Because while Franklin Haroldwonders in 2014 if “we may still be missing some essential insight” (given that a century of origin of life research “has failed to generate a coherent and persuasive framework that gives meaning to the growing heap of data and speculation” and has “remarkably little to show for” for all the effort expended), it was, in fact, just over a century ago when evolution’s co-founder, the great Alfred Russel Wallace, provided exactly what Harold may be looking for, to wit Read more
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And yet micro biologists, biology departments, private research institutes, Nobel laureats, nationally funded national science institutes, private enterprises, and Joe Blogg your average interested amateur all keep a close eye on OOL developments;fools.
Great point. There’s no way for naturalism/materialism to evaluate itself as a paradigm. It can’t even consider the possibility that there is a non-naturalistic explanation for anything at all, or that anything non-naturalistic exists.
That’s why I think it’s essential for materialist-atheists to keep open the possibility that there is something more than nature, and therefore, to use the right tools (obviously, not empirical science) to evaluate such a thing.
The choice of the naturalistic paradigm as the only source and method requires something other than naturalism.
Evolutionists could and necessarily would have to know better (as above, you can’t use science to choose your philosophical paradigm) but they have to blind themselves to other knowledge sources.
Our problem may be that our methodological naturalism mandate has planted us firmly in the belly of anti realism. Or more simply put, there may be no naturalistic explanation. It may not be that we are missing some essential insight, but rather that there simply is no such insight to be found.
Excellent point. Scientism makes claims to be the true realism, but it can’t evaluate itself and could actually be anti-realism (fantasy) and would never know that.
Exactly. It’s one thing if we said that science needs to consider the existence of fairies and goblins. But it’s simply as modest as saying that “there could be something other than naturalistic forces at work” and that would explain why naturalism cannot find the answers.
But evolutionists cannot say that. They cannot admit to the scientific truth. In fact, quite the opposite and quite unbelievably, they insist evolution is a fact beyond all reasonable doubt.
Evolutionists say that their skeptics oppose science, present theories that are driven by presupposition and are unfalsifiable. But all of that precisely describes evolution. Why can’t we just tell the truth?
The scientific evidence continues to undermine Darwinian evolution. With each new discovery we recognise the complete and utter failure of Darwinian evolution to explain anything worth while. It is the dead dog that each new discovery continues to kick. It is sad, it is wrong and it really needs to be laid to rest.
But it won’t. Evolution is big business. The new state religion. The Darwin faithful will not give it up.
as to:
There is actually very good evidence that “Power was exercised from without” on multiple occasions in the formation of life on earth. There is a ‘higher dimensional’ stamp of individuality on each unique species. A transcendent ‘4-Dimensional’ stamp of uniqueness on each kind of species. A stamp that is not reducible to 3-Dimensional material processes.,,, A transcendent ‘signature’ that each species was created from a higher dimension:
Here is, what a Darwinist termed, a ‘horrendously complex’ metabolic pathway (which operates as if it were ’4-Dimensional’):
And remember, Darwinian evolution has yet to explain a single gene/protein of those ‘horrendously complex’ 4-Dimensional metabolic pathways.
The reason why a ‘higher dimensional’ 4-Dimensional structure, such as a ‘horrendously complex’ metabolic pathway, would be, for all intents and purposes, completely invisible to a 3-Dimensional process, such as Natural Selection, is best illustrated by ‘flatland’:
Thus, with apologies to C.S. Lewis,,,
Of related interest:
Please compare the similarity of the optical effect, noted at the 3:22 minute mark of the following video, when the 3-Dimensional world ‘folds and collapses’ into a tunnel shape around the direction of travel as a ‘hypothetical’ observer moves towards the ‘higher dimension’ of the speed of light, with the testimony of the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ reported in very many Near Death Experiences: (Of note: This following video was made by two Australian University Physics Professors with a supercomputer.)
Verse and Music:
bornagain77 (quoting Fodor & Piatelli-Palmarini): The conclusion here is inescapable, that the driving force for these invariant scaling laws cannot have been natural selection.
Not only is the claim wrong, but the reason had been known for a decade when they made the claim. Contrary to Fodor & Piatelli-Palmarini, a quarter-power law is consistent with selection for energy efficiency. The reason it’s a quarter-power law is due to the fractal nature of distribution systems. See Banavar et al., Size and form in efficient transportation networks, Nature 1999.
Actually Zach, contrary to whatever ‘just so story’ you may want to believe to be true for the creative power of natural selection, natural selection is not a ‘force’ that pushes, pulls, or creates, anything. Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Cornell, William Provine himself admits that Natural Selection is not a ‘force’ that pushes or pulls anything,,
To the extent that Natural Selection can be empirically observed to do anything, Natural Selection is found to be a eliminative force not a generative force as is commonly believed in Darwinian story telling:
As well, Natural Selection, to the extent that it can be observed to do anything, is grossly inadequate to do the work required of it, especially at the metazoan level, because of what is termed ‘the princess and the pea’ paradox. The devastating ‘princess and the pea’ paradox is clearly elucidated by Dr. John Sanford, at the 8:14 minute mark, of this following video,,,
Dr. Sanford points out, in the preceding video, that Natural Selection acts at the coarse level of the entire organism (phenotype) and yet the vast majority of mutations have effects that are only ‘slightly detrimental’, and have no noticeable effect on phenotypes, and are thus far below the power of Natural Selection to remove from genomes before they spread throughout the population. Here is a peer-reviewed paper by Dr. Sanford on the subject:
Here are a few more notes on this insurmountable ‘princess and the pea’ paradox:
Moreover, I hold that it is is fairly clear to see that the reason why internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional instead of three dimensional is because of exactly what Darwinian evolution has consistently failed to explain the origination of. i.e. functional information. ‘Higher dimensional’ information, which is bursting at the seams in life, simply cannot be reduced to any 3-dimensional energy-matter basis:
In the following paper, Andy C. McIntosh, professor of thermodynamics and combustion theory at the University of Leeds, holds that non-material information is what is constraining the cell to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium. Moreover, Dr. McIntosh holds that regarding information as independent of energy and matter ‘resolves the thermodynamic issues and invokes the correct paradigm for understanding the vital area of thermodynamic/organisational interactions’.
Here is a recent video by Dr. Giem, that gets the main mathematical points of Dr. McIntosh’s paper over very well for the lay person:
Dr. McIntosh’s contention that ‘non-material information’ must be constraining life to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium has been borne out empirically. i.e. It is now found that ‘non-local’, beyond space-time matter-energy, Quantum entanglement/information ‘holds’ DNA (and proteins) together:
That ‘non-local’ quantum entanglement, which conclusively demonstrates that ‘information’ in its pure ‘quantum form’ is completely transcendent of any time and space constraints (Bell, Aspect, Leggett, Zeilinger, etc..), should be found in molecular biology on such a massive scale, i.e. found in every DNA and protein molecule, is a direct empirical falsification of Darwinian claims, for how can the ‘non-local’ quantum entanglement ‘effect’ in biology possibly be explained by a material (matter/energy) cause when the quantum entanglement effect falsified material particles as its own causation in the first place? Appealing to the probability of various ‘random’ configurations of material particles, as Darwinism does, simply will not help since a timeless/spaceless cause must be supplied which is beyond the capacity of the material particles themselves to supply!
