Posted on 08/02/2019 7:49:16 PM PDT by robowombat
Darwin’s hypothesis should never have been labeled theory.
I recently read “Darwin’s Doubt” and it is indeed a tour de force.
“Which are the debunked arguments he rehashes?”
All of them.
Why the evasion?
Why don’t you point us to where they are debunked.
No. And I certainly have no standing to judge. But I do get the impression from repeated rumblings in scattered reading over the years that, with regard to Darwinism, biology has become a field in which many people feel unable to speak openly. Officially, virtually everyone is a Darwinist. "Yessiree, Bob, we all be true believers here! No design, because our fundamental axion is that there can be no designer! Everything is an accident!" You won't get into a good graduate program, get hired by a good university, or get tenure if you do not affirm the party line.
But down in the weeds, the design inference refuses to die. Things look designed, and the deeper you go, the more complex and intricately constructed things seem to be. I don't recall who coined the phrase, but it is regularly muttered, sotto voce, that information seems to precede order, which is another way of saying, "it looks designed."
I don't know how the debate will develop, but there does seem clearly to be a silencing of dissent in the academy. That is, of course, a clue that the reigning paradigm is on unsteady ground. Another field where this is apparent is the study of intelligence, especially with regard to heritability, race and gender. A lot of people in the field know that the party line is a lie. But very, very few are willing to speak out.
“Why don’t you point us to where they are debunked.”
Do your own homework. These myths pop up here every week or so. There was a thread yesterday.
I have. But I’m not the one making sweeping claims on an internet forum.
” It’s a bitter, fundamental, angry, outraged rejection [of intelligent design], which comes nowhere near scientific or intellectual discussion.”
The dude is right about one thing. He doesn’t know what he is talking about.
David Berlinski, a mathematician, physicist and scholar has also taken serious heat from the entrenched academy for his views on Darwin. His book is also cited in the article. He defended intelligent design and promptly became persona non grata on American college campuses. Yet he is one of the few who echo comedian George Carlin’s question, “If man evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?”
The evidence that I find most compelling for the hypothesis that all higher life forms are evolved from simpler life forms is the commonality of the genetic code. Every form of life shares the same DNA encoding mechanisms and that mechanism itself evolved as a more stable molecule from its RNA ancestor. The same five nucleotides, the same 20 amino acids, the same drift statistics in the mitochondrial DNA, the same cellular machinery of ribosomes generating proteins from mRNA copied from the nuclear DNA, every species shares the same evolutionary history at the cellular level. An intelligent designer would not constrain every species this way because it would be redundant and inefficient and subject to massive failures due to disease and decay over time. It also is optimized for the survival of populations at the expense of individual members. The most important design feature of life is that it dies hopefully after it reproduces. Is this sacrifice of the individual for the survival of the population something a loving intelligence would design in?
I found “Signature in the Cell” even more impressive. It’s about the origin of life (as opposed to strictly evolution) , and it totally dismantles the notion of the primordial “soup” and lighting creating life.
Stephen Meyer is truly a gift to honest (real) science. He has a PhD in “philosophy of science” which examines what science itself is and its various methodologies. He also has degrees in physics and I believe biology as well.
To take one of the least explosive issues: there is a great deal of overlap on mental and behavioral dimensions between men and women, and there are outliers in both sexes. But in terms of averages across large groups, men and women have (slightly) different aptitudes and significantly different interests and priorities (e.g. desires regarding work-life balance, orientation towards children, risk tolerance, job preferences). Men and women, on average over large groups, tend to make different choices, and while some of this is likely due to social conditioning, some of it is almost certainly biologically based. Saying this, however, is a likely career killer at many universities and, of course, at Google. So people who know better are silent and, when ritual expressions of fealty to the party line are demanded in public, they lie.
Ok. Thanks. Re:
“the professor notes there are no examples in scientific literature showing that “mutations that affect early development and the body plan as a whole and are not fatal.””
Therefore there are examples of mutations that affect early development and the body plan as a whole that are not fatal.
What are they?
(I hope you don’t say “all of them”)
Since professor David Gelernter could not have come from natural selection, which he is trying to invalidate, then where did he come from? Uh. David, think A - B = C. Without A or B, There can’t be a C. So you don’t exist as you deny A and can’t provide a B.
If genius comes from highly educated people, then why are there still idiots like him? (Sorry George)
rwood
Darwin’s Theory of Relativity is so flawed.
Evolution does not equal Mutunt Colonization Squared.
You make a plausible argument, but your inferences are much too sweeping. There are millions of organisms on Earth. A designer that made each one a completely different, molecularly unique type of organism would have created an essentially magical world. It is at least equally plausible that a designer would prefer a universe that was rules based and logically ordered. And-- a big leap here -- if such a designer were actually concerned with us, he might particularly value a universe that is, at least in principle, somewhat predictable and comprehensible to human beings. It's getting too late to develop the argument now, but the idea of directed evolution is a step in that direction. There is nothing implausible about a designer reusing effective tools. If you were writing computer code, you would not deliberately set out to create bloatware. You would probably value parsimony in design. (Or whatever term the computer people use for lean, mean, efficient coding.)
None of this is evidence for a designer. But it does suggest that biological continuities are perfectly consistent with a design hypothesis. They should certainly not be taken as evidence against design.
The odds against evolution are staggering - and that is the point of this mathematician. DNA code is a complete computer language, telling each cell what to do next - and there are thousands of steps in each process. Each cell has over 3 Gbits of error-free information - try that, Microsoft. And this is true for every living thing - animals, plants, even bacteria has unique codes (though not this much). For those who really look at the facts, random selection is really impossible.
When I was in school, they actually taught that the universe was stagnate - had always been here. This meant there was literally unlimited time to make anything happen, however impossible it seemed. But now, the time frame is limited - very limited. Impossible limited. If random selection happened on a linear scale, there would have to be a new - entirely new - species every three years. So where are they? Why did they stop?
So many questions . . . .
George Carlin’s question is one of the more stupid ones I have seen. There are still monkeys because there are still trees which are a good place for monkeys to live and not such a good place for humans to live. Creatures evolve to live in specific suitable environments. Today I was reading about Marsupial evolution compared with Mammalian evolution. There are Marsupial anteaters and mammalian anteaters and they both evolved effective strong claws to tear apart termite mounds. Marsupial moles and Mammal moles both are nearly blind and have powerful digging claws. Unlike almost all other Marsupials which have a baby pouch which aims upward, the Marsupial moles pouch aims downward so they don’t scoop dirt into the pouch as they crawl along. Evolution is amazing. If you want more up to date information try reading Shawn Carrol’s “Endless Forms Most Beautiful” which covers some amazing recent discoveries about evolution and species formation. Perhaps Darwin should not have named his book “The Origin of Species”, but rather “The Evolution of Species.” He did not have the technical equipment to examine the very early precambrian development of living entities or of microbiology, so his theories were based on examination of macrolife, not microlife where it all started.
“Creatures evolve to live in specific suitable environments. Today I was reading about Marsupial evolution compared with Mammalian evolution. There are Marsupial anteaters and mammalian anteaters and they both evolved effective strong claws to tear apart termite mounds. Marsupial moles and Mammal moles both are nearly blind and have powerful digging claws. Unlike almost all other Marsupials which have a baby pouch which aims upward, the Marsupial moles pouch aims downward so they don’t scoop dirt into the pouch as they crawl along. Evolution is amazing.”
What’s interesting is all the things you point out here could be used as arguments for design as well.
I think this question is still well beyond the scope of science and that’s why it’s so “controversial”.
Contrast to, say, the properties of gold, aren’t particularly controversial.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.