Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Pretending That Darwinism is Sophisticated (and Difficult-to-Understand) Science in Order to Deflect Challenges (or, Mickey Mouse Pretends to be a Scientist)

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Mickey MouseIn DonaldM’s post (‘Analyze and Evaluate’ Are the New Code Words for ‘Creationism’) discussion ensued about high school students and challenges to orthodox evolutionary theory.

One of the ploys of Darwinists is to pretend (and especially to try to fool young students into thinking) that evolutionary theory is like real science (mathematics, chemistry, physics, or electrical, mechanical, aeronautical, software, or other engineering disciplines) — when it is not. It’s Mickey Mouse stuff pretending to be hard science, and is not difficult to understand and therefore not difficult to challenge.

The Darwinist lobby would like us to believe that young people are neither sufficiently intelligent, nor sufficiently sophisticated, nor sufficiently “educated” to appreciate the fact that all challenges to orthodox Darwinism have been refuted. These innocent young victims of the enemies of science must be protected by the intervention of the courts, so that they are not exposed to any dissent (no matter how justified by evidence or logic), otherwise they might start believing in a flat earth and astrology.

It is true that young students who have yet to learn algebra would have a hard time with partial differential equations, but it is not true that young students can’t grasp the problems with orthodox evolutionary theory. It is not hard to figure out that the fossil record, with its various explosions and consistent pattern of discontinuity and stasis, presents a challenge for the Darwinian gradualism claim. It is not hard to figure out that complex information-processing machinery and the information it processes present a problem for the random mutation/variation and natural selection hypothesis. (All young people nowadays are familiar with computers and software and know that computer programs can’t write themselves through random accidents.) There is nothing difficult at all about understanding the claims of Darwinian theory or the perfectly legitimate scientific and evidential challenges to it.

The Darwinian mechanism is 19th-century Mickey Mouse speculation, passed off as “science.”

As Denyse put it: “Darwinian evolution, as a concept, is in ruins. That much is obvious. However the history of the world happened, that wasn’t how.”

So, let’s at least let young people in the public schools know that no one knows for sure how all this came about, and let them evaluate, think about, and consider the options, rather than attempt to coerce them into thinking that they are too stupid to think for themselves, and must be told by authorities what to think about the most important, ultimate issues in their lives: where they ultimately came from, and why they exist.

Comments
An unmoderated joseph in #68 pontificates that evolution does not have a direction. Is that how Homo sapiens became its most recent and probably last mammalian product? It is hard to believe isn't it?JohnADavison
April 4, 2009
April
04
Apr
4
04
2009
07:07 AM
7
07
07
AM
PDT
One of the ploys of Darwinists is to pretend (and especially to try to fool young students into thinking) that evolutionary theory is like real science (mathematics, chemistry, physics, or electrical, mechanical, aeronautical, software, or other engineering disciplines) — when it is not.
Since when have "electrical, mechanical, aeronautical, software, or other engineering disciplines" been sciences? No one is denying they are respectable disciplines in themselves or the contributions they have made to society but finding more efficient ways of delivering supplies to troops in the field, while no doubt of great value to the armies of the world, can hardly be said to add to the sum of human knowledge. Airlines will welcome quieter, more fuel-efficient aircraft but a better Boeing does not offer us new insights into how the Universe was born, regardless of whether it was thrown together by a tornado in a junkyard or designed and built in Seattle.Seversky
April 4, 2009
April
04
Apr
4
04
2009
04:27 AM
4
04
27
AM
PDT
I challenge anyone here or elsewhere to produce a single example of one species gradually transforming into a second species. All experimental attempts have failed. As near as we can ascertain, each species, like each Genus and every other taxanomic category, appeared instantaneously often with no proven immediate ancestor. That does not mean that it had no ancestor, but only that the mechanism by which it was produced did not involve the accumulation of micromutations as the Darwinians still maintain. I have proposed that true speciation resulted from the reorganization in single steps of the ancestral genome*. Such reorganizations produce multiple effects on the phenotype such that gradual conversions cannot possibly be the mechanism. The Darwinian model is without foundation. That it still persists is a scandal. * Davison, J.A. 1984. Semi-meiosis as an Evolutionary Mechanism. J. Theor. Biology 111: 725-735. and several subsequent papers. Let's see how long it takes for this one to appear. It is submitted 6:45 AM April 4, 2009.JohnADavison
April 4, 2009
April
04
Apr
4
04
2009
03:47 AM
3
03
47
AM
PDT
madsen:
It appears that everyone you linked to, with the possible exception of Julian Barbour, is a mainstream physicist. I don’t see anyone saying that “nothing can move in spacetime, therefore GR is nonsense”.