In other words, to give a coherent explanation for an effect that is shown to be completely independent of any time and space constraints one is forced to appeal to a cause that is itself not limited to time and space! i.e. Put more simply, you cannot explain a effect by a cause that has been falsified by the very same effect you are seeking to explain! Improbability arguments of various ‘special’ configurations of material particles, which have been a staple of the arguments against neo-Darwinism, simply do not apply since the cause is not within the material particles in the first place!
Thus Darwinism, even though most Darwinists such as Zach will refuse to accept the falsification, is empirically falsified as far as our best science can tell us.
Verse and Music:
I don’t understand what you people find incoherent or unpersuasive about “it just happened, that’s all.”
POOF!
OT: Dr. Giem has a new video lecture up:
Biological Information – Criticizing ENCODE 12-13-2014 by Paul Giem – video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhlFJO1WqVk
bornagain77: contrary to whatever ‘just so story’ you may want to believe to be true for the creative power of natural selection, natural selection is not a ‘force’ that pushes, pulls, or creates, anything.
The effects of natural selection are easily demonstrated. It can be measured in the lab, and directly observed in nature.
Fodor & Piatelli-Palmarini’s claim was that natural selection couldn’t cause the fourth-power law because the third-power law should have been the intuitively optimal result. However, fractal geometry of distribution systems means that the fourth-power law is the optimal result, so it is consistent with selection for energy efficiency.
as to this claim:
That claim, as is usual with claims from Zach, is false. The types of mutations that natural selection is observed to fix in populations in the lab are not the types of mutations that neo-Darwinism needs to build the unfathomed integrated, and optimal, complexity we see in life:
This following headline sums the preceding paper up very nicely:
Actually BA, evolution (neo-Darwinism) doesn’t ‘need’ the vast changes you claim. The incremental changes observed in the lab are perfectly sufficient over vast periods of time. I’m always dissapointed when people use the phrase ‘Cambrian Explosion’, as if it happened in six days, rather than the incomprehensible (to our human brain of 70 years of existence) millions of years.
Also I’m not sure you should ally yourself to Provine. He thinks we have no free will, there is no life after death, there is no absolute foundation for right and wrong and there is no ultimate meaning to life; much as I do. You have chosen a strange bedfellow.
rvb8:
bacteria remain bacteria, fruit flies remain fruit flies. No vast changes required when nothing changes.
Who could disagree?
hilarious. simply hilarious. the entertainment here at UD never ends. it’s absolutely worth the price of admission.
How much of science did you just invalidate with our inability to grasp the incomprehensible?
I think the idea is to strive to understand the ‘incomprehensible’, therefore making it comprehensible; that’s what science does Mung. By saying we don’t understand something means we humans with our selected for curiosity will go and try to understand it. I didn’t invalidate science by saying many things are incomprehensible, it was a shout of joy. After all, if it’s designed by humans we know all we need to know and there is no further motivation to question. Being god would be so dull, I thank god everyday I’m not her.
bornagain77: The types of mutations that natural selection is observed to fix in populations in the lab are not the types of mutations that neo-Darwinism needs to build the unfathomed integrated, and optimal, complexity we see in life
As we said, the effects of natural selection are directly observable, in particular, its optimizing capability.
By the way, your quote of Fodor & Piattelli-Palmarini is mangled, and includes text from another author. Reading the original Fodor & Piattelli-Palmarini provides a good example of why philosophers shouldn’t think they can overturn well-established science with facile arguments.
Umm, natural selection doesn’t optimize and doesn’t have any “optimizing capability”. Whatever is good enough to survive and reproduce does so.
And no, there aren’t any known microevolutionary events that can extrapolated into macroevolution. Not one.
although they did quote a researcher on 4-D power scaling in the first part of the quote, the quote stands as to its intent and integrity:
Thanks for alerting me as to the context, I will now use the full context of the quote since it gets my point across much more effectively.
You are hallucinating if you think random mutations breaking things, so as to confer a temporary benefit, is a ‘optimizing capability’ for natural selection. ,,, Can I come over to your house and demonstrate such ‘optimizing capability’ on your car and furniture??? 🙂 I’m sure you would be none too impressed with my ‘optimization’ results once I was done!
fifthmonarchyman: the quote stands as to its intent and integrity
We assume, then, you will correct your quote-mine.
Fodor & Piattelli-Palmarini: “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.”
The power-law is not a binary condition, but can vary continuously. As organisms evolve, they will tend towards the most energy efficient solutions. This results in a fourth-power law due to the fractal nature of distribution networks.
fifthmonarchyman: You are hallucinating if you think random mutations breaking things, so as to confer a temporary benefit, is a ‘optimizing capability’ for natural selection.
We can directly observe natural selection and its ability to move populations towards optimal solutions. For instance, the beaks of Darwin’s finches evolve in response to the local food supply.
Zach, you have no evidence that natural selection can choose optimal 4 dimensional power scaling, you merely have a belief. I disagree with your belief and have evidence to back me up, whereas you do not! For instance, as to your example “the beaks of Darwin’s finches evolve in response to the local food supply”
It might surprise trollish you to know that finch beak variation is evidence for design, not Darwinism:
Darwin’s Finches Show Rule-Constrained Variation in Beak Shape – June 10, 2014
Excerpt: A simple yet powerful mathematical rule controls beak development, Harvard scientists find, while simultaneously preventing beaks from evolving into something else.,,,
We find in Darwin’s finches (and all songbirds) an internal system, controlled by a non-random developmental process. It is flexible enough to allow for variation, but powerful enough to constrain the beak to its basic form (a conical shape modulated by scaling and shear) so that the rest of the bird’s structures are not negatively affected. Beak development is controlled by a decay process that must operate at a particular rate. It’s all very precise, so much so that it could be modeled mathematically.,,,
The very birds that have long been used as iconic examples of natural selection become, on closer examination, paragons of intelligent design.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....86581.html
Epigenetics and the Evolution of Darwin’s Finches – 2014
Excerpt: The prevailing theory for the molecular basis of evolution (Neo-Darwinism) involves genetic mutations that ultimately generate the heritable phenotypic variation on which natural selection acts. However, epigenetic (Non-Darwinian) transgenerational inheritance of phenotypic variation may also play an important role in evolutionary change.,,,
Genome-wide alterations in genetic mutations using copy number variation (CNV) were compared with epigenetic alterations associated with differential DNA methylation regions (epimutations). Epimutations were more common than genetic CNV mutations among the five species; furthermore, the number of epimutations increased monotonically with phylogenetic distance. Interestingly, the number of genetic CNV mutations did not consistently increase with phylogenetic distance.,,,
http://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/...../1972.full
The Grants (who studied Darwin’s finches) made a long presentation at Stanford in 2009 on their work. It is available for all to see on the internet. In it they give the game away. All the so called Darwin finches can inner breed. Doesn’t happen much but it does happen and they have viable offspring that reproduce. Here is the link:
Darwin’s Legacy | Lecture 5 – video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMcVY__T3Ho
To save you some time. Start at about 109:00 and follow Rosemary for a few minutes till at least 112:00. Then go to 146:30 and listen to Peter. Before this is the inane prattle by two of Stanford’s finest who do not understand that the Grants are saying that the whole evolution thing is a crock.
also of note:
Darwin ‘Wrong’: Species Living Together Does Not Encourage Evolution – December 20, 2013
Excerpt: Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution set out in the Origin of Species has been proven wrong by scientists studying ovenbirds.
