Question: Is the key problem that new species are seldom or never observed?

_{Denyse O'Leary

September 25, 2006

Intelligent Design}

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A key problem with the argument over Darwinian evolution (evolution by natural selection acting on random mutations) is that so few actual examples of speciation (new species forming) have ever been observed that we really have no way of knowing for sure whether Darwin had the right idea.

I suspect that explains precisely why acceptance of Darwinism is so often treated as some kind of loyalty test for support for science in general.

That is, the Darwinist is taking a great deal on faith. And thoseÃ‚Â Darwinists who also happen toÃ‚Â be fanaticsÃ‚Â by temperament behave just as other fanatics do when they think they have found certainty: They go aboutÃ‚Â like bulls looking for a fight -Ã‚Â demanding that you too, brudder, better get saved. Otherwise, you face udder damnation …

As Jonathan Wells noted in his controversial Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design,

So except for polyploidy in plants, which is not what Darwin’s theory needs, there are no observed instances of the origin of species. As evolutionary biologists Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan wrote in 2002: “Speciation, whether in the remote Galapagos, in the laboratory cages of the drosophilosophers, or in the crowded sediments of the paleontologists, still has never been directly traced.” Evolution’s smoking gun is still missing.

– Jonathan Wells, Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design , p. 55, quoting Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origin of Species (New York: Basic Books, p. 32)

In fairness to the fanatical Darwinist, unlike the Islamic extremist, he is only trying to separate doubters from their careers, not their heads.

That said, why not insist that at least one thousand obvious examples of speciation in animals – where we have a lot of information about what happened -Ã‚Â be accumulated and studied, so that we have a study population to work with, to assess various theories of the origin of species?

Ã‚Â If we can’t find that within the next century, we need to assess just what role Darwinism is playing in science or society, because shedding light cannot really be the role.