Of course nobody in the mainstream is saying "GR is nonsense". Nobody makes it to the mainstream by being stupid. Would you bite the hand that feeds you? Not unless you got a death wish.
BTW, is this your website?
Bingo! I am the eternal "crackpot" thorn on the side of mainstream cowardice aka political correctness.Mapou
April 4, 2009
April
04
Apr
4
04
2009
01:22 AM
1
01
22
AM
PDT
Mapou,
I am not sure how their knowing that nothing can move in spacetime affects their understadning of relativity but I can tell you that it can only mean one thing: time is not a physical dimension of nature and “changing or passing time” is an oxymoron.
It appears that everyone you linked to, with the possible exception of Julian Barbour, is a mainstream physicist. I don't see anyone saying that "nothing can move in spacetime, therefore GR is nonsense". BTW, is this your website? www.rebelscience.org/Crackpots/physicists.htmmadsen
April 3, 2009
April
04
Apr
3
03
2009
09:51 PM
9
09
51
PM
PDT
Mapou, Thanks, I'll read the links concerning the physicists you gave. In the meantime, the wikipedia article I provided has a link to a paper by Weisberg and Taylor (Taylor being one of the recipients of the 1993 Nobel Prize for this work) with this statement in the abstract:
The measured rate of change of orbital period agrees with that expected from the emission of gravitational radiation, according to general relativity, to within about 0.2 percent.
madsen
April 3, 2009
April
04
Apr
3
03
2009
08:50 PM
8
08
50
PM
PDT
madsen @68:
I’m not talking about merely refining models, I’m saying that GR generates new predictions of unanticipated phenomena. For evidence of the existence of gravitational waves, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulse-Taylor_binary
Are you kidding me? Wikipedia is a cesspool of political correctness. There are alternative reasons for the the orbital decay of binary stars such as friction with interstellar gas and internal friction due to the huge tidal forces. The total mass of the stars themselves is constantly diminishing. There are too many unknowns, in my opinion, and I would not put it past relativists to fudge measurement data (extremely marginal data, I might add) to promote a bankrupt theory that cannot even account for most of the universe's mass.
If you have names and links for physicists who agree with your block universe critique of spacetime, I’d like to see them.
Ok. Here's an excerpt from From "Relativity from A to B" by Dr. Robert Geroch, U. of Chicago:
There is no dynamics within space-time itself: nothing ever moves therein; nothing happens; nothing changes. [...] In particular, one does not think of particles as "moving through" space-time, or as "following along" their world-lines. Rather, particles are just "in" space-time, once and for all, and the world-line represents, all at once the complete life history of the particle.
