Revolutionary Biology

Evolution News and Views ^ | October 20, 2014 | Jonathan Wells

[JimSEA]

Evolution occurs in populations and often is in reaction to the environment. Mutations are infrequently the basis for speciation or population change unless they are frequently occurring mutations. More frequently existing alleles are selected for among the diversity within the population by giving reproductive to individuals possessing that characteristic. So, it really isn’t all that random. Only genetic drift is in part random. Survival is the product of evolution and that isn’t random.

[Heartlander]

I did not say random (although mutation is random WRT fitness) - I said evolution cannot have a goal – is unguided and blind. What’s up with the song and dance routine?

[JimSEA]

There is a reason why evolution occurs, it is guided by the environment and survivability. Thus, it's not random and unguided. Mutations are random but their persistence in the organism isn't random. Most mutations are decidedly unhelpful or fatal and are out of the sets of alleles and are not heritable. It is an article of faith among creationists and intelligent design believers that evolution is all chaos and random chance which is simply not true.

Also, when I want to illustrate something I often search YouTube to find the explanation I'm looking for. Here is an article from New Scientist on the flagellum or rather a whole range of such appendages..

[Heartlander]

I know how evolution works – I don’t need YouTube – I’ve read many books on the topic from Dawkins, Dennett, Futuyma, et al… (Did not buy any of Dawkins or Dennett books – I would read them at the coffee shop / book store. I would not give them my money)

So are you stating that you believe God guided evolution to create humans through the environment?

[JimSEA]

That’s a shame, the article is rather good. You seem to be saying that books, articles, presentations on the theory of evolution and basic biology are worthless? You’re missing out by not having an understanding of much of the world around you and you are telling me that nothing I can say could possibly get you to be interested in much of the world around you. That’s not an attack on you, I’m just saying we have entirely too few things in common to converse as I’m an old man set in his ways as much as you seem set in yours.

[Heartlander]

Give me a break Jim – I watched your first video – now did you read Behe’s article? I ask because you don’t seem to understand ID at all – you’ve mischaracterized it many times. At least I actually understand evolution.

Now back to the question, are you stating that you believe God guided evolution to create humans through the environment?

[JimSEA]

Evolution by its very definition isn’t guided or managed expect by nature, biological processes and laws. I’ve read Behe’s articles and watched his presentations. I haven’t read his book nor am I likely to read it. He has an intelligent creator engineering proteins in the cell where a comprehensible alternative exists. Somehow the more we learn, the fewer instances of “irreducible complexity” we are faced with. When I was in high school, Crick and Watson had just figured out the structure of DNA, continental drift was highly controversial and the functioning of plate tectonics was unknown.

Particularly what I saw in ore body geology fit so well with the conclusions of tectonics in mountain and continental formation - structural geology. Biology has resulted in medicine and treatments that were just plain absent when I was born. I find the scope of change quite overwhelming but at the same time understandable where one directs their interest.

I’m looking forward to many more discoveries and understandings in whatever few years I’ve left.

[Heartlander]

I’m looking forward to many more discoveries and understandings in whatever few years I’ve left.

Good luck with that... I am not old and set in my ways - the irony being one of us is static living fossil - and the other is still evolving...

[JimSEA]

If only us living fossils could be seen for what we are, successful populations of of which other populations have physically become isolated and in their new environment or due to small numbers have evolved new species. See the mantis shrimp, horsetail, hedgehog, etc. Or perhaps there are Lazarus species where very similar creatures (but the same in appearance only) have evolved more than once. Lots of speculation here bur a difficulty in doing more exact identities is the lack of ancient DNA. Of course, an Asian mussel will be different in allele frequency at least to a Mediterranean mussel.

[Heartlander]

Enjoy your niche...

[Darwin's] alternative to intelligent design was design by the completely mindless process of natural selection, according to which organisms possessing variations that enhance survival or reproduction replace those less suitably endowed, which therefore survive or reproduce in lesser degree. This process cannot have a goal, any more than erosion has the goal of forming canyons, for the future cannot cause material events in the present. Thus the concepts of goals or purposes have no place in biology... (p. 282)

This experiment conveys the essence of natural selection: it is a completely mindless process without forethought or goal. (p. 285)
The textbook Evolution, by Douglas J. Futuyma

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Darwin showed that material causes are a sufficient explanation not only for physical phenomena, as Descartes and Newton had shown, but also for biological phenomena with all their seeming evidence of design and purpose. By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.
-Douglas Futuyma's Evolutionary Biology p. 5

..and try to live consistent in your stasis.