Posted on 02/11/2005 9:29:29 PM PST by restornu
I have found you "directed mutation" stuff. Barry Hall and John Cairns. If you have access to Futuyma's 3rd edition this is discussed on p 285.
Basically the experiments are in serious doubt. Hall used a transposon as one of the mutations that needed to be reverted (directed). Unfortunately the experimental set up required the cells to grow on salicin. It required 2 mutations to get there. But while waiting for the mutations to occur the cells were in a state of starvation, and their particular IS tended to "jump" a lot faster during starvation.
While the results are not totally discredited, some new experiments will be required to revive this at this time (Genetics 120:887 for the original article).
Am I right in surmising that Hall's doubtful results are one of the main pillars of Spetner's thinking?
The micro-macro argument IS addressing the fossil record--to dismiss it, in the usual creationist manner: on the grounds that humans haven't been able to create goldfish from zebras in a lab, therefore, humans can only prove that micro-evolution happens. There is nothing new here, except yet another clever--a' la Behe and Dembski--blizzard of tech patter and obtuse mathematics to drive laymen away from discerning how threadbare the meat of the argument is.
He seems to make this question as obscure as possible, but here's a quote from the reference in post #83 where he describes his work. You can take "evolution A" and "evolution B" to refer to micro and macro evolution, despite the handwaving.
The distinction between these two meanings of evolution is often ignored by those defending neo-Darwinian evolution, but the distinction is critical. The claim is made for Evolution A, but proof is often limited to Evolution B. The implication is that the observation of Evolution B is a substantiation of Evolution A. But this is not so. Since Evolution A is not observable, it can be substantiated only by circumstantial evidence. And circumstantial evidence must be accompanied by a theory of how it relates to what is to be proved. Neo-Darwinian theory (NDT) is generally accepted to be that theory. The thesis of my book is that NDT cannot account for Evolution A.
The author is deliberating being misleading. Theories of evolution prior to "Origin of Species" were almost entirely formulated on religious grounds.
Professor Richard Owen was one of Darwin's critics. One example of his antomical theories:
However, Owen did not believe that his archetype was anything like an ancestor to the vertebrates. Rather, the archetype represented an idea in the Divine mind, which also "foreknew all its modifications."
Sounds like modern Creationism/ID to me.
An intro to the Professor is here.
Don't bother reading the book before you make your final verdict on the arguments. That will help ensure that people who don't already "get it" see you as a credible source. /sarcasm
On musing about it, I think this requires a bit more of an answer. The extra fillup that S has added to the argument here, is that God had to intervene to whip up a new macro-species from DNA rather than to whip up a new macro-species from scratch each time. That doesn't seem like a significant distinction to me, nor does it seem particularly new. We've been bickering within biology for years about how long it apparently takes to do stuff, and how long it ought to take to do stuff--without a felt need to throw up our hands in dismay, any more than fossil gaps produce this effect.
There are an infinite number of things I will never get around to reading, that are a good deal more important, and for which there is a good deal more credible vouchsafing available, than this one. I'm sorry this makes you feel pouty, but there isn't a great deal of help for it, and just in general, I would suggest that my failure to jump through whatever arbitrary hoop a creationist who seems to demonstrate some affinity for several of the least convincing standard arguments, holds up for me, isn't likely to have much long term impact on my credibility. While your capacity to denigrate those who refuse to engage in debate, however tenuous and scientifically disreputable the issue, is well-demonstrated here--it does not really constitute a significant argument.
Here are the two most obvious reasons I don't consider this a serious enough argument to read the book... donh Post 126
Maybe your quick decision to accuse me of something I don't do (and haven't done on this thread) tells me something about the integrity of your assessments of others you read and disagree with. After all, I'm committed to dealing with reality, not some some preconceived projection thereof.
You vastly overrate your level of adult courtesy. I'll confine myself to reminding you of other equally disparaging remarks you've made to me on this thread:
They are coming from different perspectives and having what looks for all the world like an honest debate. Eeeegads, imagine that.
