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Evolution - Beyond the Popular Science
In Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution Carroll undertook an ambitious project - nothing less than to update George Gaylord Simpson's classic works from the 1940s and 50s, Tempo and Mode in Evolution and The Major Features of Evolution. The result is a "broad picture" overview of the processes of evolutionary change, centred on paleontology but attempting to integrate that with the rest of biology. Patterns and Processes is aimed at students of paleontology and specialists in that and related fields, but it should also be considered by general readers: while it goes into quite involved details, they are always used to illustrate broader ideas and there is solid motivation for persevering with them. It is especially recommended to those unhappy with the lack of substance in popular debates over the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which Carroll critically appraises. Patterns and Processes is effectively illustrated with line-drawings and figures and has a useful glossary.
Carroll begins with an overview of current problems in evolutionary theory and in particular of the "gap" between short- and long-term processes in evolution, and between paleontology and other disciplines. He also discusses the choice of the vertebrates as a testing ground (which is picked up at the end of the book in a brief comparison with invertebrate metazoa, prokaryotes, protists, and vascular plants). He then provides an overview of theories of evolution, at the level of populations and species, from Darwin through Dobzhansky and Mayr to Gould and Eldredge.
Two chapters present some essential background. The first looks at evolution in modern populations, in particular at rates of evolution among the Galapagos island finches, where significant directional change does occur and doesn't appear to be correlated with speciation. The second considers some of the limitations of fossil evidence, the irregularity of fossilization and other stratigraphic issues and problems with the dating of events and processes and the measurement of rates of evolution.
Next come two case studies. The rates and directions of change among late Cenozoic mammals are examined with an eye to testing theories of punctuated equilibrium and species selection. Many lineages exhibit stasis "of particular characters and character complexes," but in none is there stasis of all characters and phyletic evolution is common. And "no major trends involving a complex of character changes can be demonstrated as having resulted from species selection." In contrast, the rapid radiation of the cichlid fish of the East African Great Lakes provides some evidence for species level evolution, and a bridge between macroevolution and microevolution.
Four separate chapters focus on related disciplines, in an attempt to reunify different fields. Taxonomy influences our basic concepts of evolutionary patterns as well as providing tools for discovering them; phylogenetic systematics (cladistics) has been particular influential, offering "an objective way to compare patterns of large-scale evolution from group to group and within groups over time" and forcing reconsideration of traditional naming schemes in the vertebrates. With evolutionary genetics Carroll presents some basic models, focusing on quantitative traits; he touches on the enigma of low selection coefficients and on genetic constraints.
Turning to developmental biology, Carroll surveys heterochrony, homeobox and Hox genes, and the phylotypic stage. He then applies this to the origin of craniates and skull and axial skeleton development, but above all to tetrapod limbs, to their origins, developmental processes, morphogenesis, and evolution. He also considers the integration of developmental biology with the evolutionary synthesis and its possible connections with macroevolution. Other constraints are imposed by physics: Carroll considers vertebrate locomotion in water, in the air, and on land, and touches on membrane transport, heat transfer, and size scaling.
Three chapters then look at large scale structure and patterns in evolution. A chapter on "major transitions" focuses on movements between environments: the most detailed study is of the origin of birds, but others cover the origins of terrestrial vertebrates, mosasaurs, and whales. Critical periods saw rates of change exceeding those in ancestral and descendant groups, but not those observed in modern populations; more importantly, directions of change were sustained for long periods. Turning to radiations, Carroll treats at length the Cambrian explosion and the radiation of early Cenozoic mammals: occurring in intervals of 10 million years or less; these differ from other, slower radiations into already occupied environments and "can certainly be attributed to factors that were not considered by Darwin". At the largest scales, vertebrate evolution has been irregular, driven by "forces" that can't be extrapolated from those operating at the level of populations and species: among them sustained evolutionary trends, continental drift, and mass extinctions.
Among Carroll's overall conclusions:
"Evolutionary forces that can be studied in modern populations are sufficiently powerful to account for the amount and rate of morphological change throughout the entire course of vertebrate history."
and
"Transitions between environments governed by major differences in physical constraints do not necessarily require special evolutionary processes."
but at the same time
"Large-scale patterns of evolution cannot be fully explained by processes that are directly observable at the level of modern populations and species.... the patterns, rates, and controlling forces of evolution are much more varied than had been conceived by either Darwin or Simpson."
And macroevolution is essentially historical, with each major event "unique and worthy of detailed study in its own right".
Patterns and Processes in Vertebrate Evolution combines clear exposition of details - and what appears to be an encyclopedic knowledge of vertebrate history - with a willingness to tackle big questions. Sometimes Carroll seems to take both sides of debates, but that is a reflection of respect for complexity, not of unengaged fence-sitting. The result is a useful overview for students or outsiders; it also seems to have established itself as a minor classic within the field.
You might want to purchase Patterns and Processes in Vertebrate Evolution from bn.com or read some of Danny's other evolution book reviews. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Yesterday I found out my boss is a devout 7-day creationist. I myself am an athiest, but I did not admit this to her for fear of my job :P Anyway we entered a heated discussion about the origins of the universe, and frankly I provided more evidence through the big bang theory and our information about human vs. ape genetics that she simply back into the "faith" arguement. This article will give me the fodder I need to lay her flat on her ass the next time discussion of such things comes up. Thanks slashdot!
I bet it's easy to go through life thinking you're a biological mistake. No morals, no absolute truth; no right or wrong. It's all random chemical interactions in your brain. Rape, steal, kill. No reason not to if this is all there is.
Ignorance is bliss.
You should read it some time, and point out where it says you, today, should do that.
While you're there, find out what happened/happens to the people that do those things.
Hey, dude, if you honestly need to believe in a God that will sentence you to eternal torture in order to keep yourself from raping, stealing, and killing, then .. wow. Please, by all means, continue to believe. My personal concern is for the safety of my family, and if your beliefs will prevent you from harming them, then please hold on to them.
Some of us have gotten past all of that and have realized that you don't need a vengeful deity holding a metaphorical shotgun to your head in order to behave in a moral and ethical matter. But if you're not there yet, then please do whatever it takes, dude.
While you're there, find out what happened/happens to the people that do those things.
;-)
Heh. They established a homeland between Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon.
With all of this talk about order and Disorder, perhaps someone should attempt to define order or disorder, without being circular in their definitions.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Looks like they got away with the incestuous rape of their father, with a rather spurious justification.
What a fascinating pile of crap!
As an example closer to home take a look at common dogs. I can bet that some biologist in the far future (say 100 million years from now) is going to find all of these dog fossils, especially in pet cemetaries, etc. and conclude that these were all different species of animal. A chihauhau vs a Saint Bernard? the same species? come on now.... ;-)
This loose grey zone is probably part of the problem. and I can see them trying desperately trying to find the intermediate forms in the fossil record. They will have just "mysteriously appeared"
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Evolution is always promoted as being founded on scientific facts that were collected by Darwin, and this was why it gradually gained acceptance in the universities, schools etc. This book demonstrates that it was promoted for many years before Darwin, his Origin of Species only appearing at the right time.
The ground work for the acceptance of evolution was laid by Charles Lyell in his Principles of Geology. He quickly befriended Darwin when he returned from the Beagle voyage and the circumstantial evidence is that it was he who suggested to Darwin he should write about evolution. Darwin had no thought of it before then.
Throughout the famous Beagle voyage, Darwin was far more interested in geology than biology. He did NOT think of evolution whilst visiting the Galapagos and seeing the various beaks of the finches. This was pointed out to him by the ornithologist entrusted with his collection AFTER he had returned to England. He made many such (false) claims in his "biography" which he wrote late in his life.
As an agnostic, I do not agree that science and faith are similar. I see the scientific process of demanding precise cause and effect justifications as the complete opposite of faith, a process that by its very nature is divorced from rational inquiry.
/. lets me moderate after posting anonymously.
Your question implies that there are two world views, the scientific and the Christian. In reality, there are many more: Other religions, the aesthetic, the apathetic, the ineffable, and the otherwise dogmatic. Christianity and science both are in conflict with all of these; you may have as well asked when nihilism will receive its turn in the review spotlight.
All of this said (to what must have taken you only 10 seconds to type as a throw away line) I intend to mod you up if Slashdot lets me do so. Even if it doesn't, I hope to encourage people not to mod faith punitively.
Religion is a widely held worldview, and hardly counts as flame-bait. Let me repeat that, RELIGION IS NOT A TROLL. It is a serious objection, and one that is worth debating in a thread with every post +5 so that everyone reads it.
To conclude this hastily composed reply, I hope your response gets modded back up from 1 - a punitive disagreement mod - so that someone will take the time to express their opinions on the matter. I hope that some Atheist rises to the challenge and delivers a heartfelt and logically immaculate defense of free thought, and I hope some God fearing writer replies with an equally eloquent and elegant defense of religious belief.
Now, lets see if
First off, I hope this doesn't enevitably descend into a flame war.
That said I would like to ask for honest and open thoughts on whether it is possible for faith in 7 day creationism and micro-evolution to co-exist. God created species, which naturally adapt to their environment. What evidence for macro evolution is out there that is non consistant with such a view point? All the evidence for macro evolution I'm aware of does not seem to fit better with either creation and micro-evolution or macro+micro evolution.
nothing circular about that.
Keep reading... They didn't 'get away with it'... their descendants, the Moabites and Ammonites were shunned or at worst hunted down by Israelites in later portions of the Old Testament.
While we're on the subject... what does the story suggest to you about the wisdom and consequences of Lot raising his family in Sodom and Gomorrah?
--JACH
lacks a backbone.
No morals, no absolute truth; no right or wrong.
Wrong. Morals are created by human beings.
The moral code YOU apparently believe in was created by a band of savage goat herders in the Middle East thousands of years ago, not by some spook. The spook part is just to delude the ignorant.
If you want to see the consequence of applying the moral code of savage Middle Eastern goat herders to the modern world, I direct you to Ground Zero, New York, New York.
You think Christanity or Judaism are any better? Try actually READING your Bible, rather than thumping it. Start with Numbers Chapter 31.
It may give you a whole different perspective on the presumed raping, killing, and murdering that you allege will be committed by nonbelievers.
Your moral code sucks. It was designed for ignorant savages. If you adhere to it, that makes YOU an ignorant savage.
The concepts of "microevolution" and "macroevolution" are basically arbitrary distinctions invented by people who are forced to admit that biological evolution does, in fact, happen, but cannot accept that twin-nested hierarchies of evolutionary common descent are the source of the biodiversity on Earth.
Let me give you an example. If I stand on one side of my living room and take tiny toe-to-heel steps, I will reach the other side of my living room within a minute or so. If I stand on one edge of my town and do the same thing, I'll reach the other side in a day or so. If I stand in New York and do the same thing, I'll reach Los Angeles in a few hundred years (just a guess, really.)
The point is this: in each of the three examples, the results are increasingly visible and dramatic, but the process is exactly the same. You would not, I presume, suggest that I was "micro-walking" in my living room and "macro-walking" across America. Some people seem to think that evolution is some sort of directed Black Magik. It's not. Biological evolution is variation in the gene pool of a population over time. That's it. That's all it is. The fact that its results are more visible and dramatic over time should not be particularly surprising to anybody.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
That was absolutely brilliant. Thank you.
