Evolution

[CardiacCoug]

I actually listened to the entire discussion in that video. I was not, to be honest, very impressed with their analysis. Moreover, they are focusing on something that is really not very important: whether Darwin was 'wrong' doesn't matter. Darwin created the framework for the paradigm. Nothing they are talking about requires the abandonment of the paradigm as modified by current knowledge. There was nothing there that was new or different. It was just intelligent design with a couple of not so articulate oddballs spitting out commentary. The moderator was pretty sharp, as was the intelligent design guy. But nothing new at all.

Agreed. It’s like if somebody said “Well we now know that some people get sick due to autoimmune conditions and allergies so Is Germ Theory Wrong?!?!? “

Just because Darwin didn’t understand every weird, rare, unusual way that genetic material can be transferred between organisms doesn’t mean he was wrong. Darwinian evolution will always have massive explanatory power for what is observed in nature at a macroscopic and microscopic level.

[tooblue]

LOL. Ok tooblue, you and those truly heroic scientists continue to ask those dangerous questions. The rest of us will be too busy trying to maintain the orthodoxy.

LOL, here's another link to a heroic ... oh, wait he's not a heroic scientist but rather a journalist ...

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/11/63778...e-tangled-tree

[SeattleUte]

I am probably not familiar enough with this stuff to talk about it here, but I am at a loss as to why you find this material so compelling. First, Darwin never addressed the origin of life, he addressed the origin of species. So you can conclude that archaea must have followed a different creation path and it doesn't affect the mechanism for speciation (plus, it is a peculiar bit of evidence to use to support the notion that God created life; its like God leaving a little drop of material somewhere that doesn't quite fit). It does not mean Darwin was wrong. Likewise, horizontal gene transfer is a mechanism that might have been significant (although the scope of that significance seems very unsettled) but it neither supplants Darwinian mechanisms nor does it urge intelligent design. It is an alternate method for spreading genetic information and allowing species to take advantage of variation that is neutral as to the origin of life. It also does not mean Darwin was wrong, it just means he was incomplete due to lack of information. I am not sure what you mean by your reference to math, but if you mean the timetable of speciation doesn't fit, there are some very real questions to be answered but asking how the human tree speciated at a rate faster than randomness of mutation might permit does not mean that Darwinian thinking (as opposed to Darwin himself) is wrong, it means it is not entirely explored. Moreover, as before, nothing about this issue means intelligent design must be the answer or is even a more plausible answer. In fact, it makes it easier to argue that intelligent design is even less plausible, but that is an irrelevant point.

If you want to say that Darwin, in his writings, was wrong in some respects because he lacked information or didn't foresee and answer all of the questions raised by subsequent analyses and investigations, you are probably correct. But nothing you have presented suggests, to me, that Darwinian inspired thinking is incorrect or is proven wrong. Further, nothing you presented suggests intelligent design as the answer.

Let me try to help. Darwin fell upon evolution or speciation. I don’t think he went further than that. He died flummoxed by the the mechanism for speciation. To be sure, he speculated a lot, and it was all wrong. Though Darwin and Gregor Mendel were contemporaries, when Darwin died Mendel’s groundbreaking discoveries that would catalyze genetic science were ignored (and there would be efforts to misappropriate it). (Ironically, the very journal that published Mendel’s findings that would be unearthed many years later was found in Darwin’s study after his death. His notes were in the margins of other articles, but apparently he skipped over Mendel’s.)

Since then we’ve come to understand DNA, mutation and natural selection. Now, since for good reason scientists won’t touch the supernatural, they are left with randomness as the explanation for how dead matter transmogrified into single cell life, which over time evolved into blue whales, Golden Eagles, and people. Randomness is the only available explanation if, as it must, science restricts itself to considering the material.

The problem with randomness is that it’s not at all satisfying to us humans at an emotional or intellectual level. In addition to suggesting that we are no more important than the ants I found on my counter and murdered in mass this morning, it’s violently counterintuitive (which doesn’t mean that randomness isn’t the true explanation; truth is often counterintuitive). What we see with our eyes, is that randomness doesn’t build things—on the contrary, if you randomnly throw Lincoln logs on the floor, a log cabin won’t materialize—and has time passed, the universe—life itself—has moved in the direction of increased complexity. Yes, there have been dead ends. But int the long run, there’s been increased complexity on a massive scale. Beautiful complexity.

The inability of science to explain how dead matter became life and consciousness compounds the problem of counterintiutiveness of the randomness explanation. Though, to be sure, randomness is probably all that science will ever have as the explanation—because it can’t consider anything that can’t be measured, felt, smelled, etc.—and I hope science will always be so disciplined!

Sometimes, however, it seems that scientists wax evangelical about randomness where it is the only available explanation.

[Topper]

Creekster and Seattle get it. Tooblue, stick with art.

"Darwinian Orthodoxy."

Crudely stated, in comparison to creekster's and Seattle's more elegant explanations, if the fine contours of Darwin's original explanation are exactly accurate, then we must throw it out, despite generations of scientists improving it, and accept the idiotic Intelligent Design. Binary thinking at its best.

Horizontal gene transfers and independent development of Archaea only confirm the complexity of the origin of life domains and the origin of species and speciation. Darwin as a starting point and as refined by others is doing just fine.

[tooblue]

Creekster and Seattle get it. Tooblue, stick with art.

"Darwinian Orthodoxy."

Crudely stated, in comparison to creekster's and Seattle's more elegant explanations, if the fine contours of Darwin's original explanation are exactly accurate, then we must throw it out, despite generations of scientists improving it, and accept the idiotic Intelligent Design. Binary thinking at its best.