Researchers at Oxford University found that species living together do not evolve differently to avoid competing with one another for food and habitats – a theory put forward by Darwin 150 years ago.
The ovenbird is one of the most diverse bird families in the world and researchers were looking to establish the processes causing them to evolve.
Published in Nature, the research compared the beaks, legs and songs of 90% of ovenbird species.
Findings showed that while the birds living together were consistently more different than those living apart, this was the result of age differences. Once the variation of age was accounted for, birds that live together were more similar than those living separately – directly contradicting Darwin’s view.
The species that lived together had beaks and legs no more different than those living apart,,,
,,,there is no shortage of evidence for competition driving divergent evolution in some very young lineages. But we found no evidence that this process explains differences across a much larger sample of species.,,,
He said that the reasons why birds living together appear to evolve less are “difficult to explain”,,,
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/darwi.....on-1429927
The quotes in our previous comment should have been attributed to bornagain77.
bornagain77: you have no evidence that natural selection can choose optimal 4 dimensional power scaling
We have evidence of natural selection, including direct observations. We can show that the power-law is consistent with selection for energy efficiency.
bornagain77: Darwin’s Finches Show Rule-Constrained Variation in Beak Shape
The change in beak shapes in each generation are determined by natural selection. See Grant & Grant, Natural Selection in a Population of Darwin’s Finches, The American Naturalist 1988.
bornagain77: A simple yet powerful mathematical rule controls beak development, Harvard scientists find
The study found a relationship between the scale and shear of beaks, probably due to how developmental genes are expressed, but the beak which is found in each generation is still determined by natural selection. See Mallarino, Closely related bird species demonstrate flexibility between beak morphology and underlying developmental programs, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2012.
rvb8
Have you ever been interested in art or music or poetry? If so, you’ll know there’s a lot to explore even though we know it was designed.
Zach, you have no evidence that Neo-Darwinian evolution can create anything. Whereas I have abundant evidence that neo-Darwinian processes are excellent at breaking things.
actually the changes in finch beaks are shown to be due to genetic and epigenetic factors. For you to state that Natural selection ‘determined’ fink beak variation is to not understand, or to purposely obscure, the relationship between cause and effect.
I cited a lecture by the Grants in 2009, so please see that lecture before you presume to reference me to a paper of theirs from 1988 that may contradict what they stated in that lecture.
Developmental genes do not support Darwinism Zach, in fact they are powerful evidence against Darwinism. see the Meyer-Marshall debate on developmental gene regulatory networks.
Once again, you have refused to acknowledge any of the substantive points raised against neo-Darwinism and restated already refuted points as if they were not already addressed. ,,, As even the ever patient Dr. Giem recently commented, you are troll with no intent on ever being honest to the evidence. That you could make even Dr. Giem caste your credibility into the dumpster as worthless should make you realize how you look to other people on UD.
Hopefully someday you will become honest with yourself and others before you die and have to face the truth.
Of note:
Dr. Giem has a new video lecture up:
Biological Information – Criticizing ENCODE 12-13-2014 by Paul Giem – video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhlFJO1WqVk
Pure propaganda.
bornagain77: you have no evidence that Neo-Darwinian evolution can create anything
We weren’t discussing evolution “creating anything”, but optimizing across a continuum.
bornagain77: actually the changes in finch beaks are shown to be due to genetic and epigenetic factors.
Without selection, they don’t change. Selection is what determines which genetic factors predominate in the next generation.
bornagain77: I cited a lecture by the Grants in 2009, so please see that lecture before you presume to reference me to a paper of theirs from 1988 that may contradict what they stated in that lecture.
We watched the section you recommended. Grant says “Divergence in morphology through the tracking of environmental change by natural selection”. She also discusses reproductive isolation, which is not complete, and the conditions under which to expect hybridization. That’s standard standard evolutionary biology. It’s so standard, you’ll find it in Darwin 1859.
rvb8 @
Yes, we all know this is part of the evolutionary statement of faith. So lets be clear here. Regardless of how strongly you believe this, it is nothing more than your opinion. Stating it as if it is fact does not make it fact.
I can also understand why you don’t like the term Cambrian Explosion. But you know, I don’t think there is anyone even just a little familiar with science who thinks it was a literal explosion. But the problem for evolutionists is that in the evolutionary framework of time, it looks like an explosion. Meyers has done a good job (IMO) of explaining why it was indeed an explosion and why it caused Darwin to doubt. This is indeed still a problem for neo-darwinism.
Of course, since we are dealing with history here, we cannot run an experiment to show that the Cambrian Explosion is actually damning evidence against neo-darwinian evolution. But looking at the data, that is how we see it and again, Meyers has done a good job of explaining the reasoning behind that view.
Your interpretation obviously will differ, but that is to be expected since you approach the data and interpret it through a different worldview and scientific framework than we do.
tjguy: Stating it as if it is fact does not make it fact.
No, but for it to be true, observed rates of evolution have to be at least as great as the faster inferred historical rate of evolution. And, indeed, observed evolution is much much faster than anything in the historical record, including during the Cambrian Explosion..
Zachriel, “indeed, observed evolution is much much faster than anything in the historical record” I think that evolution needs to be divided between “change in allele frequency” (natural selection) and “new data” (mutations). I see no reason to doubt that selection (especially human guided selection) can rebalance the available alleles to produce very unique seeming organisms (tea cup dogs from wolf, for instance*) in very short order.
The second thing that needs to be factored out is “neutral theory” class mutations. My view of “neutral theory” is that many mutations get a response of “don’t care” from natural selection — they are neither particularly beneficial nor particularly deleterious. Neutral theory, it seems to me, is pretty good at making new alleles for NS to work on. However, to create new forms we need mutations that are, at least within certain circumstances, beneficial — not neutral.
I know that the “neutral theory” proponents suggest that neutral theory alone is adequate to explain the number of mutations that separate humans from chimps. I don’t buy their hypothesis because I think that there are lots of mutations that haven’t been considered within that context, but hey.
Do you really contend that there have been enough contextually beneficial mutations to account for the cambrian explosion? Do you have real data to confirm this?