Comments

There's an interesting parallel between the thought that impersonal and anonymous forces could (or could not) generate rational and conscious animals (such as ourselves) and the thought that impersonal and anonymous neurons, no one of which has any reason or awareness to speak of, could (or could not) work together to generate a rational and conscious animal. I would guess that people who find evolution inadequate as an explanation for the facts of human existence are also skeptical about the thought that one's personal identity is constituted by a specific organization of cells. Conversely, I would guess that people who aren't put off by the thought that variation and selection are the principal (even if not sole) mechanisms driving biological complexity also don't loose sleep at the thought that a human being is made of meat -- or at the thought that a piece of meat could be sentient, rational, and self-aware. In other words: "They're Made Out of Meat"!Carl Sachs_{September 26, 2006
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Tom English Evolution WAS never a statistical phenomenon It was a planned, executed and now finshed phenomenon. Got that? Write that down. See below. "A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable," John A. DavisonJohn A. Davison_{September 26, 2006
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Tom, you are obviously right about the minus sign, I apologize (I was writing in a hurry). Your answer is interesting, because it shows, in my opinion, that in reality you seem to be thinking of a process with "intelligent" characteristics: it is not a case that you use the words "adaptation" and "memory", although you will probably say that you use them to help my intuition and avoid the mathematics. But my intuition tells me exactly that, that the individual "adapts" and "remembers" because he is in some way conscious and/or intelligent. Adaptation, memory, generation of purposeful information are all the products of some intelligence, of some need. The problem with darwinists is that you make "nature" or "evolution" behave as though it were an intelligent "goddess". To go back to the problem, you must remember that, for a single bit of information to be "remembered", or "naturally selected", it must be "recognizable" as good by the forces that can operate selection, or create memory. That's the real problem. A single bit of information is, for the blind forces of physics (please, let's not speak of "evolution" or "nature", we are speaking of blind forces here) completely anonymous. It is, moreover, continuosly "diluted" in a sea of other new bits, useless or more often bad. To be selected, or "memorized", in preference of all the other possible configurations of new information that chance can afford, it must be in some way "privileged" on the mere basis of the forces of physics. And I still affirm that, to believe that every single bit of an impossibly long genome has been acquired and memorized because it conferred a "reproductive advantage" to its system is a fairy tale that I really can't even begin to consider. There is absolutely no chance that information sequences which, already at the level of a simple protein code, are far beyond any reasonable limit of being generated in a single step, can have been acquired by bit by bit accunulation, each time privileged by a "reproductive advantage". That's far beyond any mysticism I know of. That's simply false.gpuccio_{September 26, 2006
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P.S.--Preview showed me a superscript for the exponent in my expression in the last post, but it did not display that way. What I mean is 2 ^ -4,890,000,000Tom English_{September 26, 2006
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gpucci:
You should remember that the real probability of getting the information of the human genome by chance is 2^4,89 billions, which is a really frightening number for everyone!
I'll say! Would you perhaps like to insert a minus sign somewhere? ;) My experience with people who retort with expressions like 2-4,890,000,000 is that they need an intuitive rather than mathematical response. Suppose I tell you that a baby was born with an expert knowledge of quantum mechanics. You would be incredulous, I presume. (Or perhaps you would proclaim that Intelligence had designed new wetware for the latest release of homo sapiens -- I don't know.) Now suppose I tell you that another baby went on to acquire 25 years of formal education, ultimately defending a doctoral dissertation in quantum mechanics. There's nothing dubious about that claim, is there? You may say that evolutionary adaptation is different from individual adaptation, but on an abstract level there are important similarities between the two (and also cultural adaptation, as discussed by Norbert Wiener in Cybernetics). Notably, individuals and species both have memories. A species can gradually acquire a large repository of information in its genetic memory in much the way that an individual can its neural memory. The probability of uniformly drawing a particular genome all at once has no relevance to any claim of neo-Darwinism.Tom English_{September 26, 2006
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John Davison:
It was the blind adherence to LyellÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s uniformatarianism that led Darwin down the primrose path to a dead end.
Interestingly, it was James Hutton in the late 1700's who taught at the University of Edinburough--where both Lyell and Darwin went to school for a time--that "uniformitarianism" was propounded. Hutton considered the world (perhaps a la Aristotle) to be eternally old. With that much time, anything could happen I guess. Chris Hyland asks where did the "tens of thousands" of intermediates come from; well, it comes from Darwin's notion that the world is eternally old. He more than hints at this at places in the Origins. And, when it comes to the development of the eye, he is looking for a huge number of intermediates to lay the foundation for a transition before the appearance of the eye in the Cambrian/Silurian period. Another way of saying all this is that Darwinism is the by-product of a world-view, likely a very materialistic world-view (per Hutton), which contains presumptions that may or may not be true. Certainly no one would now say the world is eternally old. Just a bit of history if you're not already aware.PaV_{September 26, 2006