I first learned that nothing can move in spacetime from an email correspondence I had with William Mark Stuckey who is a professor of physics at Elizabethtown College. He and I agreed that there is no such thing as spacetime. Dr. Matej Pavsic is a professor of physics at the famous Jozef Stefan Institute in Slovenia. You can read what he wrote about motion in spacetime in this message at a Cornell forum. Professor Joe Rosen (I currently don't have a link) is the retired former chair of the physics department at the University of Central Arkansas. Dr. Stuckey was the first to introduce me to Dr. Rosen's work. Dr. Rosen not only rejects the existence of a time dimension in which we are moving in one direction or the other, he also rejects the existence of space. He calls it nonspatiality and nontemporality. I completely agree with Dr. Rosen's views on these issues although we arrived at similar conclusions on space and time via different routes. Anyone interested in the nature of time should read his papers and essays. I especially recommend his "Time, c, and nonlocality: A glimpse beneath the surface?" Physics Essays, vol. 7. Of course, there's Dr. Julian Barbour, the independent physicist who wrote the famous The End of Time. It's on Amazon, look it up. It's a good read but I would go even futher than Barbour and claim that both space and time are abstract concepts, mere illusions of perception. There are many others but these will do for now. I am not sure how their knowing that nothing can move in spacetime affects their understadning of relativity but I can tell you that it can only mean one thing: time is not a physical dimension of nature and "changing or passing time" is an oxymoron. There is only the now, the ever changing present. Don't take my word for it. Figure it out for yourself.Mapou
April 3, 2009
April
04
Apr
3
03
2009
08:29 PM
8
08
29
PM
PDT
Above I posed questions to Gil [54] and jerry [41]. My posts are being held in moderation, so they appear way up in the thread and may be overlooked. Gil and jerry, I hope you have the opportunity to respond.David Kellogg
April 3, 2009
April
04
Apr
3
03
2009
05:33 PM
5
05
33
PM
PDT
DoneJohnADavison
April 3, 2009
April
04
Apr
3
03
2009
10:32 AM
10
10
32
AM
PDT
I should also mention that the Newtonian conception - a body in motion (relative to a reference frame) occupies different co-ordinate space positions at different co-ordinate times - is also perfectly applicable in General Relativity. The great thing about GR, though, is that its general covariance allows us to provide a definition of motion that makes no appeal to reference frames.Sotto Voce
April 3, 2009
April
04
Apr
3
03
2009
09:17 AM
9
09
17
AM
PDT
By making time a dimension of nature, one automatically eliminates change (motion), period. It’s that simple. No amount of self-delusion or rhetoric can change that fact. Sorry.
Do you know the difference between co-ordinate time and proper time? Do you see why it is relevant to the point you're trying to make? I have repeatedly offered a perfectly coherent sense in which motion can take place in a spacetime manifold, and you have studiously ignored it. I repeat again: a body is moving (in spacetime) if it occupies different spacetime points at different proper times. Far from denying that any body can move, GR essentially tells us that every body moves through spacetime (although the story is a little complicated for photons). Please tell me why you think this is problematic. And just asserting that this isn't change is not sufficient. Explain what you think change is in clear physical terms and why this does not fit your definition.Sotto Voce
April 3, 2009
April
04
Apr
3
03
2009
09:11 AM
9
09
11
AM
PDT
Jerry writes:
Another form of gradualism has replaced Darwin’s gradualism among Darwin’s original ideas. Namely, Gould’s gradualism. The biggest proponent here of this is Allen MacNeill who claims, and I believe he is correct, to know what most current evolutionary biologists believe. Gould’s gradualism is not changes to the current species by small changes in the allele frequency of a population but rather changes that happen out of sight in unused parts of the genome. A very small number of these changes suddenly become functional and this is when a new species or genera are born. This is the essence of punctuated equilibrium.
Hi jerry, I'm familiar with Gould & Eldredges papers on punk eek, and almost none of what you wrote here rings a bell. Could you point out, for example, where they say anything about punk eek involving "unused parts of the genome"? That does not strike me as being correct. Thanks.Dave Wisker
April 3, 2009
April
04
Apr
3
03
2009
06:37 AM
6
06
37
AM
PDT
Mapou,
Epicycles can be refined to be as accurate as necessary. Same with GR.
I'm not talking about merely refining models, I'm saying that GR generates new predictions of unanticipated phenomena. For evidence of the existence of gravitational waves, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulse-Taylor_binary If you have names and links for physicists who agree with your block universe critique of spacetime, I'd like to see them.madsen
April 3, 2009
April
04
Apr
3
03
2009
05:26 AM
5
05
26
AM
PDT
You will never hear a physicist saying that the theory of evolution is as well established as GR... Sal Gal 47):
The outcome of natural selection is conceptually simple, but the empirical question of the degree to which variation in living things permits a ratcheting from lower to higher complexity is complicated.