*I am sure that a few mutations are required to get there from here, but mostly we’re seeing change in allele frequency.
Zach as to: “We weren’t discussing evolution “creating anything”, but optimizing across a continuum.”
You have no evidence for unguided processes doing anything of interest. Especially when cell mediated changes to the genome are subtracted from your just so story telling. Whereas, we do have abundant evidence for unguided random material processes breaking things, i.e. compromising optimization!
Selection as you are using it could just as well be stated, whatever survives, survives,, i.e. lucky us. Moreover, if evolution were actually the truth about how all life came to be on Earth then the only ‘life’ that would be around would be extremely small organisms with the highest replication rate, and with the most mutational firepower, since only they would be the fittest to survive in the dog eat dog world where blind pitiless evolution rules and only the ‘fittest’ are allowed to survive. The logic of this is nicely summed up here:
Richard Dawkins interview with a ‘Darwinian’ physician goes off track – video
Excerpt: “I am amazed, Richard, that what we call metazoans, multi-celled organisms, have actually been able to evolve, and the reason [for amazement] is that bacteria and viruses replicate so quickly — a few hours sometimes, they can reproduce themselves — that they can evolve very, very quickly. And we’re stuck with twenty years at least between generations. How is it that we resist infection when they can evolve so quickly to find ways around our defenses?”
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....62031.html
i.e. Since successful reproduction is all that really matters on a neo-Darwinian view of things, how can anything but successful reproduction be realistically ‘selected’ for? Any other function besides reproduction, such as sight, hearing, thinking, etc.., would be highly superfluous to the primary criteria of successfully reproducing, and should, on a Darwinian view, be discarded as so much excess baggage since it would, sooner or later, slow down successful reproduction. But that is not what we find. Indeed, instead of eating us, time after time these different types of microbial life are found to be helping us in essential ways that have nothing to do with their individual ability to successfully reproduce,,,
NIH Human Microbiome Project defines normal bacterial makeup of the body – June 13, 2012
Excerpt: Microbes inhabit just about every part of the human body, living on the skin, in the gut, and up the nose. Sometimes they cause sickness, but most of the time, microorganisms live in harmony with their human hosts, providing vital functions essential for human survival.
http://www.nih.gov/news/health.....gri-13.htm
We are living in a bacterial world, and it’s impacting us more than previously thought – February 15, 2013
Excerpt: We often associate bacteria with disease-causing “germs” or pathogens, and bacteria are responsible for many diseases, such as tuberculosis, bubonic plague, and MRSA infections. But bacteria do many good things, too, and the recent research underlines the fact that animal life would not be the same without them.,,,
I am,, convinced that the number of beneficial microbes, even very necessary microbes, is much, much greater than the number of pathogens.”
http://phys.org/news/2013-02-b.....tml#ajTabs
Moreover, you forgot to mention that All the so called Darwin finches can inner breed. Doesn’t happen much but it does happen and they have viable offspring that reproduce. This is not what Darwinists were claiming in 2009:
Wired Science: One Long Bluff – Refuting a recent finch speciation claim – Jonathan Wells – Nov. 2009
Excerpt: “Does the report in Wired Science mean that “biologists have witnessed that elusive moment when a single species (of Galapagos finch) splits in two?” Absolutely not.”
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....bluff.html
Thus once again Zach, you are found to be severely disingenuous as to honestly evaluating Darwinism. ,,, I believe Dr. Giem’s analysis of you being a troll is spot on!
Moose Dr: I see no reason to doubt that selection (especially human guided selection) can rebalance the available alleles to produce very unique seeming organisms (tea cup dogs from wolf, for instance*) in very short order.
*I am sure that a few mutations are required to get there from here, but mostly we’re seeing change in allele frequency.
It certainly takes mutations to turn a wolf into a tea cup dog. However, you are correct that selection can quickly work through existing variations.
Moose Dr: Do you really contend that there have been enough contextually beneficial mutations to account for the cambrian explosion?
There was certainly much more than mutation involved, including genomic rearrangements. The evolution of the metazoan toolkit was probably the primary innovation. That was apparently developed largely before the Cambrian Explosion.
There’s another thread on the Avian Explosion. There was a similar pattern. Most of the adaptation were already in place in the theropod lineage before the Avian Explosion. As the saying goes, it took years to become an overnight success.
Interview with Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig – Mar 22, 2014
Excerpt: Richard Dawkins and many other evolutionary biologists (claim) that dog breeds prove macroevolution. However, virtually all the dog breeds are generated by losses or disturbances of gene functions and/or developmental processes. Moreover, all the three subfamilies of the family of wild dogs (Canidae) appear abruptly in the fossil record.
http://dippost.com/2014/03/22/.....rd-lonnig/
podcast – On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin talks with geneticist Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig about his recent article on the evolution of dogs. Casey and Dr. Lönnig evaluate the claim that dogs somehow demonstrate macroevolution.
http://intelligentdesign.podom.....1_14-08_00
Part 2: Dog Breeds: Proof of Macroevolution?
http://intelligentdesign.podom.....7_07-08_00
The Dog Delusion – October 30, 2014
Excerpt: In his latest book, geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig of the Max Planck Institutes in Germany takes on the widespread view that dog breeds prove macroevolution.,,, He shows in great detail that the incredible variety of dog breeds, going back in origin several thousand years ago but especially to the last few centuries, represents no increase in information but rather a decrease or loss of function on the genetic and anatomical levels.
Michael Behe writes:
“Dr. Lönnig shows forcefully that one of the chief examples Darwinists rely on to convince the public of macroevolution — the enormous variation in dogs — actually shows the opposite. Extremes in size and anatomy come at the cost of broken genes and poor health. Even several gene duplications were found to interfere strongly with normal growth and development as is also often the case in humans. So where is the evidence for Darwinian evolution now?”
The science here is indeed solid. Intriguingly, Lönnig’s prediction from 2013 on starch digestion in wolves has already been confirmed in a study published this year.,,,
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....90751.html
bornagain77: You have no evidence for unguided processes doing anything of interest.
As Moose Dr pointed out, natural selection can work through existing variation quite quickly, which can ” rebalance the available alleles”.
bornagain77: Selection as you are using it could just as well be stated, whatever survives, survives,, i.e. lucky us.
Actually, what Grant & Grant showed was the relationship between adaptation and environmental conditions.
bornagain77: Moreover, if evolution were actually the truth about how all life came to be on Earth then the only ‘life’ that would be around would be extremely small organisms with the highest replication rate, and with the most mutational firepower, since only they would be the fittest to survive in the dog eat dog world where blind pitiless evolution rules and only the ‘fittest’ are allowed to survive.
Heh. You forgot that dog eats rabbit, and worm eats bacteria.
evolution evolved a toolkit so evolution could evolve?
Its almost as if evolution had foresight and agency!
You have no evidence for unguided processes doing anything of interest especially when you subtract cell mediated processes from your just so story telling (J Shapiro).