Without god, there are no moral absolutes, goes the argument. And without moral absolutes, why, what's to prevent all sorts of immorality?
Therefore, attempts to debate the theory of evolution with "christian" fundamentalists, or their fellow travelers, is pointless, because you are challenging their entire world view, not objectively evaluating competing scientific theories.
FWIW, almost all thinking non-fundamentalist Christians, as do most educated people regardless of religious belief/nonbelief, realize evolution is a scientific reality.
And we, the vast majority, further realize that evolution doesn't imply anything about morality, or the existence of god, one way or the other.
And therefore there is no reason to waste time in high school science classes teaching theories like creationism that are neither theologically nor scientifically interesting.
Order cannot happen without disorder, beings can't just become more orderly beings by themself. Our brains are too tiny to comprehend the universe, that's why some people have to believe evolution. We can't understand why or how a greater being created this world, but we know that we are living and we need an explanation. Even if you believe evolution, you don't know where it came from.
Jonahweb.com has stuff.
You don't need fossils to show that life started out simple and monocellurar and progressed through more complex, multi-cellular forms. You can find evidence of it in structure, morphology, and DNA.
The analogy to computer code is really very striking. Imagine primitive life to be the base objects, and later forms of life to be programs built of of these base objects (except that the base objects are continuously tweaked in parallel)
Life's "toolbox" grows more complex with time, and the traces of that development can be followed back through time by examinining the microbiology.
The fossil record just confirms this.
Mind you, a lot of books on evolution talk about the fossil record, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that fossils are much easier to find (and can be done with less technology) that tracing back microbiological cues. We haven't known about DNA for all that long, really, but now that we do, it makes for overwhelming evidence.
In order for a 7-day-creation to "work" God would have had to "fake" all the evolutionary processes that developed the more complex forms of life - that seems like a strange thing for him to want to do.
You need to ask yourself: what makes more sense, a constant,long-running, natural process that slowly develops ever-increasingly complex biological processes, or an invisible, omnipotent being that willed all life - complete with a bogus innate biological "history" of development baked inside their cells - out of nothing?
Which seems more likely? (especially when we have evidence of the biological processes at work, but zero evidence of any supernatural boogeyman)
Give me some fruit flies and a lab, and I can demonstrate evolution for you. No faith required, I can make it happen right in front of you.
I defy you to produce God in front of me.
Darwin certainly did not claim to have discovered evolution. The evidence for evolution of some sort was accepted by a large number (though far from all) scientists and interested people for some time before Darwin - amongst them, Darwin's Grandfather, Josiah Wedgewood, so the idea was far from new.
What Darwin did was find an explanation for evolution - a mechanism by which it occurred. Undoubtedly Lyell believed in, and pointed out to Darwin, the operation of evolution. And the ornithologist certainly pointed that all the finches he had brought back (and carelessly jumbled up) appeared to be descended from a singel ancestor. His book is titled "On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", and it is the "Means of natural Selection" bit that is original.
To assert that Darwin claimed to have discovered Evolution is like claiming that Columbus discovered the Atlantic. Columbnus dicovered how to cross the atlantic, and Darwin discovered hopw to explain Evolution.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Just ask the Caananites.
Or the Jebusites.
Or the Sodomites.
Or the first born sons of the Egyptians.
Shall I go on?
For all you fools out there who think evolution is a proven fact, please read a book called Not By Chance! by Lee Spetner, an information theorist from MIT who has studied evolution on the side since the 1960's. He proves rigorously that Neo-Carwinian evolution could not have happened -- or rather is about as unlikely as tossing 10,000,000 coins at random and having them all come up heads (yes, that is "possible", I guess).
On second thought, don't bother. Your mind is made up and you wouldn't want to be confused with the facts. And Spetner offers no religious alternative, so you cannot attack him as a religious fanatic, so what strawman argument will you fall back on instead?
Just for the record, I do not personally believe in "creation science", nor do I think that science can explain how "creation" occurred, but I am amazed at how completely fooled Slashdot readers are by the completely discredited neo-Darwinian theory of evolution. If Darwin were here, I think he'd slap you all upside the head.
RussP.org
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
-Evolution theory as formulated by Darwin does NOT assert that all sentient life arose from total chaos and disorder with no outside influence. Its premise is that evolution does occur, and that the mechanism is natural selection.
-"Survival of the fittest" does NOT mean that organisms more suited to their environment will survive. Let me repeat and rephrase that. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST DOES NOT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH PHYSICAL/INTELLETUAL FITNESS. Darwinian "fitness" is a measure of reproductive success. The more offspring an organism leaves, the greater its fitness, in a Darwinian sense. Thus, mutations (which we observe all the time in the laboratory, for you naysayers. Ever wonder how bacterial colonies develop resistance to toxins?) that increase progeny are more likely to accumulate in the population, and eventually become traits of the entire species. That organisms appear more suited to their environment because of natural selection is a side-effect, possible corollary, but NOT central to Darwin's theory. If my children mutate so they are stronger, faster, and more intelligent than ever before, it all means jack shit if they're also infertile. By the same token, that trailer park skank with an IQ of 80 and ten kids is more fit than you 25-year-old genius virgins. Ponder the relationship of this fact to the state of the world today. Rinse, repeat.
This seems like a good forum to get responses to a theory I've had in my head for about a year now.
Given a mass of matter, floating in space, its atoms interacting with one another making random combinations. Eventually, over billions or even trillions of years, every possible combination of molecular structures will be created from these random interactions.
What if one of these random structures coming out of this process naturally attempts to create copies of itself, using the resources around it? What if this structure doesn't make perfect copies, but creates copies that are the closest it can come to an exact copy with the resources around it? Exactly at what point does this molecular compound become life?
I'm not looking for flames, just good arguments why this can't happen. It's the most reasonable explaination of the source of life that I have come up with.
There goes another £29. Why do you do this to me? The pile of Books To Read is already a structural hazard.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
If you do actually study The Bible, you'll see that the Isrealites never commited genocide without a direct order from God, as punishment on a completely corrupted race.
Apart from obedience to a direct order from God to carry out His judgement, the Isrealites could not have accomplished these military conquests within the bounds of the Moral Law. To do so would have VIOLATED their morality by presuming to pass judgement in God's place.
As for the events of 9-11-01, what makes you think those attacks were compatable with Hebrew morality? Don't assess a morality by those who don't adhere to it. The same goes for the Crusades. That whole series of atrocities may have happened in the "name" of Christianity, but not within any Christian morality or obedience to God. Don't mistake the Pope for God.
I think this is the first time I've ever seen someone's sig get /.'d.
And I like Bujold too... damnit.
So-called fundamentalists care because we're right. The Lord created heavens and earth in six days - it's right there in the Bible. Deny at your own peril.
20721
you can never be precise enough with vague terms ;)
"..groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural
populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups"
somehow I'm still missing the word viable in this definition
All things short of a methematical 'proof' in science is theory, including gravitation and even cause-and-effect itself. The word 'theory' in science has an entirely different connotation to what it has in common parlence, and in particular to the way you use it here.
What you are equating evolution with is a hypothesis, not a theory, and the two are very different. Or, put another way,
The theory is not did evolution happen. We already know evolution did and does happen, there is a mountain of factual data underscoring that point. What is theoretical and debated (by scientists) is what the mechanism is by which primates became human and dinasaurs became birds. The fact that it happened is denied only by those with a religious agenda, whose fragile beliefs are challenged by the factual data collected by thousands of researches all over the face of the planet.
And I know this non-fundamental Christian believes God could have used evolution to create us.
And I know this Athiest believes aliens could have seeded the Earth with proto-human life, but until I see some sensible evidence indicating that such might be the case, I'm not going to pay the notion much heed.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Or do you believe that justice is not a legitimate part of a moral code?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
That is kinda strange as all religions believe in creationism. However, people of most other religions seem to realize the distinction between faith-based religious beliefs and scientific facts like evolution. Also, this debate seems to be the hottest in America alone. Why is that?
I don't want to hurt anyone's sensibilities, but history is filled with instances of the Christian church condemning the scientific world and trying to regulate what the scientists say.
I am interested in knowing the views of all you calm people out there as to why evolution is so vigorously attacked by America's religious Christians alone and not so much by other religions/countries?
All your favorite sites in one place!
Of all the topics that come up regularly on Slashdot, this is certainly the least productive. I doubt that anyone is interested in hearing anything other than their own comfortable beliefs. For those that don't mind being challenged, here is a discussion from a radio program called The White Horse Inn entitled "How Can I Believe in Creation when Evolution is a Scientific Fact?" I expect it should make everyone unhappy, but perhaps it will make some on this forum rethink their positions - at least about Christians if not on the evolution/creation debate.
For those who might be interested in the differences between the various creation theories in the Christian community, there is also part 1 and part 2 of a debate on the subject.
All three are RealAudio, about 25 minutes long.
There was an article in Scientific American entitled "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense", which covers the 15 most misconstrued aspects of Evolution, and defends them. Here is an exceprt, which seems pertinent to a lot of posts on here already: "1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law. Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth." People who are arguing that Evolution is just theory, do you argue with math as well? Pythagorean theorem, theory of relativity, etc. Are those not true, also? FUll article here.
Let's assume you're right, and all of these societies were corrupt.... (for the sake of argument...) What possible moral code would justify sending in an army, killing everything except the preteen girls, slaughtering the livestock, women and children, INCLUDING INFANTS, and taking said preteen girls back to your camp to be raped? (excuse me... 'married.')
And it's the CAANANITES that were corrupt?
How about Sodom? 'Oops... these people aren't bowing down and grovelling before my all powerfulness... and they're doin icky things with their slippery bits. Guess I'm going to have to drop a mountain on them. (After all... I'm all powerful and I can do that sort of thing.... this God job has some fun perks....) Yes I know it'll kill all of the women and children too... too bad. I guess they should have been born someplace else into different families. (Never mind that as an all powerful God I was the one responsible for having them born there in the first place...) Too bad. Oops. I guess I can't kill EVERYBODY.... this one guy is grovelling enough for my tastes. So I guess I'll send down a flunky or two to get him and his family out of the city before I murder everybody else in it. No problem. It'll make for good press. Of course as an omniscient God I know ahead of time that his wife won't grovel enough... I'll just have to think of some novel way to get rid of her. Hmm... *munches on pretzels* AH HA!!!! SALT!!! Very cool. Sometimes I amaze even myself. And of course I also know that this one righteous man is going to proceed to have a drunken orgy with his own daughters afterward... but hell... he grovels. No problem. I'll overlook it. After all... I'm boss, remember?'
Your precious moral code gives a sociopathic tyrant free reign to do whatever the hell he wants. The sooner we as a society cast off the superstitions of a bunch of illiterate goat herders who respected only power and military strength, the better.
Was everyone who was killed corrupt?
Even the infants?
Or do you believe that genocide can be considered justice?
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
I love people who argue against facts with huge odds against. It doesn't matter how small the chances are that life was created out of non-living matter. It doesn't matter how small the chances are that life would then change and adapt and slowly give rise to the diversity of flora and fauna we see around us.