I'm not looking to prove evolution wrong, I'm not looking for its worst proponents, I'm looking for the best, and none of them address the best arguments of the ID side. At least not that I've found.
If you don't wish to be addressed in a contempuous manner, I respectfully suggest that you reciprocate.
They are coming from different perspectives and having what looks for all the world like an honest debate. Eeeegads, imagine that.
I'm not looking to prove evolution wrong, I'm not looking for its worst proponents, I'm looking for the best, and none of them address the best arguments of the ID side. At least not that I've found.
So at that time, I had no reason to be disrespectful
From the available evidence, you don't give the appearance of a person who can tell when they are being disrepectful. I commented, quite reasonably, on a pointer--given to me by you--to an explanation, by the author, of what is in the book. And in response, I commented upon it, and gave you, I thought, quite clear and detailed reasons, which I don't recall you particularly responding to, why I wouldn't be reading it, addressing what appears to be the central technical point of the argument, as explained by the author.
It appears to me to be the case that you vouchsafed an argument from the book, I explained in fairly concrete terms why the arguement is not considered new, or pursuasive by me, or the biological science community, and I don't recall seeing a detailed counterargument--just the annoying contention that if I don't read this book cover to cover, I've, in some vague manner, become intellectually dishonest.
If you think this book provides a telling counterargument, than let's hear it, if not, then let's not be mistaking nebulous allegations of intellectual impropriety regarding my not jumping thru whatever time-consuming hoops you raise for me to jump through, for a technically sound argument.
It appears to me to be the case that you vouchsafed an argument from the book, I explained in fairly concrete terms why the arguement is not considered new
Well, how very fair-minded. All actions have consequences, and all opinions have implications. If you wish to have a discussion that rises to the level of seriousness of drunken late nite high school bullsession, than you are right on the money. However, you have stumbled onto a forum that takes it's conversation more seriously than that, as a general rule.
If we accept that you are ferreting out rhetoric virtue in this quest, that carries with it some interesting freight. it suggests that both sides of this discussion have dragged in meat of relatively equal intellectual sustenance upon which to feast. In every schoolboard meeting across the country right now, regarding science textbooks, the creationists are striving 'til they sweat blood to create exactly this impression. If the astrologists and the flat-earthers were doing the same thing, the issue would be a little clearer to schoolboards, and so would the problem with your supposedly fair and neutral quest for dialog.
This is not a democracy, The two sides of this discussion are not on equal footing due to some high school decorum rule of rhetorical manners. The one side is scientists, speaking in the language of science, about issues that they are extremely, and uniquely qualified to handle, and doing so with an excruciatingly high standard of honesty, self-criticism, and care, and the other is theologens with a demonstrated, extremely careless attitude toward believable facts, and a well-understood predisposing agenda, putting up an extremely thin pretense of being scientists, on the basis of a handful of well-educated cranks, that does not automatically buy them equal time at the scientific table--the only table scientists are any more qualified than anyone else to talk at.
Creationists are making a concerted assault on what science currently believes with these ID arguments--which are rediculously thin--not because they are necessarily wrong, but because they are necessarily lacking in the meat and potatoes of science--incontrovertable, tangible positive material evidence--and lacking in the other important touchstone of such evidence as is available: falsifiability. (If I insist the something I don't presently understand happened because aliens with incomprehenisble powers intervened--how do I then set up tests or predictions regarding what the next incomprehensible act will be?)
Acting as if creationists in ID clothing and and scientists were being bulky and childlike because one or the other refuses to sit at your table a play by your rules where the implication is that their positions are of roughly enough equal intellectual merit as to make discussion fruitful is, in itself, an opinion that I may attack quite reasonably, on intellectual grounds. Furthermore, amongst adults, I should reasonably expect to be able to do so without being castigated for it by someone who thinks he has arrogated to himself the warrant to establish such equality without the need of putting up an argument, instead of bleating and gnashing about fairness.
So, my suggestion is...make a real argument, or give up; your stance strikes me as unduly patronizing and proudly incompetent, and I think you should find a forum where fairness counts for more than precise argumentation. They abound; you won't be lonely.
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