“Heh. You forgot that dog eats rabbit, and worm eats bacteria.”
heh, you forgot that successful reproduction is all that really matters for ‘selection’ to occur, In that regards bacteria outclass all other life forms combined and should have eaten everything, including atheistic trolls, long ago, but they did not. Darwinists have no reason why this should be so!
bornagain77: evolution evolved a toolkit so evolution could evolve?
Evolution precedes the metazoan toolkit. Small changes in regulatory systems resulted in a network of adaptations, many of which predate metazoa. See Erwin, Early origin of the bilaterian developmental toolkit, Philosophical Transactions B 2009.
bornagain77: heh, you forgot that successful reproduction is all that really matters for ‘selection’ to occur, In that regards bacteria outclass all other life forms combined and should have eaten everything
Apparently not. Worms eat bacteria, for instance. ETA: For that matter, humans eat bacteria.
http://kyleahealth.com/wp-cont.....Yogurt.jpg
Zach, every toolkit was built by someone with intelligence. To say evolution built a toolkit so as to enable evolution is to endow evolution with agency, even foresight. Moreover, the illegitimate highjacking of words implying ‘agency’ by Darwinists is rampant:
Stephen Talbott has clearly pointed out, a major problem with Darwinian explanations is how to describe the complexities of life without illegitimately using terminology that invokes agency,,,
This working biologist agrees completely with Talbott:
Nice summary, BA. It remains unanswered.
Like the good troll you are, you are purposely missing the point with bacteria. So what if worms and humans eat bacteria? The point is that if evolution, red and tooth and claw, were actually the truth for how life came to be on this earth, then bacteria, since they far outclass metazoans in their ability to successfully reproduce, then we should not be around since they should have exploited us as a food source long ago! Yet, as you yourself pointed out, we can eat probiotics that are beneficial to us with impunity:
Richard Dawkins interview with a ‘Darwinian’ physician goes off track – video
Excerpt: “I am amazed, Richard, that what we call metazoans, multi-celled organisms, have actually been able to evolve, and the reason [for amazement] is that bacteria and viruses replicate so quickly — a few hours sometimes, they can reproduce themselves — that they can evolve very, very quickly. And we’re stuck with twenty years at least between generations. How is it that we resist infection when they can evolve so quickly to find ways around our defenses?”
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....62031.html
bornagain77: To say evolution built a toolkit so as to enable evolution is to endow evolution with agency, even foresight.
No. Each step in the evolution of the toolkit had to be advantageous for the organisms involved, including endoderm formation, anterior/posterior patterning, segmentation, and distal-less appendage formation.
bornagain77: So what if worms and humans eat bacteria? The point is that if evolution, red and tooth and claw, were actually the truth for how life came to be on this earth, then bacteria, since they far outclass metazoans in their ability to successfully reproduce, then we should not be around:
Successful reproduction depends on access to resources. Bacteria are extraordinarily successful, but this means they become a resource for other organisms. Bacterivores evolved to take advantage of this resource. There’s nothing contradictory about that.
Zach, there is EVERYTHING contradictory about it!
The Microbial Engines That Drive Earth’s Biogeochemical Cycles – Falkowski 2008
Excerpt: Microbial life can easily live without us; we, however, cannot survive without the global catalysis and environmental transformations it provides. –
Paul G. Falkowski – Professor Geological Sciences – Rutgers
http://www.genetics.iastate.edu/delong1.pdf
Doubting Darwin: Algae Findings Surprise Scientists – April 28, 2014
Excerpt: One of Charles Darwin’s hypotheses posits that closely related species will compete for food and other resources more strongly with one another than with distant relatives, because they occupy similar ecological niches. Most biologists long have accepted this to be true.
Thus, three researchers were more than a little shaken to find that their experiments on fresh water green algae failed to support Darwin’s theory,,,
“It was completely unexpected,” says Bradley Cardinale,,,, “When we saw the results, we said ‘this can’t be.”‘ We sat there banging our heads against the wall. Darwin’s hypothesis has been with us for so long, how can it not be right?”
The researchers ,,,— were so uncomfortable with their results that they spent the next several months trying to disprove their own work. But the research held up.,,,
The scientists did not set out to disprove Darwin, but, in fact, to learn more about the genetic and ecological uniqueness of fresh water green algae so they could provide conservationists with useful data for decision-making. “We went into it assuming Darwin to be right, and expecting to come up with some real numbers for conservationists,” Cardinale says. “When we started coming up with numbers that showed he wasn’t right, we were completely baffled.”,,,
Darwin “was obsessed with competition,” Cardinale says. “He assumed the whole world was composed of species competing with each other, but we found that one-third of the species of algae we studied actually like each other. They don’t grow as well unless you put them with another species. It may be that nature has a heck of a lot more mutualisms than we ever expected.,,,
Maybe Darwin’s presumption that the world may be dominated by competition is wrong.”
http://www.livescience.com/452.....f-bts.html
Zach, you have no evidence of Darwinian evolution, especially when the ‘genetic toolkits’ (cell mediated processes) are removed from your just so story telling, ever producing anything of interest. Whereas we have abundant evidence that unguided processes are excellent at breaking things!
bornagain77: Microbial life can easily live without us; we, however, cannot survive without the global catalysis and environmental transformations it provides.
Of course. Animals, in particular, are dependent on other organisms for nutrition. That doesn’t support your claim that evolution would predict nothing besides bacteria. Frankly, the claim is just silly as the theory was proposed to explain diversity.
Actually, what is beyond silly, indeed what borders on mental illness, is that you claim to believe that unguided material processes, unguided processes that are empirically shown to consistently break things, created the unfathomed functional integrated complexity in life. A level of integrated functional complexity that our best computer programmers and engineers can only dream of accurately modelling!
Moreover, Why in blue blazes should the evolution of bacteria care one iota if higher organisms exist? Random mutations and high reproductive rates could care less if some slower reproducing metazoan with a lower mutation rate got steamrolled in the process of the evolution of bacteria exploiting some new food source.
But that is not what we see. For instance,
Yet, despite the fact that Darwinian evolution was somehow super genius enough to construct a biosynthetic pathway for lignin, that took years of intensive research by a interdisciplinary team to get a basic understanding of, Darwinian evolution is somehow too dumb to figure out the much easier biosynthetic pathway of how to tap lignin as an energy source??? And if you believe that I got some ocean front property for you in Arizona!
Supplemental note on the extreme fine tuning of microbial life for metazoans:
Verse and Music:
Zachriel, “That was apparently developed largely before the Cambrian Explosion.”
I have reason to question the “before the cambrian there was a bunch of lost details” hypothesis. This, of course, was Darwin’s hypothesis as well. However, I understand that there are some well preserved very early cambrian fossil records, storing extensive soft tissue details. These fossil finds show sponges, and no other animal life. I guess it was possible that the particular finds were in regions that showed painful subsets of the variety that was available a the time. However, fossil beds in the late precambrian seem to show no animal life at all.
