February 2, 2010
February
02
Feb
2
02
2010
01:40 AM
1
01
40
AM
PDT

Leave a Reply