The fact is that it happened.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
I thought I was created by a Dog...
"Dog is an animal is a man is a child. Dog is breathing." -Godsdog by Skrew
Or maybe it was the Sleeper...
"May the Sleeper awaken." -a member of the Brotherhood in the video game "Gothic"
"They realized that their great Sleeper is an evil arch-demon" -main character
Every religion is a cult. At least science can be supported or disproven by use of logic.
How do you know your God exists? The Bible says so.
How do you know the Bible is accurate? Because it was inspired by God.
How can you not argue with that logic?
TodayTM BillyJoelTM GoogleTMd for StitchTMes due to WindowsTM while RollerbladeTMing with an AppleTM and a PopsicleTM
Don't confuse the "Christian Church" with the Roman Catholic Church. Contrary to Roman Catholic teaching, the Pope is NOT the head of the church. The Pope and the Roman Catholic church may have tried to control a few people and their ideas, but Christianity has as a theme that believers should do the research, and check things out for themselves.
As an interesting side note, the Roman Catholic Church does sponsor scientific reasearch. Unfortunately, I have no links handy.
Macro evolution as described in the big bang theory says simple cell or single cell organisms evolved gradually over billions of years into the animals and people we have today.
Micro evolution is like the finches that are so often discussed. They were move from one part of the world to some island. Their beaks changed shapes and there were other changes. Another type is the mice that were moved that they say have developed into a "different species".
I have no problem with micro evolution. Animals (and probably people) will change biologically to some extent if given the proper conditions. This is no proof for macro evolution. The finches are still birds and the mice are still mice. Since they are not breeding with a large a gene pool as before, they change over time. They will have LESS genetic information. Which is a loss (duh). Macro evolution states things go from least complex to more complex. Single cell to animals we have today. It can't be proven that the changes in the finces prove this aspect of Macro evolutoin.
Not into statistics or information theory are we?
If you don't like the books example, then use fermions. They have similar behavior.
A Usenet Troll Triumphs on Slashdot
It seems like evidence for macroevolution on the changing species level is what is missing. The cichlid fish is an interesting case study but from my minimal research on the matter it does not seem to provide that needed "bridge". It still seems to be firmly in the realm of microevolution.
I wish this review has discussed how this book compares to other books written on this topic, say A.S. Romer's _The Vertebrate Story_ (4th. ed., Chicago, 1959) or the well-known works of Stephen S. Gould.
If nothing else, a suggestion for future reviews.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Since you're so big on encouraging others to read their Bibles, why don't you try reading yours? How about the last half (roughly) in particular, the one sometimes referred to as the "New Testament"? The days of the Law (and some of the rules you referred to) ended with the start of the NT, but I'm sure you already knew that, you just chose to take a passage out of context to goad those who wouldn't catch your error. And that smarmy comment about rules you consider "Christian" leading to the tragedy of 9/11? Brilliant. [/sarcasm]
"We are far too easily pleased." --C.S. Lewis
I hate to intrude into the creationism vs. evolution debates which seem to be dominating this discussion, but I actually have a _different_ question. We all know that high school and perhaps introductory college texts on general biology have often become seriously watered down and error-ridden. Stephen Jay Gould wrote one amusing essay on how a particular error (something to do with _Eohippus_, which isn't named _Eohippus_ anymore I guess, but I like the old name) has propagated itself, unchecked, from text to text.
Frankly I don't trust many high school or freshman level textbooks in _any_ subject. So I'd like to know: can anyone recommend a scholarly, well-referenced textbook, aimed about about the twelfth-grade level, in biology, in particular one which does a good job of covering evolution? Any particular authors and titles stand out? Any good resources to reviews and critiques of popular science textbooks?
The popular works have their place, but they're all deficient in some way. Gould is too scattershot--he's an essayist, really--and Dawkins is too polemical (frankly I think Dawkins has become an unmitigated jackass in recent years, and I'm not a creationist.)
hyacinthus.
I don't think you (or most people) really understand what evolution is
The implied assumption in your statement is that you do! - such hurbis is often a clear indication of ignorance.
However, the fossil record fails to show the progressive transformation of any living organism into a distinctly different kind of organism. The fossil record is "punctuated" by new fully formed organism. Is it not this observation that is the prime mover behind the concept of the "hopeful monster" or punctuated equilibrum.
Evolution goes a long ways towards explaining our wonderful landscape of crickets and birds in the air, but don't you feel that there is still something lacking.
As an analogy, I think we are still living in the comparable ara of newtonian physics and still waiting for relativity.
Maybe I am coming at this the wrong way, but can someone explain how evolution would even get off the ground? If we start near the beginning (if there is such a thing) where we have a single-celled organism (how that organism came about we can leave to another discussion), how did it become multi-cellular? With the little biology I know, single-celled organisms reproduce by creating an exact copy of themselves. Without sexual reproduction, then there is no change in the next creature that comes out. That leaves us to random mutations to somehow create more complex living multi-cellular organisms. Now I may be wrong, but if I remember from my biology book, mutations are most of the time harmful (if not always -- especially dealing at this level of simplicity, mess with anything and it will probably die). Maybe this idea deals more with cell theory, but it seems to be a large hole to how evolution would even start/work.
This begs the question of why some people prefer a dishonest God. I'd rather live in an uncaring universe than with a God that lies to me.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
One day a wandering ant reports back to the colony that he experienced "God" (you) and that there is always food on your kitchen countertop. Upon investigation by the colony, the food is definitely there, but there remains speculation about "God" (you) because you are remarkably difficult for the ants to experiment upon: they can't get your attention. You do seemingly random things. And then when you go on vacation... it just about kills the "God" theory outright. Until you come back. The body of knowledge the ants build up about you (e.g. eating patterns etc.) is not "science" per se, because it isn't controllable. It's much more like religion--vague but important. Some ants believe in you, some don't... but the religion--the accumulated experience of some ants--is important, and effects the survival of the colony. Which is how science and religion are the same. Neither are absolute. Both are based on experience. And in the end, the only way to determine which theories are adaptive is to observe them over time... and even then realize that one doesn't actually "know"--only that for the time being one theory seems to work better. If only the ants could see this, they would be kinder to each other, and pay more attention to each other's experiences and reasons for believing what they do. Early on in this discussion, an "atheist" was belittling a Creationist boss. It should be observed that atheism, the belief that Deity doesn't exist, is a pure-faith belief system. Any superintelligence could evade detection indefinitely. Therefore, no evidence can ever be provided which will support the "Diety Doesn't Exist" theory, because by definition any such evidence could be contrived by Deity. The only meaningful statement would be "I personally don't think it is adaptive to explain X in terms of a superintelligence." And even then, the other party may have had different experiences which lead them, with good reason, to conclusions which are far more religious than yours.
Who the heck saw this flamebait with nothing but twisted logic 'insightful'?
Take another cup of coffee, moderators...
http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/scientific_am erican.asp
Surprisingly honest and scientific, for a group which is forever being derided as useless idiots.
And that smarmy comment about rules you consider "Christian" leading to the tragedy of 9/11? Brilliant. [/sarcasm]
How did I convey the idea that Christian morality lead to the 9/11 atrocity?
> I bet it's easy to go through life thinking you're a biological mistake. No morals, no absolute truth; no right or wrong. It's all random chemical interactions in your brain. Rape, steal, kill. No reason not to if this is all there is.
And how is divine creation any different? In a divinely created universe it's perfectly OK to commit genocide against a tribe competing with yours for the possession of a land you think your god promised to your people, or to fly a passenger plane into a building, if that's what you think your god wants you to do.
There is no morality in religion, just self-justification. I'll take my chances in a secular universe.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Okay. I can assume that you're living the Communist lifestyle commanded in the Acts of the Apostles, then?
I didn't quota a "passage" out of context. It's a full chapter. One among many. Hell, read the entire Book of Numbers.
Sure is funny how you thumpers talk about Mosaic law no longer being in force when it comes to things like, say, slaughtering unbelievers or wearking cotton/polyester blends, but you're perfectly willing to cite it against, say, homosexuality.
Tell me, where is the passage that tells us exactly which OT laws are still in force?
Irrational religious beliefs (and believers) are dangerous.
Evolution asserts to explain more than changes in characteristics due to interbreeding- it asserts to explain the origin and progress of all living things. Inheritability of breeding (whether fruit flies or sheep) was known 1000s of years ago.
It's not quite as demonstrable as you think, unless you pick a strawman definition. I can do that too. I defy you to produce evolution of man from molecules in front of me.
--JACH
While we're recommending books to each other, you might want to try Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" for some info on the subject of how science works - it's not the last word, but it serves as a good intro. I'll give you the ten-cent synopsis: just because someone comes along with a possibly plausible-sounding hypothesis, doesn't mean it's correct.
If Spetner does turn out to have a point, evolution would be changed fairly dramatically, but it is not really replaced, since crucial basic aspects of the theory remain unchanged. Saying that you are "amazed at how completely fooled Slashdot readers are" is a little like saying that you're amazed at how completely fooled people were by Newton's theory of gravity, right around the time Einstein first published his papers on General Relativity.
Slashdot readers are wise to reserve judgement on hypotheses like this one, until the affected discipline has had a chance to properly debate, test, and possibly assimilate the ideas.
Spatner's statistics often remind me of the statistics used to determine the probability of alien life in the universe: the results are all over the map, depending on who's doing the calculating and what their assumptions are. You could accept almost all of Spatner's logic and simply change a few assumptions, and come to a completely different conclusion.
An additional and unfortunate problem with Spetner's work is that the nature of the hypothesis is such that almost every crackpot religious group seems to have jumped on it as proof that "evolution can't be right", despite the fact that if anything, the hypothesis might in fact help to produce a more sophisticated theory of evolution. Blind religious crackpottery doesn't help in having a reasoned debate on the topic.
At present, I do not put much stock in the theory of evolution. Specifically, I see two holes in the theory.
The first problem I have is the small number of species in the fossil record. Evolution predicts the past existence of millions of species and we've only got thousands of different fossils. Basically, our copy of the record seems to be missing millions of species. It's so lacking that, of all the fossils we have, none of them are direct ancestors or descendants of any other fossil. We are missing links between every known point in the fossil chain which, of course, could imply that there is no chain. This lack of fossils is something Darwin mentioned as a problem in the "Origin of Species" (I don't remember exactly where) and, 130+ years later, this exact same problem still remains. In my opinion, our incomplete fossil record is, at best, inconclusive as supporting evidence and, at worst, damning as counter evidence.
The second problem I have with the theory is the lack of evidence for mutations increasing the amount of information in a gene pool. As I see it, there are two halves for the working theory of evolution: natural selection (reducing information) and mutation (increasing information). Natural selection has a lot of evidence and examples are seen all the time in the world. In contrast, mutation doesn't have any real world examples (again, that I know) of increasing the information of a gene pool over time. Basically, I'm saying that it is not sufficient to say that randomness 'just works'. At least show me how it works or, failing that, at least provide an actual working experiment showing randomness adding information to a system. I'd personally love to see a computer simulation demonstrating a gene sequence containing more information in it and arrived at only through random twiddling of the gene sequence.
