Posted on 04/15/2006 11:44:16 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
Posted: April 15, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
I suggested here last week that the established authorities of every age act consistently. They become vigilantly militant against non-conforming dissidents who challenge their assumptions.
Thus when the dissident Galileo challenged the assumptions of the 17th century papacy, it shut him up. Now when the advocates of "intelligent design" challenge the scientific establishment's assumptions about "natural selection," it moves aggressively to shut them up. So the I.D. people have this in common with Galileo.
I received a dozen letters on this, three in mild agreement, the rest in scorn and outrage. This calls for a response.
Where, one reader demanded, did I get the information that 10 percent of scientists accept intelligent design? I got it from a National Post (newspaper) article published two years ago, which said that 90 percent of the members of the National Academy of Science "consider themselves atheists." Since if you're not an atheist, you allow for the possibility of a Mind or Intelligence behind nature, this puts 10 percent in the I.D. camp.
I could have gone further. A survey last year by Rice University, financed by the Templeton Foundation, found that about two-thirds of scientists believed in God. A poll published by Gallup in 1997 asked: Do you believe that "man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, including man's creation?" essentially the I.D. position. Just under 40 percent of scientists said yes. So perhaps my 10 percent was far too low.
Two readers called my attention to a discovery last week on an Arctic island of something which may be the fossil remains of the mysteriously missing "transitional species." Or then maybe it isn't transitional. Maybe it's a hitherto undetected species on its own.
But the very exuberance with which such a discovery is announced argues the I.D. case. If Darwin was right, and the change from one species to another through natural selection occurred constantly in millions of instances over millions of years, then the fossil record should be teaming with transitional species. It isn't. That's why even one possibility, after many years of searching, becomes front-page news.
Another letter complains that I.D. cannot be advanced as even a theory unless evidence of the nature of this "Divine" element is presented. But the evidence is in nature itself. The single cell shows such extraordinary complexity that to suggest it came about by sheer accident taxes credulity. If you see a footprint in the sand, that surely evidences human activity. The demand "Yes, but whose footprint is it?" does not disqualify the contention that somebody was there. "Nope," says the establishment, "not until you can tell us who it was will we let you raise this question in schools."
Another reader argues that Galileo stood for freedom of inquiry, whereas I.D. advocates want to suppress inquiry. This writer apparently did not notice what caused me to write the column. It was the rejection by a government agency for a $40,000 grant to a McGill University anti-I.D. lobby to suppress the presentation and discussion of I.D. theory in the Canadian schools. Suppressing discussion is an odd way of encouraging "freedom of inquiry." Anyway, the I.D. movement doesn't want to suppress evolution. It merely wants it presented as a theory, alongside the I.D. theory.
Why, asked another reader, did I not identify the gutsy woman who stated the reason for the rejection, bringing upon herself the scorn of scientific authority. That's fair. Her name is Janet Halliwell, a chemist and executive vice president of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council. She said that evolution is a theory, not a fact, and the McGill application offered no evidence to support it.
The McGill applicant was furious. Evolution, he said, needs no evidence. It's fact. Apparently Harvard University doesn't quite agree with him. The Boston Globe reports that Harvard has begun an expensive project to discover how life emerged from the chemical soup of early earth. In the 150 years since Darwin, says the Globe, "scientists cannot explain how the process began."
The most sensible letter came from a research scientist. "I think that the current paradigm of evolution by natural selection acting on random variation will change," he writes. "I think that evidence will accumulate to suggest that much of the genetic variation leading to the evolution of life on earth was not random, but was generated by biochemical processes that exhibit intelligent behavior."
Then he urges me not to disclose his identity. Saying this publicly would threaten his getting tenure, he fears. Galileo would understand.
Yeah, ID is a belief, and a possibly valid one, but it's still not science. My belief in God and my immortal soul is not science either. I'm fine with that, because science doesn't determine my religion.
So now you don't understand logic or biology?
Then why are you even posting on this thread?
One, two, or even more beneficial mutations can be independantly spreading through the population at the same time as they aren't cancelling each other out.