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Jerry said: "It is interesting to see the desperation that is being displayed by some here to justify these species changes. " Jerry, I just can't figure out what you believe about this. Earlier you stated, "Assume for the sake of argument that different species turn up in the fossil record and that common descent appears to explain what we observe. I donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t really have a problem with these for any theological reasons." Well, do you believe in descent with modification, speciation, etc., or don't you? Otherise your statement is another one of those "If A, then B, but if C, then D" ID arguments. (Although I am noticing that an earlier post where I raised that issue didn't pass muster vis the Nixplanatory Filter that controls the discussion around here.")Reciprocating Bill_{September 26, 2006
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gpuccio said: "The problem is always the same: can chance (RM + NS) create complex specified (and, I would add, useful) information?...I am sure the answer is not, and the whole debate is about that." Well, it just so happens that the title of this thread asks, "Is the key problem that new species are seldom or never observed?" So far as I can tell, you are saying "no" to that question, and grant the reality of speciation, descent with modification, etc., while differing vis mechanisms.Reciprocating Bill_{September 26, 2006
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gpuccio said: "This is a completely false argument, just one of the bad aspects of darwinian propaganda." To become a science, ID needs to make unique falsifiable predictions. Sooner or later, that is going to require a model of design with moving parts. The dark energy analogy doesn't hold for the simple reason that astrophysics proposes such models and put them "at risk" by means of empirical test, discarding those that don't yield correct predictions. ID has never done that and certanly will never do that so long as it remains silent on the nature of design and designers. (One thing for sure is that horses must be nearing extinction, what with all the dead ones that are beaten around here.)Reciprocating Bill_{September 26, 2006
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The forces that acted in the past are no longer in operation in any aspect of the living world. We see not evolution in progress but the products of a long ago finished evolution, one that will never again resume. All that remains is extinction. That makes perfect sense to me! I just wanted to point out that uniformitarianism is an axiom of science. I didn't mean to say that it was correct.DaveScot_{September 26, 2006
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It was the blind adherence to Lyell's uniformatarianism that led Darwin down the primrose path to a dead end. The forces that acted in the past are no longer in operation in any aspect of the living world. We see not evolution in progress but the products of a long ago finished evolution, one that will never again resume. All that remains is extinction. Trust me but of course you won't. No one will. Pierre Grasse , Julian Huxley and Robert Broom probably would, but they are dead. It is hard to believe isn't it? I love it so! A past evolution undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable." John A. DavisonJohn A. Davison_{September 26, 2006
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"I would give credit to Darwin in Species" I'm looking specifically for the origin of the number 'many tens of thousands'. Or any estimate of what 'should be' there, and why the current numbers fall drastically short.Chris Hyland_{September 26, 2006
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John, I get it. In fact that was my primary argument against evolution when I first started to read about the evolution controversy six years ago and one of the biggest nails in the coffin of NDE. If current life demonstrated numerous transitions, we would never hear the end of it and be hiding in our corners. But there are none. It is nice to watch the Darwinists twitch when they are presented with the obvious. They have not yet learned how to hide in their corners. But they sure can snap. As you say, such obdurate behavior must be prescribed. "I love it so."jerry_{September 26, 2006
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The DarwinistÃ¢â‚¬â€œI suppose what heÃ¢â‚¬â„¢d have to say is that in selective breeding we reach the limit when we have to wait for mutations to provide more ammo for changeÃ¢â‚¬â€œbut again the burden of proof is on him.
Done. Next? BobBob OH_{September 26, 2006
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I get an enormoys kick out of how so many of you insist in using the present tense for evolution. You just don't listen do you? You don't listen to me just as you never listed to Robert Broom, Julian Huxley or Pierre Grasse. What do you suppose the significance is of my signature? Did it ever occur to any of you that I was serious and that I might be right? Probably not. "Prescribed" homozygous, "born that way" ideologues are like that. "You can lead a man to the literature but you cannot make him read it." John A. Davison Even if he did he would have to comprehend it wouldn' he? Apparently that is asking way too much don't you know. Why do I continue to waste my time here? It is hard to believe isn't it? I love it so! " A past evolution is UNDENIABLE, a present evolution UNDEMONSTRABLE." John A. Davison, his emphasis. Get it? I hope that helps but somehow I doubt that it will.John A. Davison_{September 26, 2006
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Carl Sachs Nothing is Ã¢â‚¬Å“supported byÃ¢â‚¬Â in-principle unobservable events. Not true. I refer you to uniformitarianism, an axiomatic principle in scientific reconstruction of the past from observations made in the present. Nothing can be said of the prehistoric past without acknowledging axiomatic unformitarianism in the philosophy of science.DaveScot_{September 26, 2006
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Darwin and Richard Dawkins are the ones responsible for the necessity of the large number of intermediates. They may have not used an exact number but emphasized the term gradual and the back side of Mt. Improbable. Why don't the NDE only proponents estimate the number of genome and morphological changes that had to take place to go from a land animal to a whale. Each one had to be fixed in its population before it could be passed on. It is interesting to see the desperation that is being displayed by some here to justify these species changes. A fruit fly here, a plant there, a few fossils over there (and I mean few). The expression "Is that all you've got" comes to mind. You would think with the overwhelming evidence that is available it would be easy to present some of it and then sit back and smirk as the ID people in embarrassment had to deal with it. But as I like to say my favorite expression from literature is "The dog barking in the night" from Silver Blaise. The dog never barked and the Darwinist don't bark either; they hardly go "woof".jerry_{September 26, 2006