Sorry for the long winded response but I really think there are some fatal flaws in the present theory. Anyone who knows better, please feel free correct this post.
Thanks,
AC
Ummm, my comment replied to the parent of yours, maybe you didn't see that. But if you are the same poster as the one I responded too, maybe I should give you more credit than I did. You are correct when you say the law was fulfilled in the New Testament (and I commend you for having more of a conceptual knowledge of the Bible, rather than just random passages quoted out of context, as is the want of most of the /. crowd), but that doesn't mean that all of the rules God set for the OT-Israelites carry forward to this day. The original intention of those rules was to guide the Israelites into a true heart condition of obedience to God, not just some trite do's and don'ts (which has unfortunately become the focus of some the more legalistic sects of Christianity and, admittedly, even of myself from time to time).
As to the original poster's (if that's indeed yourlself) conveying that Judeo-Christian ethics directly contributed to the deaths of 3,000 people a year ago? If you can't see that yourself, I don't know how to explain it to you.
"We are far too easily pleased." --C.S. Lewis
People talk about evolution as fact. Well, where is it, give me an example that you have seen yourself. And don't say dogs, because that is an example of selective breeding, not evolution. Evolution is the mutation of genes to form new genes. Selective breeding is combining existing genes into a new combination. It would be like saying that if a pure-blooded Asian, and a pure-blooded African had a child together, one that looked like a combination of the two, yet different from the two, it was a new species, a form of evolution. That's ridiculous, though, it is simply a form of breeding, not evolution. Most of you seem to just believe what you read in science books, taking it as fact, and then disagreeing with a certain other book, one that is the most read, most widely known, best selling book of all time. I'm sure most of you would like some kind of "sign" that God exists, but it is a "wicked and adulterous generation that seeks after a sign." The answers most of you seem to so desperately seek are there, in the Bible, you just have to open your eyes.
Wow. I don't even know where to begin in response to your post. Just for future note, it would be nice if would use the same login when responding to my reply to your post so I know it's the same person. But that's mostly beside the point...
I didn't quota a "passage" out of context. It's a full chapter. One among many. Hell, read the entire Book of Numbers.
Actually, I have read Numbers, and although some of the more specific commands God gave to the Israelites don't apply verbatim today, like the rest of the Bible, it has some great things to say. And, yes, you did quote a passage out of context. Context is not defined by a certain amount of words or page space, as you seem to believe. I said that you were taking the chapter out of context because you were using it as a stand-alone example of violence and hatred being encouraged under the Judeo-Christian value system. In reality, those commands were, at that time, for the protection of God's chosen people; the New Testament is full of commands to love your neighbors and enemys.
Sure is funny how you thumpers talk about Mosaic law no longer being in force when it comes to things like, say, slaughtering unbelievers or wearking cotton/polyester blends, but you're perfectly willing to cite it against, say, homosexuality.
Like I mentioned above, "slaughtering unbelievers" (although you greatly generalized and misconstrued that concept) was an OT thing. And it wasn't commanded wholesale, only at certain times. But that's too much to go into here...
I'm not sure about the fabric blends, but the homosexuality commandments were not just an OT thing, they were reinforced numerous times in the New Testament as well. But since you know your Bible so well, I shouldn't have to remind you of that...
Also, being the Bible scholar that you seem to make yourself out to be, I won't have to explain role of the New Testament in clarifying or doing away with other OT commandments.
Irrational religious beliefs (and believers) are dangerous.
True, but any kind of irrational beliefs (and their corresponding believers) are dangerous. The guy in the lane next to me who believes he can shave while driving is dangerous. The coder who creates a gaping whole in his sofware who believes its secure, because he didn't test it enough, is dangerous. Trying to make that sort of generalization apply only to religious beliefs is nothing but a cheap shot.
"We are far too easily pleased." --C.S. Lewis
Damn, that's better than the stories I read on alt.sex.stories.incest.
Thank you.
It sounds ridiculous, but think about it.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
These evolution debates sound oddly similar to the paradigm fight raging over in the Java-hello-world topic right now.
"frankly I think Dawkins has become an unmitigated jackass in recent years, and I'm not a creationist"
Agreed and true of me as well.
Dawkin's recent popular examples and computer models have been so flawed in their basic assumptions that I just have to shake my head. Yet he, and many others, seem to treat even a basic critique of such models as "Creationist Propaganda".
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Evolution is, in fact, losing credibility as people begin to look at it critically. Witness the fac that the journal Natural History, hardly a bastion of creationist thought, recognized the validity of Intelligent Design enough to give three ID proponents (Michael J. Behe, William A. Dembski, and Jonathan Wells) an unprecedented page and a half each to present thier arguments in favor of ID in the April 2002 issue.
The Behe argument is really nothing more than a complaint that knowledge of biochemical evolution is not well understood so far. A typical "Gaps equal God" argument.
He suggests that because nobody knows what the intermediate (simpler) versions of complex biochemical processes are, that intermediate versions likely are impossible, and thus they must have appeared as-is in their full, complex forms.
This of course is silly. Often "good enough" simple chemical processes are later replaced by more complex processes section by section (WRT "chain"). Just because we don't know what these earlier simpler forms are right now does NOT mean that they *cannot* exist.
Behe confuses "don't know" with "cannot".
If we did not have the Flying Squirrel as a living example, the evolution of bat flight might be harder to imagine, for example.
Table-ized A.I.
I have noticed that people generally assume that evolution takes place so slowly that it is impossible to directly observe complex creatures (such as insects) turn from one species to another. Is this correct? If people were to have evolved from a disticntly different species 3 million years ago with a full generation taking 24 yrs, then that would be 125000 generations. Now, if these were fruit flies with a generation occuring every 5 days, this would take about 68 years. Since we have been observing fruit flies for nearly this length of time and doing all sorts of experiments with them, shouldn't there be another species by now? And I'm not talking about steril 'freaks' with 4 wings, but a stable population with the same quantity if not greater quantity of genetic data than the previous species? To me, this would be substantial proof of evolution.
The Behe argument is really nothing more than a complaint that knowledge of biochemical evolution is not well understood so far. A typical "Gaps equal God" argument.
:-)
He suggests that because nobody knows what the intermediate (simpler) versions of complex biochemical processes are, that intermediate versions likely are impossible, and thus they must have appeared as-is in their full, complex forms.
This is not at all true, and pretty much proves you've not read what he's written. Behe's entire point is that there *is* such a thing as irreducible complexity, meaning that there cannot be any "intermediate versions" to find, for the simple reason that they cannot exist, since any partial or intermediate state would result in a non-functioning organism that could not survive. Some things simply had to be created all at once, whether you like the worldview implications of that or not...
If we did not have the Flying Squirrel as a living example, the evolution of bat flight might be harder to imagine, for example.
And if this doesn't illustrate the shallowness of evolutionist argument, I don't know what does. I'm pretty darn sure that no evolutionary scientist is willing to stand up and say that bats evolved from flying squirrels. Perhaps they evolved from flying snakes instead?
(Valid question: if evolution is as strong as it must be to support your argument, why would you argue against bats evolving from snakes? The reason is that even evolutionists recognize that the transition from reptile to mammal is effectively impossible, so they take pains to paint it as happening only once. See Stoneage Mutant Mammal Turtles for more on this topic...)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Some things simply had to be created all at once
For someone flaming evolutionists for making unsupported statements, that's a pretty big claim. What had to be created all at once? How do we know that? A long time example was the eye, but that's pretty much been shattered.
If we did not have the Flying Squirrel as a living example, the evolution of bat flight might be harder to imagine, for example.
And if this doesn't illustrate the shallowness of evolutionist argument, I don't know what does.
Wha? Read what was written. Flying squirrels were given as an example of similiarity, not evolution. An example of an intermdiate step.
See Stoneage Mutant Mammal Turtles for more on this topic...)
Which asks questions like:
How did a reptile with one vagina, that reproduces by expelling hard-shelled eggs, become a marsupial?
There are snakes that give live birth, so the concept of a group of reptiles developing live birth isn't at all implausible. Bifurcated/multiple vaginas is also a common mutation, even in humans.
Behe's entire point is that there *is* such a thing as irreducible complexity, meaning that there cannot be any "intermediate versions" to find, for the simple reason that they cannot exist, since any partial or intermediate state would result in a non-functioning organism that could not survive.
He has not *proven* that there cannot be an intermediate form. He is simply removing links from the current chain instead of testing all posible substitutions. IOW, he is doing only DELETE in his tests and not REPLACE.
He has not invalidated all possible combinations, but JUST the ones that he personally tested.
And if this doesn't illustrate the shallowness of evolutionist argument, I don't know what does. I'm pretty darn sure that no evolutionary scientist is willing to stand up and say that bats evolved from flying squirrels.
I am talking about the flight *mechanism* and NOT the species itself. You missed my point entirely. I could have used birds as an example, but they are too different from mammals to easy visualize a similar transformation.
Table-ized A.I.
I think you'll find this
this interesting.
Darwinism is really NOT a very good theory to explain evolution. It's still status quo, but there is to much evidence against as the explanation for the evolution of life. Behind the rhetoric, things are quietly changing and to see where they're going check out this site on information and complexity:
http://www.iscid.org/
This guy this atheism is so much better -- he forgot to mention Stalin and Hitler as examples of the virtues of atheism.
If the microstate falls into a rare macrostate people will still find it miraculous even if it was simply a matter of inevitability. If you sit around and flip a coin a hundred times you probably will get pretty excited after you've flipped 6 heads or 6 tails in a row... even though this is pretty much guaranteed to happen at least once per 100 flips.
"100% heads or tails" will only contain two microstates regardless of how many times you flip the coin. "Only one heads or only on tails" will contain {twice the number of times you flip the coin} microstates (provided you flip at least 3 times). "heads = tails" will contain half the number of all possible microstates (or the two "tails = heads+1" and "heads = tails+1" macrostates if you flip an odd number of times). The smaller the macrostate compared to other macrostates, the more impressed you'll be when you flip a microstate from it. (this is why you're more impressed to flip 6 heads in a row rather than 4. Ratio between smallest/largest macrostate in a 6flip is 2:32 while in a 4flip it's 2:8)
The unspoken assumption behind this type of "probability calculation" is that the microstate for a given protein or DNA sequence falls into a macrostate equivalent in meaning to "all heads or all tails." For most non-trivially defined genetic macrostates, this isn't the case. In most proteins, amino acids can be swapped out for other amino acids without affecting the function of the protein significantly or at all. Few DNA codons are unique and can be interchanged with codons coding for the same protein or, in light of the previous sentence, with the codons coding for certain other aminos.
A macrostate such as "protein that does X" or "gene that codes for a protein that does X" does not contain only the single microstate which happens to be the one currently in use. TalkOrigins' "Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics" FAQ contains a report where the "functions as a cytochrome" macrostate for ~100 amino acids length pepetides contained about 60% of all microstates.