Additionally, assuming that such does occur
The more beneficial a mutation is, the more chance it has of fixing throughout the entire population. As the mutation spreads to more individuals in the population, the chance of it spreading further increases. Exponential increase like how a virus spreads, except even better as it is beneficial rather than detrimental.
you must then include the probability that organisms, each possessing different favorable mutations, can combine to produce offspring having both favorable mutations and no detrimental mutations.
If two favorable mutations are spreading throughout the population independantly then they will both eventually become present in every individual in that population. They don't cancel each other out so they will seamlessly cross. In this way multiple changes can be occuring simultaneously.
"one mutation per locus per 10^5 to 10^6 gametes" means one mutation per gene per 10^6 reproductions. We have tens of thousands of genes meaning that this calculation gives a value of about one mutation per 100 reproductions. Given a population in which just a thousand reproductions occur in a year that means about 10 gene mutations.
Over 1,000,000 years that's 10,000,000 mutations. If only 1% of those are beneficial and manage to spread that is plenty. All the math concerning time available and mutation rates have been done long ago. If there was any problem with mutation rates and the time available it would have been apparent long ago.
Sorry, this does not pass the "real world" test.
The range of variation includes selection pressure at both ends FOR EACH TRAIT. An individual in the center of the bell curve for one trait may be near one end of the curve and just getting by for another, and off the scale for a third: result, extinct. Game over, maybe your brother or cousin or the guys on the other side of the mountain will do better.
Further, mutations will be passed on no matter what, favorable, benign or detrimental. That brings selection pressure to bear again.
I think you have been studying too much mathematics and have had too few courses in the various biological-related sciences. My own coursework which is relevant here is in human races, and just in this one field I see real-world results differing from what you are postulating; that makes me distrust your model.
Oooh, too bad for your students. I too had teachers who thought they understood a subject in spite of the obvious.
I joined this thread on the assumption that polite and reasoned debate with other participants was possible and preferable to insults.
Polite, okay, even encouraged. Reasoned? You have yet to demonstrate that you are capable of that ...
Because it addresses the fundamental question of where we (and all living things) came from according to those ignoramuses.
Eh, give him a chance. He's not a jerk, seemingly.
That's definitely questionable at this point. And it's not like he's new either ...
--A. Einstein
That depends on the mutations, doesn't it? The key point is that after thousands of generations, numerous mutations have been favorably selected, and have spread through the population. Others have been de-selected (by early death or reproductive failure) and have been removed from the population. The gene pool (that's the ball to keep your eye on) is then different from what it once had been. It changes every generation, somewhat, but over a great many generations the changes are cumulative. The creatures in the breeding population never notice this, because from one generation to the next, the effect is minimal. It's mostly apparent only when an ancestral fossil is found and compared to the current version.
It can also become apparent if the population is divided, perhaps by a river or something, and each takes it's genetic material and goes a separate way. In time (again, we're talking about thousands of generations) the two populations -- if they were reunited -- probably won't be one breeding population any more.
This part isn't quite right. I don't think any species gradually mutates itself into extinction. Rather, due to environmental changes (climate, predators, whatever), it's unable to survive.
Yes, it is an incorrect statement of the basic premise of evolution. Perhaps it would be easier for you to actually study the theory of evolution rather than trying to shoehorn it into your desired strawman?
Yes, this is an oversimplification on the order of "See Spot run!"
There is no one "favorable" or "detrimental" in most individuals. There are thousands of benign (here and now), slightly detrimental (here and now), slightly beneficial (here and now), etc. The range is huge. That seems to be the point you are missing.
Try a close look at sickle-cell anemia. One single trait. Bad news, right? Right, except that it provides some resistance to malaria. So, the efficacy of this particular trait (out of millions) depends on--is there malaria here? If there is malaria here, then you have a slight advantage in that one area, while still maintaining the disadvantage of the anemia. If there is no malaria, the slight advantage of malaria resistance does no good, and the anemia is still detrimental.
Multiply this by thousands of traits. The folks with the best overall adaptations for here and now (and here and now is always changing) survive and reproduce a little better than those who do not. Toss in a few million years and stir well.
But forget the mathematical models until you have a handle on the variables. If you can't figure out all the variables, and correctly model them, your mathematical models don't mean much in the real world.
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.