Evolution does NOT have a direction. In fact very fews evos evince comprehension of that fact.Joseph
April 3, 2009
April
04
Apr
3
03
2009
04:47 AM
4
04
47
AM
PDT
Karl Popper's notion of falsification is utter nonsense. Hypotheses need never be falsified. They only require verification. That is why the Lamarckian and the Darwinian hypotheses are not valid. Lamarck's hypothesis is eminently testable and August Weismann laid it to rest in short order by cutting the tails off new born rats. The same experiment exposed Darwin's "provisional hypothesis of pangenesis" as nonsense. Someone once said that Weismann was more Darwinian than Darwin and Darwin was more Lamarckian than Lamarck. Of course, in my opinion, all three were dead wrong. August Weismann did have two very important ideas that proved to be valid. The first is summarized with - "From eagles eggs come eagles." Of course that is true today but may not have been true in the past. Compare that with Schindewolf's - "The first bird hatched from a reptilian egg." You will notice these are diametrically opposite views of the evolutionary process. I'm a great fan of Schindewolf myself, simply because he has explained why there are no gradually transformed forms in the fossil record: transitional forms, yes, but always discretely different each from its predecessor, so much so that typically each succesive form must be placed in a new Genus. In a very real sense the Genus has been the most valid criterion of creative evolution. Both Julian Huxley and Robert Broom claimed that a new Genus had not appeared in the last two million years. Schindewolf took his saltational ideas a giant step further with another quip - "We might as well stop looking for the missing links as they never existed." This too is in complete accord with the fossil record. The other idea that Weismann had that is very interesting is summarised in four words - "The Protozoa are immortal." When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. When an Amoeba divides there is no death and no corpse. Apparently to avoid extinction, all that a Protozoan (or any other single celled organism) has to do is to reproduce faster than it aquires deleterious mutations. The moral of the story is; to be successful don't mess with the genome by practicing genetic recombination (sexual reproduction) which is a dangerous game and can lead to extinction. It is my view that sexual reproduction has proven, with very few exceptions, to end with extinction. That is certainly the testimony of the fossil record. I am convinced that sexual (Mendelian) reproduction and natural selection are entirely anti-evolutionary and were in the past, as in the present, incapable of supporting creative evolution. As near as I am able to tell the production of new "kinds" of creatures is finished. In fact I am so out of touch with Darwinism that I believe that the present biota will be permanently extinguished relatively soon, never to be replaced. I, with Robert Broom, believe that organic evolution was a planned sequence. I futher believe that it terminated with the appearance of Homo sapiens a mere 100,000 years or so ago. In short - "A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable." I hate being right. P.S. For you Stephen J. Gould fans, he claimed that Schindewolf's evolutionary ideas were "spectacularly flawed," a cynical comment for which I never forgave him and told him so.JohnADavison
April 3, 2009
April
04
Apr
3
03
2009
02:53 AM
2
02
53
AM
PDT
Sal Gal (#64) So what you were really saying is that high school students really didn't understand Darwinian evolution. Presumably this means that they are not qualified to judge the adequacy of the theory. And at least some would argue that this means that they should be taught (unguided) evolutionary theory as if it were fact, because in the opinion of the vast majority of evolutionary biologists it is fact. Bright students can easily understand the concepts you proposed. The conflict is not over what the concepts are; it is over whether the concepts are adequate as a complete explanatory framework. And bright students might easily see that there are conceptual problems with getting information without intelligent input, and that probabilistic resources needed for unguided evolution are grossly inadequate, and that the appearance of design might actually indicate reality, without being able to argue these points in precise detail. As time goes on, they can learn more detail. (And many bright students who realize this may not wish to go into biology proper; related fields such as medicine may not have as high barriers to their acceptance.) (As for the duller students, there may not be much hope for them in this area, and such hope as there is will probably be more enhanced by clarity and openness than by attempts at indoctrination. And according to your numbers (#47, although the numbers here keep moving around) 55% seem to have understood Darwin reasonably correctly, which is actually a majority.) Judging from your lack of comments, you have not been adequately taught a single pathway from one protein to another with theoretical justification of the feasibility of the required steps. And from your comments, you are brighter than most. Don't worry. It's not your fault. The reason you have not been taught this is because, with the possible exception of color vision, (AFAIK) there is no known Darwinian pathway from one functional protein to the next. If there were, we would have been referred to it by now. You seem a little confused yourself, when you say that
Differences in rate of survival and reproduction could be due to just about anything.
