At Oscillations: How the College Board skews students toward Darwinism

_{Denyse O'Leary

January 27, 2020

Darwinism, Intelligent Design, science education}

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https://www.amazon.com/Darwin-Overthrown-Mechanobiology-Suzan-Mazur/dp/0578452669

Suzan Mazur, an independent journalist and author of Darwin Overthrown: Hello Mechanobiology, takes aim at the outdated Darwinism of the College Board university preparation system:

At Oscillations, she notes that the content of its biology course and exam framework devotes 24 pages or 22% to Darwinian natural selection and describes it in the “Essential Knowledge” section as “a major mechanism of evolution.” The College Board, she reports, explicitly says that: “The principles of natural selection and its components appear throughout the course.”

She sees this as a “catastrophe” (Suzan Mazur, “College Board & The Natural Selection Racket” at Oscillations) because “the evolution paradigm has shifted” and – following Eugene Koonin – natural selection is not taken seriously any more as an explain-all.

Is the stuff she identifies designed to insulate students from the ferment going on in biology or is just the outcome of educrats’ self-insulation…? Maybe both?

Mazur has got to be one of the best-connected people writing about evolution today. Her nose for haven’t-we-seen-this-show-before?, oh-not-THAT-again?, used-to-was, done-to-death, and this-will-wash-no-more is the outcome of having interviewed many movers and shakers (and maybe some slackers and fakers) and kept notes over the years. She should certainly be better known.

The Paradigm Shifters: Overthrowing ‘the Hegemony of the Culture of Darwin’ is also a good introduction to what’s changing in biology.