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Chris Who exactly is supposed to have predicted these many tens of thousands of transitional forms? I would give credit to Darwin in Species
In it, Darwin makes "one long argument," with copious empirical examples as support, for his theory that "groups" of organisms, (now called populations) rather than individual organisms, gradually evolve through the process of natural selectionÃ¢â‚¬â€a mechanism effectively introduced to the public at large by the book.
Others might credit Wright, Haldane, and Fisher who came up with population genetics which is a core principle of the modern synthesis. Takes yo' pick. One thing is for sure, gradualism is demanded by both Darwin's theory of natural selection and the modern synthesis. The alternative can be none other than Goldschmidt's hopeful monsters; Gould and Eldredge's attempt to salvage the embarrassing revelations of the fossil record by proposing most evolution takes place rapidly in small (hidden from paleontology) populations notwithstanding.DaveScot_{September 26, 2006
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Karl species are terms applied to differences across populations. ThereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a gradual shift across generations, over thousands of years All mutations take place in germ cells, Karl. Populations don't mutate. Individual gametes do. You've been sold a pig in a poke if you believe that mutations take place somewhere other than the reproductive cells and other than instantaneously.
The first bird hatched from a reptilian egg. -Otto Schindewolf
DaveScot_{September 26, 2006
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Who exactly is supposed to have predicted these many tens of thousands of transitional forms?Chris Hyland_{September 26, 2006
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Karl Micah Sporacio gets all the credit and then some for bringing up Cutline. I was more a hindrance than a help as I was skeptical of Cutline's robustness it being only a few weeks since version 1.0 was released. I'm quite happy to be wrong in this case.DaveScot_{September 26, 2006
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Reciprocating Bill: "Rather, this state of affairs obtains because a design science that limits itself to stating, about the designer, only that it is capable of producing designs is scientifically empty. Until ID proposes models of design and designers that yield unique, falsifiable predictions that Ã¢â‚¬Å“put ID at riskÃ¢â‚¬Â (which will ultimately include hypothesized characterizations of the wheres and whens) ID will remain something other than a scientific enterprise. " This is a completely false argument, just one of the bad aspects of darwinian propaganda. The hypothesis of design is made to explain observable facts (for instance, CSI in living beings) which can in no way be explained by the current darwinian theories. There is no need to know in advance or to postulate who or what the designer is for the theory to be scientific and testable (or falsifiable). In astrophysics, which I think is still considered a science, in the last few years a single important observation (the acceleration of the expansion of the universe) has brought to the theory of dark energy. Now, I understand that dark energy is not the only possible explanation, and that the subject is controversial, but still it has been the most widely accepted theory to explain that single fact. The interesting thing is that scientists have no idea of what dark energy is or may be, and they candidly admit that. That does not make the darl energy theory unscientific, does not prevent it to be taught in schools, and does not discourace any scientist from looking for new facts which may prove or falsify the theory. I really can't see why the designer hypothesis should be treated differently. In that case, we have not one single fact which cannot be explained, but billions of facts, from abiogenesis to each living form we can daily observe. I understand that darwinists think that hat have a theory which explains all that, but that is exactly the object of debate. IDers just don't agree, and they have very good reasons not to agree. But again, not knowing or not specifying a specific model for the designer daoes not make the theory less scientific, just the opposite. Regarding speciation, I feel a little bit confused by some aspects of the debate. Does speciation happen? Certainly it must have happened, otherwise where would species come from? But how, when, with which modalities and mechanism does it happen? That nobody knows. Even if some cases of speciation had been observed (which I don't think, but I agree that the answer depends critically on the definition of speciation), still nothing is known of the mechanisms. The problem is always the same: can chance (RM + NS) create complex specified (and, I would add, useful) information? Can it create complex forms and projects with explicit purposeful functions? Can it create regulation networks, central nercous systems, error repair systems, and so on?. Could it create the known phyla (completely different body projects, vastly unrelated one to the other) in a very short evolutionary time? I am sure the answer is not, and the whole debate is about that. Tom English: "As I have posted before, there have been at least 3.5 billion years for at most 4.89 billion bits of algorithmic information to enter the human genome. Thus an upper bound on the rate of information gain of the genome is 1.4 bits per year. The massive amount of information in the genome is no problem at all for neo-Darwinian theory because there has been a massive amount of time for it to get there. To pose a challenge to neo-Darwinism, you have to invoke irreducible complexity, which is essentially a claim that in some cases a lot of information must be gained all at once. " I don't agree. It is true that the issue of irreducible complexity is still the most important (thanks to Michael Behe for having put in words what should be obvious to any sentient being), but I don't think that's all. Your computation (1.4 bits per year) is misleading. You should remember that the real probability of getting the information of the human genome by chance is 2^4,89 billions, which is a really frightening number for everyone! And unless you believe (with really admirable faith) that each bit acquired was selected by blind forces, that result is in itself utterly impossible.gpuccio_{September 26, 2006
