Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

New book: Evolution has to happen!

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This point is apparently made in Cameron M. Smith’s The Fact of Evolution:

Walking the reader through the steps in the evolutionary process, Cameron uses plenty of real-world examples to show that not only does evolution happen, it must happen. Cameron analyzes evolution as the unintended consequence of three independent facts of the natural world that we can observe every day: (1) the fact of the replication of life forms (producing offspring); (2) the fact that offspring are not identical (variation); and (3) the fact that not all offspring survive (selection). Viewed in terms of this analysis, evolution is no longer debatable; in fact it has to occur. It is simply the inevitable consequence of three obvious, observable, factual natural phenomena.

If evolution has to occur, hadn’t someone better tell the cricket, who has done nothing for 100 million years, the horsetail grass for 150 million years, and the deplorable pterobranch for over half a billion years?

Shouldn’t something be done about this? If evolution has to occur, it is a law of nature, and these creatures are in clear violation of that law, setting a bad example for thousands of extinct and endangered species.

David Tyler has some interesting comments on  avoiding the significance of stasis. He calls it “denialism.”

Comments
Defining “evolution”:
Finally, during the evolutionary synthesis, a consensus emerged: “Evolution is the change in properties of populations of organisms over time”- Ernst Mayr page 8 of “What Evolution Is”
Biological (or organic) evolution is change in the properties of populations of organisms or groups of such populations, over the course of generations. The development, or ontogeny, of an individual organism is not considered evolution: individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are ‘heritable' via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportions of different forms of a gene within a population, such as the alleles that determine the different human blood types, to the alterations that led from the earliest organisms to dinosaurs, bees, snapdragons, and humans. Douglas J. Futuyma (1998) Evolutionary Biology 3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc. Sunderland MA p.4
Biological evolution refers to the cumulative changes that occur in a population over time. PBS series “Evolution” endorsed by the NCSE
Biological evolution, simply put, is descent with modification. This definition encompasses small-scale evolution (changes in gene frequency in a population from one generation to the next) and large-scale evolution (the descent of different species from a common ancestor over many generations) UC Berkley
In fact, evolution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next. Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes, Biology, 5th ed. 1989 Worth Publishers, p.974
Evolution- in biology, the word means genetically based change in a line of descent over time.- Biology: Concepts and Applications Starr 5th edition 2003 page 10
Those organisms in the OP are not in violation of anything as evolution can mean several things. It also makes it easy to equivocate. Just sayin'...Joseph
May 14, 2011
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If evolutionary theory is true, then the environment must be explained in the same materialistic terms of selection without a designer.
No. And what has selection got to do with it? If evolutionary theory is true then life evolves. 1: Life could have been designed to evolve. 2: The universe could have been designed, and then life appeared (either as an intentional or unintentional consequence of the design) The origin of the universe must only be explained in materialistic terms if you are an atheist. Consider this: "If tectonic plate theory is true, then planets must be explained in the same materialistic terms of tidal forces without a designer."DrBot
May 14, 2011
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Bot, The problem for the Materialist evolutionist is the bigger picture here. Biological life is part of the cosmological scheme and owes its existence to the environment that makes it possible. If evolutionary theory is true, then the environment must be explained in the same materialistic terms of selection without a designer. That is, the fine tuning of the laws, constants and symmetries etc, are so razor sharp and exact there must be some explanation for their emergence. If there is not, then the whole theory of evolution is reduced to nothing but a partial theory with limited scope, at best. However, as you admitted there really is no sensible explanation- outside of the quasi-theory of multi-verse evolution, which is based on nothing except imagination, that supports this paradigm. Its just the way it is, evolutionary theory is just a theory that is very incomplete, and the notion that it rules out design as a fundamental causative mechanism is obviously false. That is why we here believe in the theory of ID- because biology and cosmology, being connected, demand it.Frost122585
May 14, 2011
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as opposed to the more general use of the word: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_%28term%29DrBot
May 14, 2011
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EvolutionDrBot
May 14, 2011
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DrBot: How is evolution defined under the modern synthesis?Eric Anderson
May 14, 2011
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Cosmologist Lee Smolin espouses such a view. According to him, Darwinian evolution among multiverses explains the emergence of our own. I don’t claim his view is standard, but he certainly hasn’t been run out of the academy.
I don't think his view is standard either, it's an hypothesis, not really a theory. "evolution" gets hijacked to explain lots of things (often by evo psychologists!) which generally muddies any attempts to discuss evolution as it applies to living systems, and as it is defined under the modern synthesis.DrBot
May 14, 2011
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DrBot at 4: Cosmologist Lee Smolin espouses such a view. According to him, Darwinian evolution among multiverses explains the emergence of our own. I don't claim his view is standard, but he certainly hasn't been run out of the academy.O'Leary
May 14, 2011
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The fine tuning of the universe CANNOT EVOLVE
Darwin was not a cosmologist, biologists do not study the stars, the modern evolutionary synthesis does not address the origin of the universe, or the origin of life. That said, God could have used a genetic algorithm to design the universe so "CANNOT" is not a word I would use without evidence of Gods methods.
The idea of fine tuning being A RESULT of evolutionary mechanisms is vacuous at best.
Yes, it is a ridiculous idea and I've never encountered any biologist or other evolutionary scientist who believed it!DrBot
May 14, 2011
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This is a joke. And the real problem is not stasis or similar counter-examples. The real problem with this nonsense is logical and definitional. The only reason this gains any traction at all is because the term "evolution" is never defined carefully enough by these folks for it to have any meaning. If we are going to define "evolution" simply as the process of leaving offspring with varying traits, then of course it occurs. No-one disputes that. However, that has nothing whatever to do with big evolution, grand evolution, involving new body parts, new body plans, new kinds of structures, new informational content. And it certainly has nothing to do with "evolution" as that term is sometimes applied to the origin of life. The word "evolution" is exceedingly slippery, sporting many different meanings, and people regularly delude themselves -- having stumbled upon some rather uncontroversial and relatively mundane process in nature -- that they have confirmed the truth of "evolution," and thereby the whole grand enterprise of everything that can possibly come under the heading of "evolution" must be a fact. Delusion at its finest.Eric Anderson
May 13, 2011
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...natural selection alone IS NOT EVOLUTION! True, but no Darwinist would claim that it is.Mung
May 13, 2011
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One of the things that these people confuse once again, and I always hated this in high school biology, is that natural selection alone IS NOT EVOLUTION! NS does not produce anything new, it only eliminates, that is kills off, things that are bad. You still need newly developed traits that themselves require quite a bit of complexity and information. Thus, there is always the question why any species, or trait within a species, should be allowed to be passed on in the first place. In other words, evolution has no explanation for the correlation of the fitness landscapes and novel living things that are arising and evolving from it. The fine tuning of the universe CANNOT EVOLVE in a Darwinian mechanical way either because there is no natural selection force that can be appealed to, that evolves the laws of physics. The idea of fine tuning being A RESULT of evolutionary mechanisms is vacuous at best. Laws, symmetries and the fine tuning in general as it applies to life's necessities, are just designed as such, and same goes for most of the fitness landscape in general, in the environments of the early earth and ecosystems through the ages etc- that are so heavily relied upon by Darwinists to fill the gaps of their "just so" stories about how all complex life evolved in so many small incremental steps.Frost122585
May 13, 2011
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