Horizontal gene transfers and independent development of Archaea only confirm the complexity of the origin of life domains and the origin of species and speciation. Darwin as a starting point and as revised by others is doing just fine.

FIFY ... per the Oxford english dictionary, revise:

"to look at or consider again an idea, piece of writing, etc. in order to correct or improve it"

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dic...english/revise

So, yah. I think I am doing just fine in this domain thank you lol

[Topper]

FIFY ... per the Oxford english dictionary, revise:

"to look at or consider again an idea, piece of writing, etc. in order to correct or improve it"

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dic...english/revise

So, yah. I think I am doing just fine in this domain thank you lol

ID is not a valid scientific theory.

[tooblue]

ID is not a valid scientific theory.

[Topper]

You're the one posting links that argues evolution didn't happen. Next thing we'll know, you'll post link saying vaccinations cause autism.

[tooblue]

You're the one posting links that argues evolution didn't happen. Next thing we'll know, you'll post link saying vaccinations cause autism.

lol ... have you actually watched the video I embedded or visited the links? In the video there are three individuals, one of which is a prominent proponent of intelligent design and the other two refuse to label themselves as intelligent design proponents, but no longer accept Darwinian orthodoxy as "absolute." I trust you realize that most proponents of intelligent design certainly accept that evolution is a mechanism by which the development of complex biological structures has occurred, but they do not accept evolution as the only mechanism, precisely because the biological complexity that has and that currently exists on our planet is far too ordered and intricate to be chalked up to randomness.

I then posted a link to a Darwin apologist reviewing a book (which I have read) called The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, by David Quammen. Quammen is most certainly a proponent of Darwinian evolution, but has written an interesting book that looks beyond the orthodoxy, by citing science that is REVISING some of Darwins core theories. Here's what he says in another link I posted:

SIMON: And to understand this, we are getting genetic matter from non-human -- even non-primate sources.

QUAMMEN: That's correct.


SIMON: Boy, this really revises Darwinism, doesn't it?


QUAMMEN: It does revise Darwinism. The canonical view of evolution -- the Darwinian view is that evolution occurs as genes descend from parents to offspring and are very gradually modified and branches diverge. The tree of life is the model used because it chose branches diverging. But now we understand that innovation in genomes doesn't always come gradually. Sometimes it comes suddenly, in an instant, by horizontal gene transfer. And that represents the convergence not the divergence of lineages.

Would it surprise you to know that in Quammen's book, he never once mentions intelligent design. And obviously, it is a surprise to you that not one individual in any of the links states that evolution didn't happen. And neither have I stated it. Good gravy ...

[Topper]

lol ... have you actually watched the video I embedded or visited the links? In the video there are three individuals, one of which is a prominent proponent of intelligent design and the other two refuse to label themselves as intelligent design proponents, but no longer accept Darwinian orthodoxy as "absolute." I trust you realize that most proponents of intelligent design certainly accept that evolution is a mechanism by which the development of complex biological structures has occurred, but they do not accept evolution as the only mechanism, precisely because the biological complexity that has and that currently exists on our planet is far too ordered and intricate to be chalked up to randomness.

I then posted a link to a Darwin apologist reviewing a book (which I have read) called The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, by David Quammen. Quammen is most certainly a proponent of Darwinian evolution, but has written an interesting book that looks beyond the orthodoxy, by citing science that is REVISING some of Darwins core theories. Here's what he says in another link I posted:



Would it surprise you to know that in Quammen's book, he never once mentions intelligent design. And obviously, it is a surprise to you that not one individual in any of the links states that evolution didn't happen. And neither have I stated it. Good gravy ...

ID proponents use clever devices.

First, challenge Darwinian evolution and propose non-scientific ID.
Second, after that fails, poke holes in historical statements without understanding so that they can further be allowed to teach non-science, i.e., ID.

Yes, there are more than one mechanism for speciation and for other evolutionary developments. None of this is earth-shattering or supportive of ID. The mechanisms of nature don't necessarily threaten an idea that some entity has somehow influenced or orchestrated the natural mechanisms of the universe.

There is no valid young earth theory.

ID is not a valid theory. The rest of what you put forth is neither startling nor anything else.

[tooblue]

ID proponents use clever devices.

First, challenge Darwinian evolution and propose non-scientific ID.
Second, after that fails, poke holes in historical statements without understanding so that they can further be allowed to teach non-science, i.e., ID.

Yes, there are more than one mechanism for speciation and for other evolutionary developments. None of this is earth-shattering or supportive of ID. The mechanisms of nature don't necessarily threaten an idea that some entity has somehow influenced or orchestrated the natural mechanisms of the universe.

There is no valid young earth theory.

ID is not a valid theory. The rest of what you put forth is neither startling nor anything else.

Who has brought up young earth theory And if what I have posted isn't startling, then why has it prompted such a startled response from you and others?

lol

[Topper]

Who has brought up young earth theory And if what I have posted isn't startling, then why has it prompted such a startled response from you and others?

lol

To nip any legitimization of ID in the bud. ID needs to be killed on the spot.

[myboynoah]

To nip any legitimization of ID in the bud. ID needs to be killed on the spot.

Archaea, the Danite of Darwinian orthodoxy.

[creekster]

Archaea, the Danite of Darwinian orthodoxy.

I recently visited Porter Rockwell's cabin, which is in Eureka Utah. Very humble. Surprisingly well-preserved. Nothing to do with evolution (AFAIK), but it's condition startled me a lot more than the hoo-ha in the video that started this thread.

[Topper]

Archaea, the Danite of Darwinian orthodoxy.

I'm more of a Robert Lamphere, Elliott Ness sort of guy.