While technically true, if carried to an extreme, this makes evolutionary theory totally incapable of predicting anything. There in fact is a coherent reason why bears, foxes, hares, and ptarmigans are all white in the Arctic, at least in the winter, and for some all year round. Without such hypotheses, the term "natural selection" loses all meaning, and we have instead random survival of the Kimura variety. Natural selection is in fact an optimization process. It is not a conscious optimization process, and cannot create preadaptation except as an accident. But if there is a fitness function that is different from exactly equal probability of survival and reproduction for all organisms of a given type, the population will tend to cluster around those specific forms that have the higher probability of survival and reproduction. That's optimization. Whether Darwin described it that way, or whether someone else wants to view it that way, is irrelevant. If there is a non-trivial fitness landscape, natural selection will function as an optimizer. I take it that your silence on my comment about change in the distributions of traits of organisms being a logical necessity is tacit agreement with my point.Paul Giem
April 3, 2009
April
04
Apr
3
03
2009
01:53 AM
1
01
53
AM
PDT
madsen @59:
It would certainly be nice if we knew what the ultimate cause of gravity is, but that’s a difficult problem. It seems to me that GR has been a tremendous success and that it’s just wrong to compare it to epicycles.
Epicycles can be refined to be as accurate as necessary. Same with GR. Note that GR is still using Newton's gravitational constant, which was obtained via measurement. It is also using a cosmological constant. Big deal, I say. Unless one understands gravity from first princicples, one understands nothing.
GR has made novel predictions (e.g. gravity waves, which have been detected indirectly)—can you point to any similar predictions which arose out of epicycles?
Are you kidding me? Gravitational waves have never been detected either directly or indirectly. In fact, GR predicts that close to 90% of the universe is missing. Imagine that, losing 90% of the universe just because a theory says so, a theory that is 100% clueless as to why things fall.
Of course if GR is to be reconciled with QM, classical spacetime will not do. But your brief takedown (nothing can happen in spacetime) just doesn’t make sense. Do you really think physicists would not have noticed if the concept could be refuted so easily?
My brief takedown is all that it takes. Spacetime is a silly concept. And I disagree that physicists have not noticed that spacetime could be refuted so easily. If Popper was smart enough to get it, others could figure it out as well. Many have and I could give you names and links if you're really interested. The problem is that political correctness in physics, especially with regard to Einstein, is even more ingrained and vicious than political correctness among evolutionists. Having a successful career in physics is not helped by saying anything against the theory of relativity. Even Popper was careful to phrase his criticism in such a way as not to ruffle too many feathers.Mapou
April 3, 2009
April
04
Apr
3
03
2009
12:01 AM
12
12
01
AM
PDT
Paul Giem (and I get to Oramus here),
Perhaps I am not understanding why you made the comment you did.