In what kind of organism(s) are you proposing that this “metazoan toolkit” was housed?
BA77, “Darwinian evolution is somehow too dumb to figure out the much easier biosynthetic pathway of how to tap lignin as an energy source?”
Yes, I have encountered the lignin theory before. Highly interesting. It is the ultimate example of a Darwinian impossibility — true altruism. I will sacrifice my own short term benefit for the long term benefit of others. While we are talking about the long term benefit of my own species, the length of the term is far too far away for natural selection to analyze. Why would an organism give up such a mighty food source, when it could probably run a few million years before producing radical ecological damage by consuming it?
Zacky:
This is a blatant lie and a stupid one at that. The adaptive changes observed in finches are due to epigenetics, a genetically pre-programmed (i.e., designed) mechanism that changes a miniscule percentage of the organism’s genes in response to certain environmental changes. Natural selection has nothing to do with it.
bornagain77: you claim to believe that unguided material processes, unguided processes that are empirically shown to consistently break things, created the unfathomed functional integrated complexity in life.
Whenever you don’t have an answer you wave your hands and try to change the subject. The question concerned why more complex organisms can exist when bacteria are the most efficient replicators. If there are a lot of bacteria, then eating bacteria becomes a viable niche. Bacterivores may reproduce more slowly, but that doesn’t matter, as long as they can survive and reproduce. It’s like saying you can’t have foxes because rabbits reproduce more quickly.
Moose Dr: I have reason to question the “before the cambrian there was a bunch of lost details” hypothesis.
Organisms form an objective nested hierarchy, which, along with the fossil succession, provides historical ordering of events. If we then look at colonial unicellular organisms and primitive metazoans, this can provide us a glimpse of when the toolkit evolved. If the genes are shared in choanoflagellate, then they likely developed before metazoa. See Erwin, Early origin of the bilaterian developmental toolkit, Philosophical Transactions B 2009.
Moose Dr: However, I understand that there are some well preserved very early cambrian fossil records, storing extensive soft tissue details. These fossil finds show sponges, and no other animal life.
Complex multicellular organisms appeared in the Ediacara preceding the Cambrian, including Kimberella, a genus bilateria.
Moose Dr: In what kind of organism(s) are you proposing that this “metazoan toolkit” was housed?
In colonial unicellular organisms, including signaling pathways.
bornagain77: Darwinian evolution is somehow too dumb to figure out the much easier biosynthetic pathway of how to tap lignin as an energy source?
Huh? Lignin is used as an energy source by fungi, including in the guts of wood-eating beetles.
Mapou: The adaptive changes observed in finches are due to epigenetics, a genetically pre-programmed (i.e., designed) mechanism that changes a miniscule percentage of the organism’s genes in response to certain environmental changes.
Apparently not, based on close observations of Darwin’s finches. The changes in beak size are shown to be due to reproductive advantages from generation to generation, and can be traced to specific genes, such as bmp4.
Zachriel, you once again are a shining example of a ‘troll’ who refuses to honestly address the merits of the argument and tries to push his agenda by any deceptive means possible!.
The argument is clear,,,
Richard Dawkins interview with a ‘Darwinian’ physician goes off track – video
Excerpt: “I am amazed, Richard, that what we call metazoans, multi-celled organisms, have actually been able to evolve, and the reason [for amazement] is that bacteria and viruses replicate so quickly — a few hours sometimes, they can reproduce themselves — that they can evolve very, very quickly. And we’re stuck with twenty years at least between generations. How is it that we resist infection when they can evolve so quickly to find ways around our defenses?”
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....62031.html
Microbial life can easily live without us; we, however, cannot survive without the global catalysis and environmental transformations it provides. –
Paul G. Falkowski – Professor Geological Sciences – Rutgers
There simply is no coherent explanation from Darwinists for why this should be so!
As to lignin:
The Lignin Enigma By Ann Gauger – July 2012
Excerpt: Why should such an abundant resource go unexploited? Darwinian evolution has apparently failed to evolve “a relatively modest innovation—growth on lignin”—over 400 million years, even though many other spectacular innovations—nodulation (a symbiotic relationship between plants and bacteria that permits the fixation of nitrogen), symbiotic pollination systems (between plants, hummingbirds, and bees), and the appearance of carnivorous plants—all appeared during the same time period, and complex biochemical pathways such as C4 photosynthesis have apparently evolved independently many times.
How can one mechanism [Darwinism] have been at the same time so effective and so ineffective? That tension vanishes completely when the design perspective is adopted. Terrestrial animal life is crucially dependent on terrestrial plant life, which is crucially dependent on soil, which is crucially dependent on the gradual photo- and biodegradation of lignin. Fungi accomplish the biodegradation, and the surprising fact that it costs them energy to do so keeps the process gradual. The peculiar properties of lignin therefore make perfect sense when seen as part of a coherent design for the entire ecosystem.
http://www.biologicinstitute.o.....nin-enigma
moreover,,
Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Design
Excerpt: The mutual relationship between vascular plants (flowering plants) and arbuscular mycorrihizal fungi (AMF) is the most prevalent known plant symbiosis. Vascular plants provide sites all along their root systems where colonies of AMF can assemble and feed on the nutrients supplied by the plants. In return, the AMF supply phosphorus, nitrogen, and carbon in molecular forms that the vascular plants can readily assimilate. The (overwhelming) challenge for evolutionary models is how to explain by natural means the simultaneous appearance of both vascular plants and AMF.
http://www.reasons.org/Arbuscu.....ngiDesign2
of related note to bacteria not seeing humans as 150 pounds of prime rib waiting to be devoured,,, chemistry is specifically found to be ‘fine-tuned’ for life like human life, not just any type of life:
The Place of Life and Man in Nature: Defending the Anthropocentric Thesis – Michael J. Denton – February 25, 2013
Summary (page 11)
Many of the properties of the key members of Henderson’s vital ensemble —water, oxygen, CO2, HCO3 —are in several instances fit specifically for warm-blooded, air-breathing organisms such as ourselves. These include the thermal properties of water, its low viscosity, the gaseous nature of oxygen and CO2 at ambient temperatures, the inertness of oxygen at ambient temperatures, and the bicarbonate buffer, with its anomalous pKa value and the elegant means of acid-base regulation it provides for air-breathing organisms. Some of their properties are irrelevant to other classes of organisms or even maladaptive. It is very hard to believe there could be a similar suite of fitness for advanced carbon-based life forms. If carbon-based life is all there is, as seems likely, then the design of any active complex terrestrial being would have to closely resemble our own. Indeed the suite of properties of water, oxygen, and CO2 together impose such severe constraints on the design and functioning of the respiratory and cardiovascular systems that their design, even down to the details of capillary and alveolar structure can be inferred from first principles. For complex beings of high metabolic rate, the designs actualized in complex Terran forms are all that can be. There are no alternative physiological designs in the domain of carbon-based life that can achieve the high metabolic activity manifest in man and other higher organisms.
http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/.....O-C.2013.1
Privileged Species – How the cosmos is designed for human life – website
http://privilegedspecies.com/
Zachriel thinks that prokayotes aren’t organisms!:
Prokaryotes do not form an objective nested hierarchy.