The trouble is, while all microsates can be rigorously defined (though this may be impractical), how one chooses macrostates is up for debate. To go back to the coin flipping example, one set of macrostates could be in ratios of H:T OR T:H (for a 6flip, 6:0, 5:1, 4:2, 3:3). Another could be just H:T (for 6flip, 6:0, 5:1, 4:2, 3:3, 2:3, 1:5, 0:6). You could highlight any microstate containing 4 Heads or tails in a row (I.E. HHHHTT, THHHHT, HHHHTH, etc.). You could define a macrostate for alternating heads and tails. You could have a macrostate for the mantissa of pi in binary for however many digits. These are just possibilities for a random sequence of two values with no real-world significance... imagine how complicated things can be when you have 4 or 20 values to choose from and poorly understood variations in real-world behaviour for a given sequence.
I suppose my point is that there IS math available for calculating the probability for a given protein or DNA sequence... it's just not likely to be understood or effectively argued by your standard issue arm chair creationist.
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions
Transcript of chat with Paul Nelson on August 8th, 2002
/So, in 1990, I cranked up the word processor and submitted a thesis statement to Wimsatt. I wrote:
;-) He'll say, Soon, I hope! Or something like that. He's a great guy (it was his idea to publish the thing).
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:46:49 PM)
Hi everyone. I'm a novice with this means of communicating, so please bear with me if something comes out fragmentary or unclear.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:47:10 PM)
My assigned topic is "Common Descent." Let me start, as Bill Dembski often does in public lectures, with some personal history to set the stage.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:47:34 PM)
When I first arrived at the University of Chicago, my main interests were the theory of natural selection, and the use of theology in evolutionary reasoning.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:48:01 PM)
But as I interacted with Bill Wimsatt (who later became my dissertation director) and with other graduate students in the philosophy of biology and evolutionary theory, I grew more interested in the theory of common descent -- or, as I'll call it in its terrestrially universal form, Common Descent.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:48:18 PM)
Bill Wimsatt gave me some of his draft manuscripts to read and critique. These dealt mainly with his ideas about the causal structure of animal development: a theory he called "generative entrenchment" (GE).
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:48:37 PM)
Here's a quick and easy way to grasp GE. Think about the functional relationships within (or between the parts of) the computer you're using right now.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:48:54 PM)
Is the color of the plastic case functionally important? -- that is, in relation to the set of normal functions for the computer?
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:49:10 PM)
Not really. You might be annoyed if the color were bright magenta, but you could probably learn to live with that, or any other color, really.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:49:26 PM)
How about the central processing unit (CPU) -- or the power supply? Clearly, these parts are deeply important (again, in relation to the set of normal functions).
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:49:42 PM)
If you were to draw the causal relationships within the computer as a diagram with arrows, where (a)-->(b) indicates that (b) depends for its function on the proper operation of (a), then both the power supply and CPU would have many more arrows coming OUT of their nodes than going in. In other words, they're more deeply entrenched that other parts.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:50:00 PM)
Indeed, the power supply is more deeply entrenched than the CPU (for obvious reasons).
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:50:17 PM)
Anyway, Wimsatt had developed GE to understand metazoan development. He wanted to explain why von Baer's Laws obtained in the animals. Von Baer's Laws, recall, say that in embryogenesis:
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:51:32 PM)
1. The more general features of a group appear before the specific features.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:51:50 PM)
2. Less general characters are developed from the most general, and so forth, until finally the most specialized appear.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:52:08 PM)
3. Each embryo of a given species, instead of passing through the stages of other animals, departs more and more from them.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:52:22 PM)
4. Fundamentally, therefore, the embryo of a higher animal is never like [the adult of] a lower animal, but only like its embryo.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:52:39 PM)
(That's Stephen Gould's translation of von Baer, BTW.)
Bill Dembski (ID=19) (Aug 8, 2002 3:52:44 PM)
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micah (ID=10) (Aug 8, 2002 3:52:51 PM)
feel free to ask questions if you want Paul to clarify anything.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:53:01 PM)
Well, Bill said to me, I can explain why these laws hold. Early development in animals is generatively entrenched. Because all animals share a common ancestor (the theory of the common descent of the metazoa), AND because of GE functional necessity, early embryogenesis is conserved throughout the animals: QED.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:53:21 PM)
Sounds good, right? Except early development isn't conserved.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:53:41 PM)
I discovered this when I trotted off to Crerar Library at the U of C (the glorious science library there, my home away from home) and started reading in comparative embryology.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:54:00 PM)
So, dutiful grad student that I was, I went back to Bill with my findings. Something was wrong.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:54:16 PM)
Here's how I represented the problem schematically: CD + GE --> (predicts) Conservation of early development.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:54:31 PM)
But ~ Conservation of early development (i.e., it's not the case).
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:54:48 PM)
Therefore: something is wrong with either CD or GE.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:55:05 PM)
Many of Bill's colleagues (e.g., the developmental biologist Rudy Raff, at Indiana University) said, heck, ~GE. Early development must be able to evolve in ways we don't yet understand.
Tristan Abbey (ID=11) (Aug 8, 2002 3:55:12 PM)
By conserved, do you mean the developmental patterns in their apparent sense, or in the genetic modules that underly them?
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:55:21 PM)
Bill himself wanted to retain both CD and GE. In rare cases, he argued, GE can be violated. Otherwise, it obtains.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:55:40 PM)
I found this deeply unsatisfying. All the experimental & observational evidence I could find strongly supported GE. One can see the saturation mutagenesis experiments in Drosophila, for instance, which won Christiane Nusslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus the Nobel as a clear demonstration of the truth of GE.
Bill Dembski (ID=19) (Aug 8, 2002 3:55:53 PM)
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Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:56:16 PM)
And to have a theory (GE) obtain except when it didn't (i.e., GE **and** ~GE), was a miserable way to run the biology shop.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:56:33 PM)
But there's more. Using GE, one of Bill's grad students (Nick Rasmussen), had predicted that genes (proteins) known to be deeply entrenched in Drosophila development (e.g., bicoid) should be very widely distributed in the Arthropoda. See Nick's paper, "A New Model of Developmental Constraints as Applied to the Drosophila System," Journal of Theoretical Biology 127 (1987):271-299.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:56:51 PM)
Nick wrote: "The most deeply entrenched system, the positional information in the egg [in which bicoid plays a key role], consists of prepackaged gene products which promote, and to some extent coordinate, the partially independent processes whereby the blastoderm nuclei generate a metamerized embryo and take on a particular segmental identity." (p. 292).
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:57:34 PM)
Given GE, it should be "nearly impossible," Nick argued, to insert novel elements into the very beginning on ontogeny. Including the ontogeny of Drosophila, the animal whose development we understand better than any other.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 3:57:55 PM)
Strong prediction -- but bicoid is not found outside the higher Diptera (Drosophila and its near relatives).
telic ontology (ID=14) (Aug 8, 2002 3:58:59 PM)
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David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 3:59:14 PM)
Paul was Raff and Rasmussen using the "principle of continuity" to adjudicate the plausibility of GE? Are other evo biologists getting away from even using this principle?
Jeremy (ID=20) (Aug 8, 2002 3:59:55 PM)
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telic ontology (ID=21) (Aug 8, 2002 4:00:18 PM)
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Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:00:39 PM)
No -- they were resting their case entirely on CD. Since we know that the Arthropoda share a common ancestor, it must be possible for their early development to evolve.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:01:09 PM)
At about this point (1990-91), I told Bill and others that I thought CD was getting a free ride. Actually, not a free ride. Failed predictions were being paid for by other theories (like GE). The account of CD was being credited at the expense of independently-derived biological theories.
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 4:01:16 PM)
Sounds axiomatic..........
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:01:37 PM)
Hey, you're stealing my tale!
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 4:01:46 PM)
sorry:)
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:01:47 PM)
Or, to use a courtly metaphor, CD was the Queen, safely seated within her throne room. The courtiers, by contrast (the auxiliary theories such as GE), were dying in the outer chambers, as failed predictions came charging back into the castle, sword in hand.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:02:04 PM)
(Sorry for the purple prose!)
Jon Runyan (ID=17) (Aug 8, 2002 4:02:13 PM)
No, that was awesome, continue!
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:02:32 PM)
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:02:52 PM)
"CD holds: a. That the common ancestor existed, and thus that
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:03:16 PM)
b. All discontinuities between organic forms and systems are merely apparent. c. Sufficiency of some causal process to generate forms."
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:03:56 PM)
"If this analysis of CD is correct, then it is a philosophical (& scientific) error to suppose that any evidence might count **against** CD."
micah (ID=10) (Aug 8, 2002 4:04:03 PM)
Paul could you repost "a."
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:04:22 PM)
Sure. a. That the common ancestor existed, and thus that
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:04:59 PM)
"One can't falsify the FORM of a tree [if one assumes that such an historical structure exists, irrespective of the actual evidence]."
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:05:19 PM)
"If one assumes the truth of CD, one may look for particular causal models and relationships within the strictures established by CD." But there is no possibility of testing the theory itself. One presupposes its truth, and then looks at nature. The testimony of nature, however, does not flow back to challenge the theory.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:05:37 PM)
Let's call this the axiom thesis (as I later did in a 1993 discussion paper with Jonathan Wells, available at the ARN web page).
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:05:54 PM)
In my thesis statement to Wimsatt, I claimed that the axiom thesis explains why unsolved puzzles like the Cambrian Explosion, or multiple genetic codes, do not falsify CD. They can't. You simply can't falsify the FORM of a tree, if you have assumed a priori that one exists, i.e., a single phylogenetic Tree, or Darwin's great Tree of Life.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:06:33 PM)
And I had a personal communication from Richard Lewontin at Harvard, one of Wimsatt's own mentors (with whom Bill did Drosophila populations genetics in the early 1970s, at the University of Chicago) to back me up.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:06:48 PM)
Lewontin wrote to me: "Let me sum up the materialist position on evolution. We take it as given that
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:07:06 PM)
"1. living material arose from non living only once in the very distant past, and when that happened for purely thermodynamic and quantum mechanical reasons those living organisms have to be what we now call 'simple.' That is to say, they could not have looked even remotely like a metazoan or a vascular plant."
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:07:23 PM)
"2. Since that time because of the nature of living organisms themselves who tend to eat up everything in sight, no further arising of life from non life could work and, therefore, since that time we have the law of all life from life."
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:07:39 PM)
"3. There are many kinds of organisms on earth today which were not here a couple of billion years ago, and many of the kinds of organisms that were around a couple of billion years ago are not here anymore."
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:07:55 PM)
"If you take all of these three things as givens, then evolution follows as the night the day, that is, the kinds of organisms that are here now that did not used to be here had to be the result of a continuous chain of life from the first early simple life. That is what we mean by evolution. All the rest is commentary."
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:08:21 PM)
"Note that it is essential that one assert that no living organism has arisen from non living since the early most rudimentary form. Also, overlying all three principles is a general uniformitarian principle, namely, that the rules have not changed in midstream." [end of quote from Lewontin, personal communication]
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:08:44 PM)
Lewontin is right, of course. A single event of abiogenesis will yield Darwin's Tree of Life (the monophyly of terrestrial organisms) as a logical necessity.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:09:00 PM)
And one could find this same axiomatic interpretation of CD defended by (for instance) Keith Stewart Thomson (now at Oxford, then at Yale), or, more recently, by Kenneth Weiss of Penn State (see his article, "We hold these truths to be self-evident," in a recent issue of Evolutionary Anthropology). Weiss argues that evolutionary theory assumes what he calls "a point source" for all of terrestrial life, as a genuine a priori standpoint. This assumption is simply not up for grabs (i.e., testing).