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Tom English: "What I think is that you have absolutely no rational response to the evidence, and the best you can do is to diminish it by appealing to the ignorance of people who have no idea how scientists glean information from fossil evidence. Here's a quote from Flank's blurb that turns this statement of yours upside down. It's the Darwinists who have failed to be rational. Duane Gish:
"Ever since Darwin the fossil record has been an embarrassment to evolutionists. The predictions concerning what evolutionists expected to find in the fossil record have failed miserably. Not only have they failed to find the many tens of thousands of undoubted transitional forms that are demanded by evolutionary theory, but the number of arguable, let alone demonstrable, transitional forms that have been suggested are few indeed. This has placed evolutionists in a most difficult situation, made even more embarrassing by the fact that the fossil record is remarkably in accord with predictions based on special creation."
This statement has not been overturned by the finding of a few more supposed transitional species. A few hundred thousand more transitional forms, and we'll all be Darwinists; but I'm afraid they're not there. It is one thing to have a transition; it is quite another to determine how that transition was made. We KNOW transitions have occurred, since the fossil record demonstrates this. But the fossil record, contrary to Darwin's predictions, neither shows a tremendous amount of fossil forms gradually leading up to the Cambrian Explosion, nor does it show, per Gish, the "many tens of thousands of undoubted transitional forms that are demanded by evolutionary theory". Q.E.D. Darwinism fails.PaV_{September 26, 2006
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Carl said: "I would expect it to become about as clear as any speciation event viewed through the distorting lens of geological time can be Ã¢â‚¬â€ which is to say, very hazy." You're right - I shifted from a single speciation event to the story of recent human origins in toto - the cumulative result of speciation events - which will inevitably become increasingly clear.Reciprocating Bill_{September 26, 2006
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Jehu:
The mere fact that Ambulocetus was exalted with such fanfare is amusing. It really demonstrates the desperation on the part of the Darwinists. Think about it.
Darwinism must be the only field of inquiry where the flimsiest piece of "evidence" can lead to such huge extrapolations (Piltdown Mand, Nebraska Man). That is an indication of the huge predisposition and the willingness Darwinists have to believe in their creation myth.Mats_{September 26, 2006
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Jehu:
The mere fact that Ambulocetus was exalted with such fanfare is amusing. It really demonstrates the desperation on the part of the Darwinists. Think about it.
What I think is that you have absolutely no rational response to the evidence, and the best you can do is to diminish it by appealing to the ignorance of people who have no idea how scientists glean information from fossil evidence. The fact is that Ambulocetus is but one of a succession of forms. The record of the evolution of terrestrial mammals into aquatic mammals does not depend on it alone. Again, from Flank:
Taken as a whole, the Archaeocete series from Pakicetus to Indocetus is very convincing evidence of descent with modification. Beginning with terrestrial Mesonychids, we can trace the path through Ambulocetus, which was a terrestrial animal that spent much time in the water, to Basilosaurus, which had nearly lost its functional legs, to the later Archaeocetes, which possessed no external legs at all and were specialized for a deep-sea life, to the modern whales.
Tom English_{September 26, 2006
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Denyse: Margulis and Sagan, discussing the Grants' study of Darwin's finches:
The Darwinian paradigm is operating exactly as it should: Different traits (whether within species or among species) are varying in prevalence according to the demands of the environment. Obviously, the genes that would produce these traits are varying in like fashion. But there is no evidence whatsoever that this process is leading to speciation. Speciation, whether in the remote Galapagos, in the laboratory cages of drosophilosophers, or in the crowded sediments of the paleontologists, stil lhas never been directly traced. The closest science has come to observing and recording the actual speciation in animals is the work of Theodosius Dobzhansky in Drosophila paulistorium fruit flies. But even here, only reproductive isolation, not a new species, appeared. The reproductive isolation occurred where a fully fertile population living at moderate temperatures became two populationsÃ¢â‚¬â€one cold-dwelling and the other warm-dwelling.
Nothing like a bit of context, is there? If you feel inclined to pick up some science, follow the first link in post 15 and read the page. You will learn that the definition of species is and has always been debated. Margulis and Sagan do not see speciation because they a) are talking about animals and b) have adopted a stringent definition of speciation.Tom English_{September 26, 2006
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http://www.comics.com/comics/fminus/archive/fminus-20060926.htmlKarl Pfluger_{September 26, 2006
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(Off topic) Just wanted to pause to thank DaveScot for getting UD 2.0 up and running. I love the preview window, and the 'recent comments' feature has already saved me dozens of mouse clicks. In case anyone missed it, there's a link under the banner to a full page of recent comments, not just the five or so presented in the sidebar. Thanks again, Dave. P.S. I'm under the impression that Dave did the work. If I'm slighting anyone else who contributed, my apologies.Karl Pfluger_{September 26, 2006
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The mere fact that Ambulocetus was exalted with such fanfare is amusing. It really demonstrates the desperation on the part of the Darwinists. Think about it. http://members.cox.net/ardipithecus/evol/lies/images/ambulocetus2.jpgJehu_{September 26, 2006
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