Bacteria can eat bacteria. No need for anything else.
bornagain77: refuses to address the merits of the argument
Our discussion started with a claim you made concerning natural selection; “natural selection is not a ‘force’ that pushes, pulls, or creates, anything.” We provided evidence, including direct observation, that natural selection can sort through variations to optimize a function. We responded to your points about how developmental genes control beak morphology.
Then you pivoted to whether natural selection was a creative force, abandoning your defense of whether it is a force that pushes or pulls. You suggested we watch a portion of Rosemary Grant’s lecture, which you falsely assured us she had said the whole evolution thing is a crock. You then misstated the results of Grant & Grant, saying it was whatever survived survived, when they actually demonstrated a direct relationship between the environment and the balance of traits in the population. They did this by close observation of every individual and mating in the population.
bornagain77 (quoting Gauger): Fungi accomplish the biodegradation, and the surprising fact that it costs them energy to do so keeps the process gradual.
The primary benefit of lignin degradation is exposing the cellulose to digestion.
bornagain77: Vascular plants provide sites all along their root systems where colonies of AMF can assemble and feed on the nutrients supplied by the plants. In return, the AMF supply phosphorus, nitrogen, and carbon in molecular forms that the vascular plants can readily assimilate. The (overwhelming) challenge for evolutionary models is how to explain by natural means the simultaneous appearance of both vascular plants and AMF.
Not sure why you consider that a problem. However, the actual history is interesting. Fungi are believed to have invaded the land first, utilizing inorganic nutrients and forming a symbiotic relationship with algae. Land plants used the released nutrients, so it became advantageous to harbor the fungi.
You provided no evidence for natural selection pushing are pulling, much less optimizing, or creating anything, as Mapou pointed out,,,
For you to pretend that you did provide evidence for natural selection doing anything is yet more evidence of your dishonest and trollish nature.
The fact that Lignin is not exploited as a food source by bacteria, but is digested at a cost of energy is proof for elegant design for the overall ecology of the earth and is certainly not what would be expected on Darwinism.
Mutually beneficial relationships are unexpected on Darwinism:
Doubting Darwin: Algae Findings Surprise Scientists – April 28, 2014
Excerpt: One of Charles Darwin’s hypotheses posits that closely related species will compete for food and other resources more strongly with one another than with distant relatives, because they occupy similar ecological niches. Most biologists long have accepted this to be true.
Thus, three researchers were more than a little shaken to find that their experiments on fresh water green algae failed to support Darwin’s theory,,,
“It was completely unexpected,” says Bradley Cardinale,,,, “When we saw the results, we said ‘this can’t be.”‘ We sat there banging our heads against the wall. Darwin’s hypothesis has been with us for so long, how can it not be right?”
The researchers ,,,— were so uncomfortable with their results that they spent the next several months trying to disprove their own work. But the research held up.,,,
The scientists did not set out to disprove Darwin, but, in fact, to learn more about the genetic and ecological uniqueness of fresh water green algae so they could provide conservationists with useful data for decision-making. “We went into it assuming Darwin to be right, and expecting to come up with some real numbers for conservationists,” Cardinale says. “When we started coming up with numbers that showed he wasn’t right, we were completely baffled.”,,,
Darwin “was obsessed with competition,” Cardinale says. “He assumed the whole world was composed of species competing with each other, but we found that one-third of the species of algae we studied actually like each other. They don’t grow as well unless you put them with another species. It may be that nature has a heck of a lot more mutualisms than we ever expected.,,,
Maybe Darwin’s presumption that the world may be dominated by competition is wrong.”
http://www.livescience.com/452.....f-bts.html
bornagain77 (quoting Mapou): We can directly observe natural selection and its ability to move populations towards optimal solutions.
We provided a citation to direct observations of natural selection. The researchers recorded every individual and mating event, and those finches which had best access to food resources tended to produce more offspring. However, we’d be happy to look at a study which indicates otherwise.
bornagain77: The fact that Lignin is not exploited as a food source by bacteria, but is digested at a cost of energy is proof for elegant design for the overall ecology of the earth and is certainly not what would be expected on Darwinism.
Fungi. Fungi break down the lignin to expose the cellulose to digestion. There’s nothing any more unusual about this than a simian expending energy to break open a clam.
http://i.vimeocdn.com/video/439240440_640.jpg
bornagain77: Mutually beneficial relationships are unexpected on Darwinism
That’s a very odd statement to make as Darwin certainly posited symbiotic relationships, such as his prediction of what we call the Darwin moth. See Darwin, On the various contrivances by which orchids are fertilised by insects, 1862. Could it be you misunderstand your own citation?
Zach as you have been told before, to postulate natural selection as the cause for an after the fact observation of an effect, (i.e. such as a change in proportions of a population), is to illegitimately switch the whole cause and effect relationship in science. Natural Selection, as it is used by Darwinists, is a superflous narrative gloss that is added on after an observation has been made and tells us nothing as to the actual cause for how the change in a populations actually occurred (which in the case of finches is found to be ‘designed’ epigenetic factors not natural selection!).
Invoking Natural Selection as a cause to an effect is useless, even misleading, as a heuristic in science, since Natural Selection falsely claims to supply a valid explanation as to the actual cause for an effect when it has in fact done no such thing, but was only brought in after the effect was observed as a ‘narrative gloss’:
your other responces in your post to lignin and mutually beneficial relations are ‘hand waving’ these insurmountable problems for Darwinism away, and certainly do not address the merits of the arguments against Darwinism. i.e. Your failure to honestly address the evidence is not a concise rebuttal of the argument!
bornagain77: to postulate natural selection as the cause for an after the fact observation of an effect, (i.e. such as a change in proportions of a population), is to illegitimately switch the whole cause and effect relationship in science.
In direct observations of natural selection, we have multiple changes in environmental conditions leading to a non-trivial correlation between the environmental conditions and reproductive success. This is not “after the fact”, but a direct observation. In addition, we can support this with studies of artificial selection, where we can directly cause changes in the environment and see changes in reproductive success.
bornagain77: Natural Selection, as it is used by Darwinists, is a superflous narrative gloss that is added on after an observation is made and tells us nothing as to the actual cause for how the change in a populations actually occurred
That is incorrect. We can directly observe reproductive success, which determines the composition of the next generation population. That’s called natural selection.
bornagain77: In contrast, traditional Darwinian evolution alleges that random changes in the DNA itself generate new and useful variants that are then selected by the environment.
Darwin didn’t know anything about DNA.
The observation of natural selection in Darwin’s finches is not directly related to the source of genetic variation. Rather, it is the observation that changes in the environment cause changes in reproductive success leading to changes in the population.
bornagain77 (quoting): In this current effort, the researchers studied two different factors in the genome.
