Dissent From Darwin

[Phil153]

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How about this sense?

ADJECTIVE: 1. Marked by or given to doubt; questioning:

How is that different from the word used in the statement?

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I've already answered that question. See here to understand what I'm talking about.

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I thought natural selection was the crown jewel of evolution. Are you saying Darwinism can survive without NS? Mutation?

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I never said that, and that's not the question. The point is there are <u>other</u> mechanisms of evolution besides random mutation and natural selection.

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God is a magic wand to explain what we can't explain.


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So is undesigned evolution.

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No, evolution will fail if any of its predictions are found to be false. It fits with the volume of evidence collected. That's all you can ask of a theory that relates to natural history.

[NotReady]

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No, evolution will fail if any of its predictions are found to be false


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No, evolution will be changed if any of its predictions are found to be false.

[NotReady]

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The point is there are other mechanisms of evolution besides random mutation and natural selection.


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I couldn't believe the way you dis NS so I did some google:

http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/d..._evolution.htm

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Evolution by natural selection is the only workable theory ever proposed that is capable of explaining life, and it does so brilliantly.


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Dawkins seems to think it still matters - a lot.

[PairTheBoard]

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I saw some of those. It's pretty light on biologists is my point. It should put up a red flag in your head that it's mostly physicists and chemists arguing against this.

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It's interesting you should say this. Lynn Margulis makes the same complaint about those working in the field of Evolution and the most vocal "expert" proponents of Neo-Darwinism. That they are weak on biology and its chemistry. Link to Interview with Lynn Margulis

PairTheBoard

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I have to disagree with that position. Wouldn't you say she's talking about a certain group of neo-darwinists in particular and not "those working in the field of Evolution" in general? She says she's a Darwinist later in that very writing

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Although I greatly admire Darwin's contributions and agree with most of his theoretical analysis and I am a Darwinist, I am not a neo-Darwinist. One of Darwin's major insights is the recognition that all organisms are related by common ancestry. Today direct evidence for common ancestry — genetic, chemical, and otherwise — is overwhelming. Populations of organisms grow and reproduce at rates that are not sustainable in the real world, and therefore many more die or fail to reproduce than actually complete their life histories. The fact that all the organisms that are born or hatched or budded off do not and cannot possibly survive is natural selection. Observable inherited variation appears in all organisms that are hatched, born, budded off, or produced by division, and some variants do outgrow and outreproduce others. These are the tenets of Darwinian evolution and natural selection. All thinking scientists are in complete agreement with these basic ideas, since they're supported by vast amounts of evidence.

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Mayr was probably the greatest evolutionary biologist of the 20th century and he had problems with some of these (as in the interview) aspects of neodarwinism.

Also, everyone seems to be falling into the trap of assuming Dawkins, etc. are typical of the work-a-day evolutionary biologist. They aren't experimentalists they are popularizers and theoretical folk. There are tons of really great scientists studying plant evolution, bacteria evolution, the chemistry of evolution, etc. and it's ridiculous to say that they don't understand what they are studying or that the bulk of our understanding of evolution resides in NYT bestsellers you can pick up at Border's. I can guarantee you that they are Darwinists.

Also, as another poster pointed out in the other thread the logic doesn't go "they thought Margulis was wrong in the 60's and she was right, now they think she's wrong again so she must be right"
(Sorry I didn't look it up - but I really liked that post)

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Sounds like you know more about it than I do. I was going on my impression of what she said and my impression of the field being dominated by paleontologists. I'm so out of touch I'd never even heard of Margulis or her work. So I'm about 30 years out of date.

I guess I didn't look really closely at the CSCE statement:

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We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged

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These terms "Darwinism" and "Neo-Darwinism" have gotten me confused. I'm undertanding Darwinism to mean Evolution with Natural Selection as a mechanism. Neo-Darwinism meaning the addition of Random Mutation as a mechanism. As phil pointed out, the CSCE statement is tricky. I think Margulis would agree with the first sentence. But would she agree with the second sentence? I'm not sure now what the second sentence even means. Does it imply scepticism of Evolution itself? Or just the Darwinian mechanism of Natural Selection and the Neo-Darwinian mechanism of Random Mutation as sufficient to explain it? I took it as the later meaning. But it's been worded tricky hasn't it. Looks like some bunk at work.