Comments

According to brain-dead "naturalists": - WE are Nature. - There is not difference between Stonehenge and some randomly assembled group of rocks. - Our minds are "random", there are neither purpose nor goals. BUT we know they are CRAZY LIARS. Our minds are goal-directed, different than a hurricane, or a storm or lightning bolts. Truthfreedom_{January 28, 2020
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Natural means "existing in or produced by nature". Stonehenge exists in nature but nature did not produce it. It is artificial with respect to its origins. Hurricanes exist in nature and are produced by nature. They are natural through and through. It all depends on the context, Andrew.ET_{January 28, 2020
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"So nothing exists in nature? Nothing is produced by nature? Really?" ET, You are not thinking about this clearly. Things exist, obviously. But what do you mean by 'nature'? Can you explain to us what nature is and what it isn't? Is it everything? What comes with a 'not natural' sign on it? Andrewasauber_{January 28, 2020
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I liked Dembski's dissection of the term 'natural selection':
",, intelligent design is a thoroughly apt phrase, signifying that design is inferred because an intelligent agent has done what only intelligent agents can do, namely, make a choice. If intelligent design is a thoroughly apt phrase, the same cannot be said for the phrase natural selection. The second word of the phrase natural selection, is of course a synonym for choice. Indeed the l-e-c in selection is a variant of the l-e-g that in the Latin lego means to choose or select, and that also appears as l-i-g in intelligence. Natural selection is therefore an oxymoron. It attributes the power to choose, which properly belongs to intelligent agents, to natural causes, which inherently lack the power to choose." - William Dembski - Science and the Myth of Progress - pg 294 - 2003
As Adam Sedgwick pointed out to Charles Darwin himself about his 'grand principle' of natural selection, “what is it but a secondary consequence of supposed, or known, primary facts. Development is a better word because more close to the cause of the fact.”,,, and yet,,, “You write of “natural selection” as if it were done consciously by the selecting agent.”
From Adam Sedgwick to Charles Darwin? 24 November 1859 Cambridge Excerpt: As to your grand principle—natural selection—what is it but a secondary consequence of supposed, or known, primary facts. Development is a better word because more close to the cause of the fact. For you do not deny causation. I call (in the abstract) causation the will of God: & I can prove that He acts for the good of His creatures. He also acts by laws which we can study & comprehend— Acting by law, & under what is called final cause, comprehends, I think, your whole principle. You write of “natural selection” as if it were done consciously by the selecting agent. ’Tis but a consequence of the presupposed development, & the subsequent battle for life.— https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2548.xml
And indeed this faux power for nature to supposedly choose between options is woven throughout the 'just-so story telling' of Darwinists in which they give nature the power to supposedly 'select' whatever characteristic one is seeking to explain the origination of simply because they can imagine it had some sort of fitness advantage over not having that particular advantage. As Stephen Jay Gould explained, “Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers “Just So stories”. When evolutionists study individual adaptations, when they try to explain form and behaviour by reconstructing history and assessing current utility, they also tell just so stories – and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.”
Sociobiology: The Art of Story Telling – Stephen Jay Gould – 1978 – New Scientist Excerpt: Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers “Just So stories”. When evolutionists study individual adaptations, when they try to explain form and behaviour by reconstructing history and assessing current utility, they also tell just so stories – and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. https://books.google.com/books?id=tRj7EyRFVqYC&pg=PA530
To repeat, "Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance." Try telling that line to your physics professor and see what kind of response you get! :) Here are a few more quotes along that line:
“… another common misuse of evolutionary ideas: namely, the idea that some trait must have evolved merely because we can imagine a scenario under which possession of that trait would have been advantageous to fitness… Such forays into evolutionary explanation amount ultimately to storytelling… it is not enough to construct a story about how the trait might have evolved in response to a given selection pressure; rather, one must provide some sort of evidence that it really did so evolve. This is a very tall order.…” — Austin L. Hughes, The Folly of Scientism – The New Atlantis, Fall 2012 EVOLUTIONARY JUST-SO STORIES Excerpt: ,,,The term “just-so story” was popularized by Rudyard Kipling’s 1902 book by that title which contained fictional stories for children. Kipling says the camel got his hump as a punishment for refusing to work, the leopard’s spots were painted on him by an Ethiopian, and the kangaroo got its powerful hind legs after being chased all day by a dingo. Kipling’s just-so stories are as scientific as the Darwinian accounts of how the amoeba became a man. Lacking real scientific evidence for their theory, evolutionists have used the just-so story to great effect. Backed by impressive scientific credentials, the Darwinian just-so story has the aura of respectability. Biologist Michael Behe observes: “Some evolutionary biologists–like Richard Dawkins–have fertile imaginations. Given a starting point, they almost always can spin a story to get to any biological structure you wish” (Michael Behe – Darwin’s Black Box).,,, http://www.wayoflife.org/database/evolutionary_just_so_stories.html “Evolutionary biology, in contrast with physics and chemistry, is a historical science — the evolutionist attempts to explain events and processes that have already taken place. Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques for the explication of such events and processes. Instead one constructs a historical narrative, consisting of a tentative reconstruction of the particular scenario that led to the events one is trying to explain.” Ernst Mayr – Darwin’s Influence on Modern Thought – Nov. 2009 – Originally published July 2000
In fact fitness itself, which plays a central role in the concept of natural selection., and which also figures centrally in the equations of population genetics, lacks a rigid mathematical definition. In fact, many leading thinkers can't even agree on exactly what fitness is suppose to be;
An Open Letter to Teachers teaching Natural Selection - 2012-03-07 Excerpt: Let’s look at the concept of “fitness” first. Fitness plays a central role in the concept of natural selection. There are at least two ways that scientists and philosophers view fitness. The propensity view of fitness argues that fitness is a probabilistic propensity while a statistical view sees fitness as a subjective probability. The propensity view sees fitness as a causal factor while the statistical view "deprives fitness of any causal or explanatory power". https://seop.illc.uva.nl/entries/fitness/#FitSubPro It is an ongoing discussion and here are a few articles discussing the role of fitness in evolutionary biology. *Two ways of thinking about natural selection *Selection and Causation (argues against a causal view) *Fitness and Propensity’s Annulment? *Fitness (Stanford Encyclopaedia) *Matthen and Ariew’s Obituary for Fitness: Reports of its Death have been Greatly Exaggerated (argues for a causal propensity view) *What fitness can't be (argues against a causal view) https://www.news24.com/MyNews24/An-Open-Letter-to-Teachers-teaching-Natural-Selection-20120307 The Strength of Natural Selection in the Wild - David Berlinski - April 25, 2005 Excerpt: Natural selection disappears as a biological force and reappears as a statistical artifact. The change is not trivial. It is one thing to say that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution; it is quite another thing to say that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of various regression correlations between quantitative characteristics. It hardly appears obvious that if natural selection is simply a matter of correlations established between quantitative traits, that Darwin’s theory has any content beyond the phenomenological, and in the most obvious sense, is no theory at all. - Berlinski http://www.discovery.org/a/2531/