You're not. I was on topic -- Gil's OP. I laid out what Darwin said about natural selection, borrowing from Allen MacNeill, and argued that high school students are not comprehending even the Darwinian principles. I long heard, and accepted, that natural selection operated on the results of reproduction-with-variation. It took me quite some time to figure out that natural selection appears as a process or as an operator in models of evolution, and that biologists, as do most scientists, slip into speaking of the abstract elements of their models as physical reality. Of course, we regularly hear that individuals are selected according to fitness. The fitness landscape is part and parcel of making selection an operator or process in models. Individuals must be selected for some reason, so we make their superior "fitness" the reason. And now, when we back away and look at the model we have wrought, we see evolution as an optimization process. In the minds of many people, evolution is an optimization process. Darwin did not describe evolution as a search-based optimization process, and it truly is important to realize that his formulation of natural selection makes much more sense than what we get by reifying the model. We cannot point to anything in nature conducting a search, and there certainly is nothing searching for a search. We observe the outcomes of a wide range of unidentified processes. Differences in rate of survival and reproduction could be due to just about anything. As Stu Kauffman points out in Reinventing the Sacred, we cannot identify "preadaptations" to the future environment -- we are constantly surprised by evolutionary adaptation. This is really not what I meant to say, but it's time to stop.Sal Gal
April 2, 2009
April
04
Apr
2
02
2009
11:20 PM
11
11
20
PM
PDT
It's offensive to compare Darwinism to Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse is not responsible for the deaths of 6 million Jews.AmerikanInKananaskis
April 2, 2009
April
04
Apr
2
02
2009
10:57 PM
10
10
57
PM
PDT
Gil,
In even trivial, functionally integrated systems, random variation degrades, and does not “ratchet” from lower to higher complexity. It does the exact opposite. Natural selection is irrelevant, because it does not create, produce, or edify — it just throws stuff out.
I repeat that I am not a biologist. But I know that biologists talk a lot about the conservatism of evolution. Evolutionary biologists say that alteration of what I presume you mean by "functionally integrated systems" is almost always lethal. I've heard of the "hot frontier of evolution" -- the traits that are relatively amenable to adaptation. Take a look at mammalian brains. The evolutionarily younger structures are glopped over the older structures. The human brain is an utter kludge. It certainly appears that evolution proceeded more by adding on than by changing what was in place. To some degree, ontongeny recapitulates phylogeny -- though not as Haeckel claimed. Evidently evolution tends to add new stuff at the end of development, so as not to disrupt what comes before. Consider also Recent Acceleration of Human Adaptive Evolution (full text), Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (December 2007). The lead author, John Hawks, makes John Sanford and Walter ReMine look mighty long in the tail. Hawks has posted a highly accessible explanation of the research on his blog.
Our evolution has recently accelerated by around 100-fold. And that’s exactly what we would expect from the enormous growth of our population. [...] [A] very small fraction of the mutations in any given population will be advantageous. And the longer a population has existed, the more likely it will be close to its adaptive optimum — the point at which positively selected mutations don’t happen because there is no possible improvement. This is the most likely explanation for why very large species in nature don’t always evolve rapidly. Instead, it is when a new environment is imposed that natural populations respond. And when the environment changes, larger populations have an intrinsic advantage, as Fisher showed, because they have a faster potential response by new mutations. From that standpoint, the ecological changes documented in human history and the archaeological record create an exceptional situation. Humans faced new selective pressures during the last 40,000 years, related to disease, agricultural diets, sedentism, city life, greater lifespan, and many other ecological changes. This created a need for selection. Larger population sizes allowed the rapid response to selection — more new adaptive mutations. Together, the the two patterns of historical change have placed humans far from an equilibrium. In that case, we expect that the pace of genetic change due to positive selection should recently have been radically higher than at other times in human evolution.