PairTheBoard

[Phil153]

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I couldn't believe the way you dis NS so I did some google:
Dawkins seems to think it still matters - a lot.

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I don't dis NS, it is the main mechanism by which evolution happens. I don't understand where this confusion comes from. Am I not being clear?

The question states:

We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.

There are some, perhaps people such as Lynn Margulis mentioned above, that would disagree that <u>random</u> mutation and natural selection alone are sufficient to account for the complexity of life. Read the link to get an idea of why they might say this, while still rejecting ID.

One model of evolution is that organisms are fairly self contained, and random mutations in their genes combined with natural selection drives the evolution of their species. Another one is that proposed by Lynn Margulis. Note that they are both Darwinian in nature (Darwin didn't even know about genes, and gene transfer between organisms), but the second may agree with strict interpretation of the above quote.

[NotReady]

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Note that they are both Darwinian in nature


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How is that true in view of this statement from the link:

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She also believes that proponents of the standard theory "wallow in their zoological, capitalistic, competitive, cost-benefit interpretation of Darwin - having mistaken him... Neo-Darwinism, which insists on (the slow accrual of mutations), is a complete funk."


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As I said in another post, undesigned evolution will always change when anything about it is falsified. The real theory of evolution from Darwin til now (for atheists), is that God doesn't exist, the cosmos is all there is, and life and it's diversity has a completely natural explanation. That theory is as unfalsifiable as ID.

[chezlaw]

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As I said in another post, undesigned evolution will always change when anything about it is falsified. The real theory of evolution from Darwin til now (for atheists), is that God doesn't exist, the cosmos is all there is, and life and it's diversity has a completely natural explanation. That theory is as unfalsifiable as ID.

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c'mon NotReady stop saying that, dawinism isn't and doesn't imply atheism. many atheists are darwinists (of some sort) but so are many jews and christians.

Darwinism is only a problem for the literal religons that claim stuff like the adam and eve story is true rather than allegorical.

In any case, we have to decide whats going on: the pursuit of truth or defense of beliefs. The ID movement is the the latter.

chez

[PairTheBoard]

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The real theory of evolution from Darwin til now (for atheists), is that God doesn't exist, the cosmos is all there is, and life and it's diversity has a completely natural explanation. That theory is as unfalsifiable as ID.


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This goes to my point on another thread that when scientists start talking about God they are no longer talking science but religion. Conversly, when religious people start talking about God and Science they are talking about religion not science.

There is no more of an Athiest Scientific Theory of Evolution than there is an ID Scientific Theory of Evolution. The terms are contradictory.

The Scientific Theory of Evolution says basically that life forms have evolved from previous life forms. There is scientific empirical evidence to support this. There is data. Science is in the business of providing models to explain such data. Models that work according natural laws. The best working model it has at this time involves Natural Selection and Random Mutation. That model may be modified as scientific understanding of natural laws improves. Nowhere in any of this is God being mentioned. God is not being denied. The God concept is being ignored and that is exactly the proper stance for science to take. Namely, no stance, no mention, no consideration.

The God concept is a supernatural one and science is not in the business of dealing with supernatural concepts. Science is in the business of providing models that work according to natural laws to explain and interpret empirical data. That's exactly the job it's doing with its Theory of Evolution.

PairTheBoard

[NotReady]

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The ID movement is the the latter.


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So is Dawkinism.

[chezlaw]

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The ID movement is the the latter.


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So is Dawkinism.

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I think you mean NotReadyism, but in any case only your work latter work is possibly defensive. The Blind Watchmaker and the Selfish Gene thorough to the Ancestors Tale are great works on the pursuit of truth.

chez