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:09:44 PM)
So: CD is an untestable axiom of biology (or so I thought). Happy with my prize, and pleased that I had discovered yet another shortcoming of evolutionary reasoning, I plunked it down on Wimsatt's desk, and said, "I'd like to write my dissertation developing this thesis."
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:10:15 PM)
But Wimsatt, and, shortly thereafter, also Leigh Van Valen, another member of my Ph.D. committee, surprised me with their responses.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:10:33 PM)
I don't think CD IS an axiom, Wimsatt said. Far from it: it's a theory that could well be false. Van Valen agreed.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:10:47 PM)
But how would we know this? That gave me the opening question for my project: IF THE THEORY OF COMMON DESCENT WERE FALSE, HOW WOULD WE KNOW IT?
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:11:04 PM)
Why don't I pause here to see if anyone has any questions......
micah (ID=10) (Aug 8, 2002 4:11:58 PM)
none here.
Tristan Abbey (ID=11) (Aug 8, 2002 4:12:03 PM)
Fine here.
Jon Runyan (ID=17) (Aug 8, 2002 4:12:16 PM)
I'm ok..
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 4:12:50 PM)
Great - when you mentioned the FORM of a tree earlier where you referring to the proposition that there IS just a TREE of life. But what the actual tree looks like doesn't matter?.........
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:14:19 PM)
A point source, to use Weiss's term, is an abstraction. We don't really need to say much about it, except that it was an organism capable of leaving offspring. That's all Darwin assumed, BTW.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:15:10 PM)
Shall I go on?
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 4:15:12 PM)
A single origin?..........and then a tree (of whatever kind)
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 4:15:25 PM)
yes please......
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:16:34 PM)
I was reading Darwin's letters, and ran across a letter he sent to Asa Gray in 1861. Gray had asked Darwin what would persuade the latter of the divine design of life. We can leav the theology out here, however. Darwin's reply is very interesting as it relates to CD.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:17:41 PM)
Darwin said, "If man was made of brass or iron and in no way connected with any other organism which had ever lived, I should perhaps be convinced." Now, why is this significant (despite Darwin debunking his own answer a line later, by calling it "childish writing").
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:18:40 PM)
Well, Darwin's answer comports with the sober claim he made in the Origin, which should be familiar to all of you from Behe's book: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibley have been formed..." (etc., etc.)
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:19:06 PM)
Behe interprets this as referring to a test of the mechanism of natural selection, and of course it does. But Darwin's point is really more general.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:20:05 PM)
The only globally necessary condition for any evolutionary transition is that it be POSSIBLE. In the mid 1960s, Crick and Orgel called this "the Principle of Continuity."
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:20:56 PM)
Darwin understood that Common Descent (both taxonomically locally -- common descent of some particular group -- and terrestrially universally) was tested by the Principle of Continuity.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:21:18 PM)
If CD violates this principle, it's false. Full stop.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:21:39 PM)
But there's a problem. The Principle of Continuity appeared to me to be a toothless wonder.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:22:37 PM)
Let's take metazoan development as an example. No one has a clue how cleavage stages, for instance, vary heritably. Funny story about this. I asked Leigh Van Valen if he knew of any examples (in animals) of heritable modifications to cleavage patterns.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:23:23 PM)
He said No. The only example he could give me (reversal of shell coiling in gastropods) is, if you will, the classic exception that proves the rule.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:23:44 PM)
Nor, at the time I was looking into the matter, did anyone understand how variant genetic codes evolved.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:24:19 PM)
So why didn't these cases (metazoan development for the animals, and variant codes for life as a whole) quality as violations of the Principle of Continuity?
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:24:48 PM)
Back I trotted to Bill Wimsatt. What explains the tenacity of CD in the face of anomalous data? I asked.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:25:07 PM)
Well, Paul, he said, you've overlooked the larger context in which CD is embedded.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:25:49 PM)
Most biologists see the origin of life as something very hard to get going. They're not about to posit multiple origins of life to explain puzzles like variant genetic codes.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:26:44 PM)
Here I sensed I was onto something. As you well know, most evolutionary biologists say that CD and theories about abiogenesis have little if anything to do with each other. Logically or evidentially.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:27:36 PM)
But, as Bill Wimsatt explained it to me -- and as I've since become fully persuaded -- the two theories (CD and whatever one assumes about abiogenesis) are as intimately connected as anything in science.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:27:47 PM)
OK -- pause for questions.
Tristan Abbey (ID=11) (Aug 8, 2002 4:28:57 PM)
But many do posit multiple origins of life...
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:29:49 PM)
Now, yes. But that wasn't the case 10 years ago, nor is it the case canonically (i.e., in terms of how the majority of evolutionary theory is done).
Tristan Abbey (ID=11) (Aug 8, 2002 4:30:07 PM)
ok.
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 4:30:27 PM)
Paul - can you tell me when the "Principle of Continuity" became a reality? Does it appear to you that Evo biologists will say that it applies (to use something you typed earlier) except when it doesn't?
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:31:36 PM)
I've found many instances of the Principle of Continuity (let's shorten it to PrC) being applied in ev bio. Is that what you're asking?
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 4:32:01 PM)
I was just wondering when did it become common usage?
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:33:04 PM)
The earliest usage I can find is Crick 1968 (his paper on the origin of the genetic code). The term itself and cognates are widespread in the literature. The idea, of course, goes back to the 19th century.
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 4:33:59 PM)
thanks
Jon Runyan (ID=17) (Aug 8, 2002 4:34:47 PM)
I have a question.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:34:50 PM)
PrC applies WHENEVER one posits a common descent relationship. You can think of this like a parallel plane, lying behind any phylogenetic hypothesis, and mirroring it exactly. If Biologist Jones claims that taxa A, B, and C are related by cd (or CD), then PrC applies. And must be satisfied.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:34:57 PM)
Go for it, Jon.
Jon Runyan (ID=17) (Aug 8, 2002 4:35:36 PM)
What about fossil Hominids? What would you say on those supposedly actualy transitions?
oneiric (ID=22) (Aug 8, 2002 4:37:22 PM)
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telic ontology (ID=21) (Aug 8, 2002 4:37:46 PM)
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Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:39:57 PM)
I'm skeptical of the whole notion of a "transitional fossil." Can you say more?
Jon Runyan (ID=17) (Aug 8, 2002 4:41:36 PM)
Kenyanthropus platyops, is one, and their are many more that are claimed to be transitions between apes and humans. Basically, I was just wondering if you could touch on that, if not, it's all right.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:45:19 PM)
I don't mean to reject your question. Fossils are data to be explained by any theory of origins. But fossils don't tell us how evolution occurs, and that's a prior question that I need to have answered before the notion of a "transition" will make any sense to me. Think about it this way. We'e known about Archeopteryx since the mid 19th century. Do we know, in any detail, how feathers evolved from scales (if they did)? No. I see no reason to draw causal links between extinct taxa when I don't know what process linked them. Questions would be begged left and right. In my view, fossils get way more respect than they deserve.
Jon Runyan (ID=17) (Aug 8, 2002 4:46:06 PM)
Ok, thanks.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:46:30 PM)
More questions?
Tristan Abbey (ID=11) (Aug 8, 2002 4:46:38 PM)
None here.
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 4:48:10 PM)
Paul - can you tell me some more about your experience with other evo biologists and how they have applied the PrC? - I'm a biologist at U of MS and it seems that the PrC is quite important when making a more general case for the mere possibility of transistions and the PrC should apply to these new data but I have never seen any of my colleagues try and take it up and stick with PrC - instead they go back to talking in generalities about the existence of CD.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:50:29 PM)
Biologists use PrC to debunk phylogenetic hypotheses they disbelieve. See, for instance, Jon Ruben's paper in Science a few years ago (I can supply the ref later), where he said that birds couldn't have evolved from dinosaurs because the transition would necessitate a diaphragmatic hernia.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:51:22 PM)
Goldschmidt's ideas about saltations failed for nearly all neo-Darwinians because they seemed flagrantly to violate PrC.
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 4:51:50 PM)
So it's used in particular phylogenies but NOT ultimately CD?
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:52:01 PM)
Keep your eyes open as you read the literature, and you'll see either explicit or implicit applications of PrC.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:52:52 PM)
No -- it's being applied to CD as well. Woese's recent papers on the polyphyly of terrestrial life (three aboriginal domains) use PrC, implicitly. One can extract it pretty easily from the logic of his arguments.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:54:29 PM)
Here's the challenge that PrC poses to ev bio. We don't really know how ANY significant evolutionary transitions occur. CD is held together, not by knowledge of how major transitions were effected, but rather by the improbability (as ev bios see it) of any other historical topology. And that improbability rests entirely on their assumptions about the likelihood of abiogenesis.
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 4:55:32 PM)
I see now - In one sense I see the biologists using PrC but when the chips are down and the PrC is violated it's not CD that gets unraveled......
Tristan Abbey (ID=11) (Aug 8, 2002 4:56:44 PM)
Paul, is there more to your lecture, or is this the final Q&A?
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:57:03 PM)
Well, I used to think that. Now I'm not so sure. When I started working on CD, about 10 years ago, ev bio friends would treat my questions with the polite embarrassment one usually reserves for folks who think Bacon wrote the plays of Shakespeare. Now, however, polyphyletic theories of evolution are popping up everywhere.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:58:08 PM)
Sorry, Tristan -- I could go on all day. There's a lot more to say (about genetic codes, probability relationships, how PrC is fleshed out in biological reasoning), but we're fast running out of time, and I wanted you all to have a chance to ask questions.
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 4:58:09 PM)
So the questioning of universal CD is not as unpopular as it once was?
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 4:58:47 PM)
Here's a prediction. Universal CD will be gasping for breath in two or three years, if not sooner.
Tristan Abbey (ID=11) (Aug 8, 2002 4:59:17 PM)
Another couple decades before the textbooks wake up...
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 4:59:40 PM)
Can you tell us something about your book "On Common Descent" and when it may come out?
micah (ID=10) (Aug 8, 2002 5:00:10 PM)
you won't have to.
micah (ID=10) (Aug 8, 2002 5:00:14 PM)
sorry.
micah (ID=10) (Aug 8, 2002 5:00:15 PM)
mistake.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 5:02:22 PM)
On Common Descent has five chapters. The first states the problem (if CD were false, how would we know it?), and spells out why the origin of life bears on this. Chapter Two deals with Darwin's understanding of CD. Chapter Three treats the problem of "historical contingency," which is a glue that many evolutionists (e.g., Gould) use to fill in the space between theory and observation. Chapter Four explains how we can get PrC to do theoretical work for us -- mainly, to keep CD honest. Chapter Five talks about the assumptions that underlie naturalistic theories of abiogenesis, and closes the loop of the discussion begun in Ch One.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 5:04:08 PM)
I've stopped giving publications dates for the monograph, because extensive revisions over the past couple of years have caused me to miss so many. If you want to send the editor, Leigh Van Valen, a note, you can reach him at leigh@uchicago.edu Tell him you're wondering when Paul Nelson's monograph is coming out.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 5:04:45 PM)
Sure, I've got acouple of minutes.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 5:05:01 PM)
Oops
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 5:05:14 PM)
Thank you Paul - I really appreciate your insights into this.