Moreover, the more rigid one becomes in his mathematical definition of fitness, then the more obvious it becomes that the mathematics of population genetics actually falsifies Darwinian evolution, and does not support it:
Defending the validity and significance of the new theorem “Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection With Mutations, Part I: Fisher’s Impact – Bill Basener and John Sanford - February 15, 2018 Excerpt: While Fisher’s Theorem is mathematically correct, his Corollary is false. The simple logical fallacy is that Fisher stated that mutations could effectively be treated as not impacting fitness, while it is now known that the vast majority of mutations are deleterious, providing a downward pressure on fitness. Our model and our correction of Fisher’s theorem (The Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection with Mutations), take into account the tension between the upward force of selection with the downward force of mutations.,,, Our paper shows that Fisher’s corollary is clearly false, and that he misunderstood the implications of his own theorem. He incorrectly believed that his theorem was a mathematical proof that showed that natural selection plus mutation will necessarily and always increase fitness. He also believed his theorem was on a par with a natural law (such as entropic dissipation and the second law of thermodynamics). Because Fisher did not understand the actual fitness distribution of new mutations, his belief in the application of his “fundamental theorem of natural selection” was fundamentally and profoundly wrong – having little correspondence to biological reality. Therefore, we have reformulated Fisher’s model and have corrected his errors, thereby have established a new theorem that better describes biological reality, and allows for the specification of those key variables that will determine whether fitness will increase or decrease. http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/defending-the-validity-and-significance-of-the-new-theorem-fundamental-theorem-of-natural-selection-with-mutations-part-i-fishers-impact/
In short, fitness itself, when more properly defined mathematically in order to more accurately reflect biological reality, then fitness itself ends up falsifying Darwinian evolution in general and natural selection in particular.bornagain77_{January 28, 2020
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So nothing exists in nature? Nothing is produced by nature? Really?ET_{January 28, 2020
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By the way, according to "naturalists": A) Everything is "Nature". B) We are the result of "Nature". C) Hence, we humans, are "natural". Conclusion: "If we select plants or animal breeds," We are "Natural Selection" in action. Where did "daddy" Darwin get the term "artificial" selection then? Was he suggesting we are different than the "rest" of Nature? Was "daddy" Darwin suggesting human exceptionalism? Truthfreedom_{January 28, 2020
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Does it not signify either panentheism or animism ? Whatever aspect of nature does the selecting, is the subject doing the selecting, and must be intelligent after some fashion. How would sunflowers have the nous to continue to face the sun by a seamless sequence of rationally sequential coincidences - a product of design, and necessarily, of purpose ? We're mad arguing with these people, aren't we ? Where there had been one fool before, our interlocutors creating another fool to keep them company in the 'secure unit', known as the scientific-establishment consensus - if only to argue with them.Axel_{January 28, 2020
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ET, 'Natural' itself is a human abstraction. It's not detectable by any measuring device. It's imaginary. It's not science. It's a philosophical position. Andrewasauber_{January 28, 2020
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If you have differential reproduction due to heritable chance (random) mutations, you have natural selection. How is that a human construct?ET_{January 28, 2020
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'Natural' - Good luck with coming up with a scientific definition for that. 'Selection' - What's doing the selecting here? The Grim Reaper? Death Himself choosing who goes? No science here. Evolutionists should go back to the land and take up farming. Do something constructive instead of wasting everyone's time. Andrewasauber_{January 28, 2020
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F***ing "Natural Selection" is a human construct. We humans observe that some living things last more than others, and then we label that difference as "selection". Truthfreedom_{January 28, 2020
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Natural selection is a process of elimination. If you have differential reproduction due to heritable chance (random) mutations, you have natural selection. The less fit get eliminated over time. It has never been shown to be the designing force Darwin envisioned.ET_{January 28, 2020
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Natural Selection Not The Only Process That Drives Evolution?
Why have some of our genes evolved rapidly? It is widely believed that Darwinian natural selection is responsible, but new research suggests that a separate neutral (nonadaptive) process has made a significant contribution to human evolution." "The researchers identified fast evolving human genes by comparing our genome with those of other primates. However, surprisingly, the patterns of molecular evolution in many of the genes they found did not contain signals of natural selection. Instead, their evidence suggests that a separate process known as BGC (biased gene conversion) has speeded up the rate of evolution in certain genes. This process increases the rate at which certain mutations spread through a population, regardless of whether they are beneficial or harmful. "The research not only increases our understanding of human evolution, but also suggests that many techniques used by evolutionary biologists to detect selection may be flawed," says Matthew Webster of the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Microbiology at Uppsala University.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090126203207.htmTruthfreedom_{January 28, 2020
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Mimus, you might also want to look up some of the prominent promoters of what is termed 'neutral theory', i.e. Graur and Moran for example. A theory in which selection is rendered, for all practical purposes, null and void, in that they hold selection is apparently incapable of eliminating the vast amounts of junk DNA that they postulate must exist in DNA in order to make some type of naturalistic evolution feasible. In fact, Moran has claimed right here on UD, a couple of times that I'm aware of, that he is emphatically 'not a Darwinist' since he rejects natural selection as a major player in evolution. Just how random chance, all by its lonesome, can produce the overwhelming 'appearance of design', minus selection as the supposed 'designer substitute', Moran never explains and is apparently left for others to figure out.bornagain77_{January 28, 2020
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“No one in the mainstream scientific community now takes selection literally.”
This was such an odd statement I had to look up its origin. It's from Mazur's own interview of Eugine Koonin . All Koonin is saying is that there is that selection doesn't entail and actual selector. That does nothing to diminish the importance of natural selection at all.Mimus_{January 28, 2020
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