From the study: “Since environmental factors are known to result in heritable changes in the epigenome, it is possible that epigenetic changes contribute to the molecular basis of the evolution of Darwin’s finches.’
In other words, epigenetics doesn’t impact the observation of natural selection. It’s a source of phenotypic variation.
bornagain77: your other responces in your post to lignin and mutually beneficial relations are ‘hand waving’
How so? You claimed that lignin degradation is not a benefit to the organism. We pointed out that it allows for digestion of cellulose. This is no different in principle than an organism expending energy to open a mussel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQXKyTWMvpM
Zach, I’m satisfied that unbiased readers who support ID can now see that you are just chasing your tail in a circle trying to make whatever excuses for Darwinism that you can, and see that you have no interest in being honest to the evidence (i.e. see that you are a troll).
Thus, I’ll rest my case, since I have better things to do today that point out the fact that your arguments are all circular.
Unbiased readers can see that we made substantive replies.
Educated readers can see that Zachriel hasn’t said anything substantive.
Zacky:
What’s with the “we” crap? You can’t speak for yourself?
http://crev.info/2014/12/astrobiology-has-no-bio/This is a great review of current astrobiology. The title is provocative:
“Astrobiology has no ‘bio'”
The article begins like this:
and concludes like this:
Anyone up for the challenge? Look at the articles reviewed and see if there is a difference between astrobiology and astrology.
At least 7 articles are highlighted. All promise possible future progress – which is a common theme of articles related to astrobiology. Everything is maybe, could have, might have, is thought to have, perhaps, etc. But statements like that have nothing to do with science if they cannot be tested. It’s no different than believing in a God you can’t see.
At least there is more evidence for a Creator than there is for alien life when you consider the complexity, the information, inter lapping error correcting codes, nano machinery, software of the cell, fine tuning of the universe, etc.
it seems to me that believers in a Creator have more justification for their faith than believers in aliens do.
Sure, there are still many things scientists are exploring in this area, but there will always be things left to explore. It is very possible that science will never solve this problem simply because life does not have a natural origin. So again, all hypotheses should be allowed on the table including the idea of a divine origin for life.
There’s just no way to rule it out & it could be argued that there is data to support it as stated above,
so why rule it out?
Zachriel,
Zachriel, please bare with me.
Can you more elaborately define “Selection” in this particular example of beak finch sizes and/or “species?”
What specifically is doing the actual “selection?”
I’ll check back later today and respond.
DATCG
“Zachriel, please bare with me.
Can you more elaborately define “Selection” in this particular example of beak finch sizes and/or “species?”
What specifically is doing the actual “selection?”
I’ll check back later today and respond.”
——
Well, don’t hold your breathe and expect a factual or truthful answer minus all the personal bias and cute game playing already being done in this OP thread. Here is a link from earlier this year which provides the best answer I can think of. It comes from Huffington Post and a conversation interview between Susan Mazur and Denis Noble on Natural Selection:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....84211.html
Suzan Mazur: “There’s also natural selection, which became a catch-all term. As Richard Lewontin has pointed out, it was intended as a metaphor not to be taken literally by generations of scientists. The range of views about what natural selection is is staggering — a brand, a political term, a political and scientific term, failure to reach biotic potential, physicists are seeing it as part of a larger process now, etc. etc. Things are being majorly redefined.”
Denis Noble: “You’re putting your finger on a very important point here. And what I just said about the definition of a gene is only one example where I think some philosophical clarity is needed.”
Suzan Mazur: “Is it the case that there are all sorts of mechanisms at play, some of which have now been identified, that have been previously considered part of natural selection? It seems natural selection is used as a catch-all for a failure to identify what the mechanisms are.”
_____
The last sentence really says it all.
“It seems natural selection is used as a catch-all for a failure to identify what the mechanisms are.”
DATCG: Can you more elaborately define “Selection” in this particular example of beak finch sizes and/or “species?”
See Grant & Grant, Natural Selection in a Population of Darwin’s Finches, The American Naturalist 1989.
The Grants cataloged finches on Isla Genovesa Galápagos over a period of years. There was a climatic event that caused a significant change in the environment, specifically a change in food resources. They showed that “different beak shapes, which influence the birds’ abilities to forage on certain food items, could directly affect the health of the survivors at the end of a dry season, which in turn would influence their ability to compete for territories, to gain mates, and to reproduce at the onset of rains.” They then showed that the beak morphology of the population changed as the environment changed according to the identified fitness advantage. Continued observations have confirmed their initial findings.
DavidD (citing Denis Noble): In principle, Darwin didn’t refer to any mechanisms.
That is incorrect.He seems to be referring to mechanisms of variation, which Darwin observed, but didn’t explain.DavidD (citing Denis Noble): If there can be selection on variants, then some will survive and some won’t. In some sense this is a necessary truth, isn’t it?
That’s not natural selection. There are many reasons an organism may survive or die. Natural selection refers to heritable characteristics that provide an advantage or disadvantage in reproduction.
ETA: The quoted statements was off-hand. The context indicates he does accept natural selection.
There isn’t any evidence that natural selection produced the variety of finches. There is evidence that the variety of finches is due to built-in responses to environmental cues. See “The Evolution Revolution”- for example back in 1967 the US released 100 finches- all exactly the same- on a Pacific atoll. Those finches soon spread to other local islands. 17 years later it was observed that the parent population had already diverged and there were several different finches on the islands- 17 years, and it most likely occurred more rapidly than that.
That is incorrect. For it to be natural selection the heritable characteristics have to be accidental, ie not planned, nor directed.
Zachriel,
thanks, apologies for late response, long day.
You quoted work done in 1989…
While these are I’m sure meticulous observations on part of the Grants, they are rather vague as to what is doing the Selection.
Is the Environment responsible for the Selection of beak size according to your response?
DavidD,
Thanks for the link. Always interested in interviews of scientific community on this subject done by Mazur. Looks like interesting read to save.
DATCG: Is the Environment responsible for the Selection of beak size according to your response?
It’s the relationship between the environment and the fitness of beak variants. Roughly, the environment selects among the available variants. As the environment changes, natural selection predicts that this will bring about a directional change in the distribution of traits associated with fitness. Additional observations have confirmed this relationship.
http://creation.com/abiogenesisAn excerpt from this article:
This information is nothing new, but it again highlights the absurd faith of the Materialist!
IMO, only a dedicated Materialist could look at the data and actually conclude that unintelligent random forces are a reasonable/rational explanation for Life.
The more discoveries that are made, the more their faith needs to be ratcheted up! It is getting harder and harder to maintain one’s faith and to convince others that “No Intelligence is Necessary!”
MY PREDICTION is that things will not get any easier for believers who are pushing the doctrine of abiogenesis, but rather that their task of evangelization for their cause will become more difficult as we learn more about the amazing wonders and design of life and the cell.