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 5:06:09 PM)
Now I'll have something talk about with my evo colleagues.......
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 5:06:39 PM)
Well, there's lots more to say. My advice? Treat CD with respect (it's a beautiful theory in many ways), but also remember that it's got to come to the bar of observation just like anything else in science. Whatever you do, don't accord it the status of an axiom.
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 5:07:58 PM)
Point well taken.
micah (ID=10) (Aug 8, 2002 5:08:15 PM)
Paul, could you make a few comments on the ID movement in general, where you see it going, etc.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 5:09:51 PM)
ID is struggling to grow up. We need to move from what I call the "bag of intuitions" stage to a real, testable theory. We need to make some discoveries of our own. All this is possible, but stubborn courage is needed.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 5:12:11 PM)
I've got an unshakeable optimism that ID is going to do great things.
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 5:13:59 PM)
There's a research meeting in Southern California, scheduled for October, where this "how do we grow up" problem will be on the agenda. I'll be there, as will Bill Dembski, Jed Macosko, Scott Minnich, Rick Sternberg from the Smithsonian, and several others.
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 5:14:00 PM)
Did you like Gould's new book?
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 5:14:59 PM)
Words, words, words. Gems of insight here and there. David Depew at Cal State Fullerton told me it was longer than War and Peace.
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 5:15:34 PM)
Any new book on the modern synthesis that you would recommend?
micah (ID=10) (Aug 8, 2002 5:16:20 PM)
well, Paul, thanks for being with us today.
Tristan Abbey (ID=11) (Aug 8, 2002 5:16:26 PM)
Thanks Paul!
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 5:16:32 PM)
You'
Bart Dunlap (ID=16) (Aug 8, 2002 5:16:38 PM)
Thanks a lot, Paul!
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 5:16:44 PM)
oops -- you're welcome!
micah (ID=10) (Aug 8, 2002 5:16:46 PM)
It was a lot of fun.
David L. Rice III (ID=15) (Aug 8, 2002 5:16:49 PM)
Thanks again
Jon Runyan (ID=17) (Aug 8, 2002 5:16:52 PM)
Thanks! Yes it was!
oneiric (ID=22) (Aug 8, 2002 5:16:56 PM)
thank you, paul
Paul (ID=18) (Aug 8, 2002 5:17:10 PM)
The pitchers of beer, when we meet in person, are on me.
What do you care anyway? Right? I mean you're nothing but primordial ooze. You have no meaning on earth no purpose. You live; you die and nothing more. All your "important" debates and attempts to accomplish anything in your life are pointless. You are pointless. We'll see who's right in the end though my friend. Meanwhile why do you even attempt to push your views on someone who believes they have a purpose in life. I mean really what a sadistic existence that is.
Why Natural Selection Can't Design Anything
0 1. pdf
by William A. Dembski
ABSTRACT--In the early 1970s Leslie Orgel argued that the key problem facing origin-of-life researchers was to explain the specified complexity inherent in the first living form. Thirty years later this remains the key problem facing origin of life research. Nonetheless, the biological community is convinced that the specified complexity of living forms is not a problem once replication is in place and the Darwinian mechanism has become operative. In this paper I argue not only that we have yet to explain specified complexity at the origin of life but also that the Darwinian mechanism fails to explain it for the subsequent history of life. To see that the Darwinian mechanism is incapable of generating specified complexity, it is helpful to consider the mathematical underpinnings of that mechanism, namely, evolutionary algorithms. Roughly speaking, an evolutionary algorithm is any well-defined mathematical procedure that generates contingency via some chance process and then sifts it via some law-like process. It is widely held that evolutionary algorithms provide a computational justification for the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection and random variation as the primary creative force in biology. Nonetheless, careful examination of evolutionary algorithms and the information with which they are programmed reveals that evolutionary algorithms, far from eliminating the specified complexity problem, merely push it deeper. Indeed, the recently proven No Free Lunch theorems show that any output of specified complexity from an evolutionary algorithm presupposes a prior input of specified complexity. And since all biological design invariably exhibits specified complexity, it follows that evolutionary algorithms (and the Darwinian mechanism in particular) are incapable of resolving the problem of biological design.
To read the entire paper, please see:
http://iscid.org/papers/Dembski_WhyNatural_1129
Roger Penrose had a pretty good visual explanation for entropy in The Emperor's New Mind. The gist of it was to have a volume, where every point in the volume is a different state for a system. In your case, there'd be a point for every possible configuration of books on the shelf. Anyhow, the different point-states each have equally miniscule probabilities, but the trick is to put them into groups, whose fraction of the total volume is the amount of entropy.
A non-subjective example that Penrose uses is particles of gas in a box. A low-entropy group would be all the states that have the particles bunch up into a corner of the box, and high entropy group would be all the states where the particles fill the volume as a gas normally does. (This example might suffer from confusion between the literal volume of the gas-filled box and the abstract volume of states)
The final and most elegant part of this kind of explanation is its accounting for the tendency of systems to progress towards higher entropy. If you start with a point inside volume, say in the lower entropy group, and let it move randomly, it'll will naturally work it's way out of the low entropy parts into the high simply because there's so much more high entropy volume to move into.
Read the chapter in the Penrose book for a better explanation and pictures... The whole thesis of the book (regarding AI) is pretty weak but there's good popular science material.
Universe Is Not "Billions of Years" Old
The general theory of evolution is based on several faulty assumptions. (Note: It is important to understand by this statement that we are not disputing simple variations that some call "microevolution," whose micro-changes are often observed but never lead to a fundamentally different kind of plant or animal.) The following assumptions of evolutionary theory are easy to prove false:
1. the universe is billions of years old,
2. life spontaneously arose from nonliving minerals,
3. mutations create or improve a species,
4. natural selection has creative power.
In this section we will deal with the first of these assumptions. The others will be dealt with elsewhere. If, in fact, it could be demonstrated that the universe is not billions of years old, all other arguments about evolution become meaningless and unnecessary.
In children's fairy tales, we are told:
frog + magic spell (usually a kiss) = prince
In modern "science" textbooks we are told:
frog + time = prince
The same basic fairy tale (evolution) is being promoted in textbooks today, but the new magic potion cited is time. When the theory of evolution is discussed, time is the panacea for all the thousands of problems that arise.
In nearly all discussions and debates about evolution that I have held at universities and colleges, I ask the evolutionists how certain things could have evolved by chance. Their answer is nearly always "Given enough time..." Time is the evolutionists' god. Time is able to accomplish anything the evolutionists can propose. Time can easily turn a frog into a prince. Time can create matter from nothing and life from matter. According to evolutionists, time can create order from chaos.
But let's remove time from the above equation. There would be the following three results:
1. Evolution becomes obviously impossible.
2. Evolutionists will scream like a baby whose pacifier has been pulled out because they know that if time is removed, their religion (evolution is religion, not science) is silly.
3. Creation becomes the only reasonable alternative explanation for the existence of this complex universe.
Let's imagine we are exploring an old gold mine, and we find a Casio Databank watch half buried in the mud on the floor of the mine. Suppose also that the correct time and date are displayed on the watch and it is still running smoothly. Then imagine that I tell you the watch has been there for over one thousand years.
"That's impossible!" you say. "That watch could not have been there for a thousand years, and I can prove it!"
"How can you prove I'm wrong?" I say.
"Well, for one thing, this mine was just dug 150 years ago," you say.
"Okay," I admit, "you're right about the thousand years being too much, but the watch has been here for 150 years at least!"
"No!" you say. "Casio didn't make the Databank watch until twelve years ago."
"All right," I say. "The watch was dropped here twelve years ago then."
"Impossible!" you say. "The batteries only last five years on that watch, and it's still running. That proves it has been here less than five years."
While we still can't prove exactly when the watch was left there, you have logically limited the date to five years at the most. You have effectively proven that my initial statement about the watch being 1000 years old is wrong. The larger numbers prove nothing in this debate. Even if I were to radiometric-date the mud or the plastic in the watch to try to prove that it is thousands of years old, my data would be meaningless. The same logic can be applied to finding the age of the earth. If several factors limit the age of the earth to a few thousand years, the earth cannot be older than a few thousand years! Even if a few indicators seem to show a greater age for the earth, it takes only ONE fact to prove the earth is young.
The Bible teaches that: God created the universe approximately 6000 years ago, ex nihilo (out of nothing) in six literal, twenty-four hour days. Then, approximately 4400 years ago, the earth was destroyed by a worldwide Flood. This devastating, year-long Flood was responsible for the sediment layers being deposited (the water was going and returning, Gen. 8:3-5). As the mountains rose and the ocean basins sank after the Flood (Psalm 104:5-8, Gen. 8:1), the waters rushed off the rising mountains into the new ocean basins. This rapid-erosion through still-soft, unprotected sediments formed the topography we still see today, in places like the Grand Canyon. The uniformitarian assumption--that today's slow erosion rates that take place through solid rock are the same as has always been--is faulty logic, and ignores catastrophes like the Flood. (2 Pet. 3:3-8 says that the scoffers are "willingly ignorant" of the Flood.)
Listed below are some of the factors from various branches of science that limit the age of the universe (including earth) to within the last few thousand years. Though it cannot be scientifically proven exactly when the universe was created, its age can be shown to not be billions of years old. Each of the following evidences of a young earth is described in great detail in the books referenced below. Source number and page number are given for the following statements (at the bottom of this page):
Evidence from Space
The shrinking sun limits the earth-sun relationship to less than "billions of years." The sun is losing both mass and diameter. Changing the mass would upset the fine gravitational balance that keeps the earth at just the right distance for life to survive. (1, p. 169; 2, p. 30; 4, pp. 56-63; 5, p. 26; 6, p. 43;)
The 0.5 inch layer of cosmic dust on the moon indicates the moon has not been accumulating dust for billions of years. (2, p. 26; 3, p. 22; 4, p. 15; 6, p. 35; 7; 9, p. 25) *Insufficient evidence to be positive (almost all estimates before the lunar landing anticipated great quantities of dust.)