Population geneticists wish dearly the environment would be stationary -- that's generally what they need to do their math -- but it often does not cooperate.Sal Gal
April 2, 2009
April
04
Apr
2
02
2009
08:35 PM
8
08
35
PM
PDT
Ludwig, If everyone agreed that evolution happens but that evolution can't explain by itself biodiversity some of the disagreement would go away. And if everyone agreed that the best explanation was that God did it, and the purpose of science was not to ask if but how He did it, then all the disagreement and contention would go away.tribune7
April 2, 2009
April
04
Apr
2
02
2009
08:19 PM
8
08
19
PM
PDT
It seems to me that Darwinism (or neo-Darwinism) (really, just take your pick) both suffer from the all too common human trait of overstating what we really know. We ALL agree (creationist, ID'er, and committed Darwinist alike) that random, chance mutations can be acted upon by natural selection (an effect not a process, in my opinion, but it sure ain't worth arguing about) to affect minor changes (and yes, some of those "minor" changes can be extremely useful in the case of survivability of viruses, bacteria, etc.) but HONESTLY, does the committed Darwinists really KNOW that random chance mutations acted upon by natural selection ALONE has ever accomplished anything that we could all describe as macro-evolution? Or even produced some fundamentally new function? No, that simply isn't known. The Darwinists assume it but play word games to hide that fact. The ID critics wave their hands about and claim to have "proven" that the bacterial flagellum could have resulted from RM-NS, but in any other scientific endeavor, that hand-waving would be called out as blatant BS. By the very nature of what we are talking about, empirical evidence is simply hard to come by. That's why Popper struggled with it and that's why anyone that is capable of divorcing themselves from the philosophy, politics, money, and fear associated with this issue doesn't have a problem saying we just don't KNOW that RM-NS alone could have done it all. ID dares to attempt to develop the math, science, and reason necessary to reliably detect design within biology. Only those overburdened by those items I mentioned previously (philosophy, politics, money, fear, etc.) could possibly have a problem with the mere attempt to develop the science of ID. But they do. And that's why Darwinism has become Mickey Mouse-endorsed pseudo-science with a thick, but false, veneer of credibility. What's so scary about admitting we don't have the goods yet to KNOW that RM-NS alone can do it all? How about a little intellectual honesty?mtreat
April 2, 2009
April
04
Apr
2
02
2009
07:47 PM
7
07
47
PM
PDT
Mapou, It would certainly be nice if we knew what the ultimate cause of gravity is, but that's a difficult problem. It seems to me that GR has been a tremendous success and that it's just wrong to compare it to epicycles. GR has made novel predictions (e.g. gravity waves, which have been detected indirectly)---can you point to any similar predictions which arose out of epicycles? Of course if GR is to be reconciled with QM, classical spacetime will not do. But your brief takedown (nothing can happen in spacetime) just doesn't make sense. Do you really think physicists would not have noticed if the concept could be refuted so easily?madsen
April 2, 2009
April
04
Apr
2
02
2009
07:46 PM
7
07
46
PM
PDT
Sorry, that was supposed to be Sal Gal.Paul Giem
April 2, 2009
April
04
Apr
2
02
2009
07:18 PM
7
07
18
PM
PDT
Sak Gak (#35), I'm with jerry (337). Yes, natural selection can be viewed as an outcome of several antecedents. But it could also be a process itself. Perhaps I am not understanding why you made the comment you did. It seems that the logical (or perhaps rhetorical) reason you put it the way you did is that you wished to emphasize that given very simple, and usually granted, antecedents, natural selection was inevitable. I'm not quite sure whom you are arguing with. I personally, I suspect jerry, and I think the majority of posters on UD believe that natural selection is a real phenomenon. So the attempt to convince us that it is real (exists, happens) seems misplaced to me. The problem that most of us have is that it is impotent to produce the kinds of change that are alleged to have occurred because of it. By itself natural selection cannot create anything. All it can do is select from already available variations. if a variation is highly improbable, without correspondingly improbable luck or intentional creation (if you wish to throw in some other process please do so) natural selection cannot select for that variation. At a certain point improbable luck stretches credulity to the breaking point. That's why we don't believe that natural selection of random variation can explain all the variety of life, not some difficulty in believing in natural selection itself. There is one glaring logical error in your hypothesis. You say,
Change in the distributions of traits of organisms is a logical necessity under the stated conditions.