"I get a picture therefore, of the first spaceship, picking out a nice, level place for landing purposes, coming in slowly downward tail-first, and sinking majestically out of sight." -- Isaac Asimov, Science Digest, January, 1959, p 36
Lyttleton felt that the X-rays and UV light striking exposed moon rocks "could, during the age of the moon be sufficient to form a layer over it several miles deep." -- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society of London, vol. 115, pp. 585-604
The existence of short-period comets indicates the universe is less than billions of years old. (2, p. 31; 3, p. 27; 4, p. 35; 6, p. 37; 7)
Fossil meteorites are very rare in layers other than the top layers of the earth. This indicates that the layers were not exposed for millions of years as is currently being taught in school textbooks. (4, p. 26)
The moon is receding a few inches each year. Billions of years ago the moon would have been so close that the tides would have been much higher, eroding away the continents. (3, p. 25; 6, p. 43; 7)
The moon contains considerable quantities of U-236 and Th-230, both short-lived isotopes that would have been long gone if the moon were billions of years old. (8, p. 177; see also 4, p. 51, for information on rock "flow")
The existence of great quantities of space dust, which by the Pointing-Robertson effect would have been vacuumed out of our solar system in a few thousand years, indicates the solar system is young. (3, p. 29; 6, p.44)
At the rate many star clusters are expanding, they could not have been traveling for billions of years. (3, p. 29; 4, pp. 30 and 59; 6, p. 44)
Saturn's rings are still unstable, indicating they are not billions of years old. (4, p. 45)
Jupiter and Saturn are cooling off rather rapidly. They are losing heat twice as fast as they gain it from the sun. They cannot be billions of years old. (5, p. 26; 4, p. 43; Jupiter's moon, Io, is losing matter to Jupiter. It cannot be billions of years old. (4, p. 3)
Among other factors to consider is that all the ancient astronomers from 2000 years ago recorded that Sirius was a red star--today it is a white dwarf star. Since today's textbooks in astronomy state that one hundred thousand years are required for a star to "evolve" from a red giant to a white dwarf, obviously this view needs to be restudied.
Evidence from Earth
The decaying magnetic field limits earth's age to less than billions. (1, p. 157; 2, p. 27; 3, p. 20; 5, p. 23; 6, p. 42; 9, p. 25; 10, p. 38)
The volume of lava on earth divided by its rate of efflux gives a number of only a few million years, not billions. I believe that during the Flood, while "the fountains of the deep were broken up," most of the earth's lava was deposited rapidly. (1, p. 156)
Dividing the amount of various minerals in the ocean by their influx rate indicates only a few thousand years of accumulation. (1, p. 153; 5, p. 24; 6, p. 42)
The amount of Helium 4 in the atmosphere, divided by the formation rate on earth, gives only 175,000 years. (God may have created the earth with some helium which would reduce the age more.) (1, p. 151; 6, p. 42; 9, p. 25)
The erosion rate of the continents is such that they would erode to sea level in less than 14,000,000 years, destroying all old fossils. (2, p. 31; 6, p 38; American Science Vol 56 p 356-374)
Topsoil formation rates indicate only a few thousand years of formation. (6, p. 38)
Niagara Falls' erosion rate (four to five feet per year) indicates an age of less than 10,000 years. Don't forget Noah's Flood could have eroded half of the seven-mile-long Niagara River gorge in a few hours as the flood waters raced through the soft sediments.) (6, p. 39; 7)
The rock encasing oil deposits could not withstand the pressure for more than a few thousand years. (2, p. 32; 3, p. 24; 5, p. 24; 6, p. 37; 7)
The size of the Mississippi River delta, divided by the rate mud is being deposited, gives an age of less than 30,000 years. (The Flood in Noah's day could have washed out 80% of the mud there in a few hours or days, so 4400 years is a reasonable age for the delta.) (3, p. 23; 6, p. 38; 7)
The slowing spin of the earth limits its age to less than the "billions of years" called for by the theory of evolution. (3, p. 25; 7)
A relatively small amount of sediment is now on the ocean floor, indicating only a few thousand years of accumulation. This embarrassing fact is one of the reasons why the continental drift theory is vehemently defended by those who worship evolution. (1, p. 155; 6, p. 28; 7)
The largest stalactites and flowstone formations in the world could have easily formed in about 4400 years. (5, p. 27; 6, p. 39; 7)
The Sahara desert is expanding. It easily could have been formed in a few thousand years. See any earth science textbook.
The oceans are getting saltier. If they were billions of years old, they would be much saltier than they are now. (7; 9, p. 26; 10, p. 37)
Ice cores at the south pole and Greenland have a maximum depth of 10-14,000 feet. The aircraft that crash-landed in Greenland in 1942 and excavated in 1990 were under 263 feet of ice after only 48 years. This indicates all of the ice could have accumulated in 4400 years. (7)
Evidence from Biology
The current population of earth (5.5 billion souls) could easily be generated from eight people (survivors of the Flood) in less than 4000 years. (1, p. 167; 3, p. 27; 6, p. 41; 7)
The oldest living coral reef is less than 4200 years old. (6, p. 39; 7)
The oldest living tree in the world is about 4300 years old. (6, p. 40; 7)
Another factor to consider: The genetic load in man is increasing. Geneticists have cataloged nearly 1300 genetic disorders in the human race. It is certainly reasonable to believe that the human race was created perfect from the hand of the Creator but has been going downhill as a result of our disobedience to the laws established by the Creator and the increased radiation from the sun. The Bible teaches that we live in a sin-cursed world as a result of Adam's sin.
Evidence from History
The oldest known historical records are less than 6000 years old. (1, p. 160)
Many ancient cultures have stories of an original creation in the recent past and a worldwide Flood. Nearly 300 of these Flood legends are now known.
Biblical dates add up to about 6000 years.
The following Bible verses tell when "the beginning" was:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (Gen. 1:1)
Moses because of the hardness of your hearts permitted you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. (Mt. 19:8)
But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. (Mk. 10:6)
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. (Jn. 1:1)
That which was from the beginning, which we have seen with our eyes and our hands have handled, of the Word of life. (1 Jn. 1:1)
He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. (1 Jn. 3:8)
For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time. (Mt. 24:21)
Ye are of your father the devil.... He was a murderer from the beginning. (Jn. 8:44)
That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; from the blood of Abel. (Lk. 11:50, 51)
And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth. (Heb. 1:10)
For in six days the Lord made heaven and the earth, the sea, and all that in them is. (Ex. 20:11)
Since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. (2 Pet. 3:4)
The works were finished from the foundation of the world. For God did rest the seventh day from all his works. (Heb. 4:3, 4)
For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created to this time. (Mk. 13:19)
Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? Have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? (Is. 40:21)
Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the Lord am he. (Is. 41:4)
Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female? (Mt. 19:4)
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. (Ro. 1:20)
Those who believe the earth is billions of years old will typically try to discredit one or two of these evidences and then mistakenly think that they have successfully proven the entire list wrong. This is not logical, of course. Each evidence stands independently: it only takes one to prove the earth is young. The burden of proof is on the evolutionists if they expect all taxpayers to fund the teaching of their religion in the school system. Many who believe in evolution are great at "straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel" (Mt. 23:24).
Evolutionists love to assume uniformitarian processes. Many of the preceding evidences follow the same logic evolutionists use all the time in dealing with carbon dating, strata formation, genetic drift, etc.
It is interesting to read the ramblings of nay-sayers like Scott, Matson, Babinski, etc. as they try to answer theses evidences for a young universe. See how many times they use words like: we believe, perhaps, could have, there is some reason to believe, etc. Evolutionists may need billions of years to make people believe a rock can turn into a rocket scientist, but that time just isn't available.
Sources
1. Morris, Henry M. Scientific Creationism. El Cajon, Calif.: Master Books, April 1985.
2. McLean, G. S.; McLean, Larry; Oakland, Roger. The Bible Key to Understanding the Early Earth. Oklahoma City, Okla.: Southwest Radio Church, 1987.
3. Huse, Scott M. The Collapse of Evolution. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1983.
4. Ackerman, Paul D. It's a Young World After All. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1986.
5. Blick, Edward F. A Scientific Analysis of Genesis. Oklahoma City, Okla.: Hearthstone Publ. Ltd., 1991.
6. Petersen, Dennis R. Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation. South Lake Tahoe, Calif.: Christian Equippers International, 1987.
7. Hovind, Kent E. Creation Seminar, Parts 1-7 (most items referenced onscreen--available from Creation Science Evangelism, 29 Cummings Road, Pensacola, Fla. 32503).
8. Wysong, R. L. The Creation-Evolution Controversy. Midland, Mich.: Inquiry Press, 1976.
9. Baker, Sylvia. Bone of Contention. Creation Science Foundation Ltd., Sunnybank, Queensland 4109 Australia: 1990.
10. Moore, John N. Questions and Answers on Creation-Evolution. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1977.
11. Brown, Walt. In the Beginning--
I will grant you that there is much data concerning evolution. What I disagree with is the interpretation of that data. Most evolutionary theory ideas do not hold up to simple logical scrutiny, much less scientific scrutiny. Yes, science will eventually straighten itself out in this regard, but in the meantime, many, many people will believe things that will later be shown to be false. Imagine the shock when some 25th century Galileo shows that evolution couldn't possibly be true!
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
A long time example was the eye, but that's pretty much been shattered.
Don't be ridiculous, NO ONE has proposed a reasonable explanation for how an eye might even hypothetically develop, even assuming that beneficial mutations that create new genetic information exist, a crucial prerequisite for which there is no evidence at all.
Please explain to me, for instance, how a unique structure like the optic nreve unconnected to either the retina (that's not there yet, because it's still waiting to evolve rods and cones), or the brain (that has no visual cortex for processing any signals it might send) might stand even a snowball's chance in Hell of being selected as a beneficial mutation, and carried along as excess baggage for the geologic eras required for the rest of the mechanism to fall into place. To get around this problem, you need to have thousands of such impossibilities all resolve themselves simultaneously in order to produce an eye that might confer some advantage in natural selection.
You make a brash claim, one that I have yet to see any actual scientist claiming to be an evolutionist want to make in public. That's because it is totally indefensible.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
You make a brash claim, one that I have yet to see any actual scientist claiming to be an evolutionist want to make in public.
Dawkins claims to explain the evolution of the eye in several of his books.
a unique structure like the optic nreve [..] or the brain (that has no visual cortex for processing any signals it might send)
Nerves run everywhere in the body, and all lead to the brain. The brain is fairly adaptable - if one nerve starts giving different information, it can handle that through non-evolutionary (intra-creature) adaptation. Yes, as the eyes develop over geological time, the optic nerve is going to get larger, as is the part of brain it hooks up to, but that's exactly what evolution claims.
Darwin was a devout Christian that was deeply troubled by his discoveries.
To adscribe atheism to Darwin is pure bad intention of whoever that does so.
Science does not have the power to repress anybody: arguments and evidence are the tools of (not ignorance and dogma), when the religious zealots come with more evidence than their faith and books written by nomadic shepards, about what they say is the truth, we may sit and listen.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Do I need to go and probe that 2+2=4?
Or that mamals give birth to live progeny?
Or that the Earth is spheric? (no nitpicks please)
No, I don't.
And regarding the Christians:
Do i need to study why some people believe the Erath is flat?
No. I do not need to do it.
The same with Evolution: it is a fact, we should concentrate in the details of how it works, but to debate anylonger if it works is childish and unproductive.
By the way, Evolution is not a belief system, I don't believe in Evolution. Evolution is a tool to understand the natural world and the way it works. Present me with a coherent alternative explantion (the bible is not one) and I mas sit down and discuss it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Lyell himself, for all that his work was essential to Darwin's, had deep reservations about evolution . . . largely because he feared that any theory of evolution would eventually expand to include humans (a prospect that horrified him because, Lyell believed, it would rob humans of their uniqueness and thus their dignity).
Lyell eventually accepted, grudgingly, the ideas laid out in Origin of Species and endorsed them in the first post-1859 edition of his own Principles of Geology. He never did come to terms with an purely evolutionary orgin for Homo sapiens, though (to the great annoyance of Darwin, Huxley, and other evolutionists).
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