For practical purposes, that is not true. If an organism is at a fitness peak of sufficient height, natural selection will force it up towards the top of the peak and counterbalance the effect of mutations which tend to move it, and thereby dislodge it from the peak. In that case, natural selection will be a force for stasis, not for change. Thus change in the distribution of traits of a given organism is not a logical necessity, or even a practical necessity. Considerations like this probably explain the stasis commonly found in the fossil record (e. g., Limulus). If you wish to convince us that a design hypothesis is unnecessary, you might start by explaining why the development of a particular biochemical pathway doesn't exhaust the probabilistic resources of our universe. Pick your pathway, or start with the bacterial flagellum. When you get done, the origin of life is always waiting.Paul Giem
April 2, 2009
April
04
Apr
2
02
2009
07:09 PM
7
07
09
PM
PDT
In science's pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics. For evolutionary biology is a historical science, laden with history's inevitable imponderables. We evolutionary biologists cannot generate a Cretaceous Park to observe exactly what killed the dinosaurs; and, unlike "harder" scientists, we usually cannot resolve issues with a simple experiment, such as adding tube A to tube B and noting the color of the mixture. ~ Jerry Coyne Regardless of one's point of view, it's quite easy to see that Darwinism is not in the same league as the hard sciences. For instance, Darwinists will often compare their theory favorably to Einsteinian physics, claiming that Darwinism is just as well established as general relativity. Yet how many physicists, while arguing for the truth of Einsteinian physics, will claim that general relativity is as well established as Darwin’s theory? Zero. ~ William Dembskibevets
April 2, 2009
April
04
Apr
2
02
2009
06:11 PM
6
06
11
PM
PDT
@ madsen 46, I accept GR in the same sense that I accept Newtonian gravity and Ptolemaic epicycles. None of them explains gravity. I reject the idea proposed by the relativists to the effect that gravity is caused by bodies curving spacetime and that the resulting curved spacetime affects the movement of bodies. This has been taught to the unweary for close to a century and it is unmitigated BS. In conclusion, I will say that GR is just a math trick, and a confusing and hopelessly misleading one at that (seeing that there is no such thing as spacetime). GR is no better as an explanation of gravity than Newtonian physics before it. It's all Mickey Mouse descriptive science, in my opinion. That famous physicists like Hawking can claim that GR does not contradict time travel is a prime example of a science gone awry. At least Newton had the decency to admit that he had no idea what caused gravity. If only spacetime physicists were so forthcoming. I can always dream. As far as you agreeing with Sotto Voce, I will counter by pointing out that opinions are a dime a dozen. I think both you and Sotto are painfully mistaken. How's that for an opinion?Mapou
April 2, 2009
April
04
Apr
2
02
2009
05:54 PM
5
05
54
PM
PDT
Gil, a while ago I asked a question that you may have missed. It was about your father, who is certainly a brilliant guy. Does he have views about these issues? More than once you have claimed that standard theories of evolution are easily understood and just as easily seen to be hogwash. They are, you suggest, trivially untrue. I'm curious, since you've mentioned your father a couple of times as an exemplary intellect, if he dismisses evolution too.David Kellogg
April 2, 2009
April
04
Apr
2
02
2009
05:49 PM
5
05
49
PM
PDT
Some good points in the OP, Gil. Of course I agree with you. There are high school students who are quite capable of doing college level, if not post-college level research. If application of analysis and evaluation to aspects of an hypothesis...natural selection, say...yields a serious challenge to the results of hundreds of other studies, such as is apparently the case in the Penn State study I referenced, then what other challenges to accepted results of evolutionary biology might surface from bright, inquisitve high school students empowered to "analyze and evaluate" evidence? The 2010 science high school science fair in Texas could be quite interesting! That's probably what is keeping Eugenie Scott up at night these days.DonaldM
April 2, 2009
April
04
Apr
2
02
2009
05:29 PM
5
05
29
PM
PDT
Sal Gal, If natural selection is an outcome, then natural selection acting upon random mutation is a misleading description of the evolutionary process. If I'm not mistaken, this is how natural selection is presented to students. Further, if natural selection is an outcome, then it has no explanatory power, correct?Oramus
April 2, 2009
April
04
Apr
2
02
2009
05:17 PM
5
05
17
PM
PDT
1 2 3 4

Leave a Reply