RTB: Serious Problems with Evolution

[neo-x]

And to be clear, I hope I am wrong on this. Seriously.

[Nicki]

I'm pretty sure God is never surprised, what I meant earlier was that we could very well be.

The others have replied pretty well, but I didn't say those catastrophes couldn't happen; I meant they won't if they're not part of God's plan for the universe, and going by the Bible it seems unlikely that they are. So don't worry too much. If you trust in Jesus (or for the OSASers, if you have ever trusted in him), God says you're saved and he's got good plans for you, comets or no comets.

I am not at all concerned for salvation. That is another topic entirely. I only remarked that these things, some of them, have already happened. I don't judge them by the Bible because the bible is mostly silent on these things, yet they happen. So it may be just a sincere belief that they won't be happening again but it's just that. There is no solid reason to say that they may not happen.

They haven't happened to (or affecting) the earth though; not while there have been people on it anyway. Something may or may not happen to the earth but I think God will be in control either way.

It's the same misplaced notion that a church should not fall down upon a body of worshipping believers...but it does...plenty of times.

Do you think God was in control? why do you say so?

And if not then why have this notion of safety in the first place?

Nikki, I understand what you are saying but to me, it's just misplaced or misguided hope.

I think God was in control in that he allowed that to happen - it was not a good thing but one of the bad things that happen in this world; however God could have used it for good in some way. When it comes to the 'end of the world' though the Bible gives some idea of what will happen, which doesn't seem to involve a comet, a supernova explosion or just the sun fading out (in however many billion years). You never know though, I suppose. My idea has always been that God will probably 'make all things new' well before any cosmic disasters.

[abelcainsbrother]

Here are some good books about evolution and the problems with the evidence in evolution science. And they are written by an atheist. These books do a good job of explaining why evolution in its current state is seriously lacking.The thing about them though is he explains why current evolution is seriously lacking but he proposes a different theory to help evolution,he proposes" a self developing genome"that allows life to evolve. He still chooses to believe in evolution though but these reveal the serious problems with the current ToE. And the good thing about them is you can check it yourself and see he is right.He is not just making up stuff he is really concerned about evolution and wants to help it,like Rupert Sheldrake.

Evolution: A case of stating the obvious


Evolution: From copying errors to evolvability

[Audie]

Books schmadooks, when someone comes with a fact contrary to ToE I will be impressed.

[Jac3510]

Quick question, Audie. Are you a supporter of the modern synthesis, or do you find the extended synthesis of Muller et al more interesting?

[Audie]

Quick question, Audie. Are you a supporter of the modern synthesis, or do you find the extended synthesis of Muller et al more interesting?

Quick answer, I dont know what either of those is.

When I get time to look at same, I could say what I think.

In general, if this sort of answers, "Darwinism" is a non topic unless
one is doing history of science.

[Jac3510]

Sure, "Darwinisn" is a non-issue. The only way the history of science is relevant to the MS/ES discussion is insofar as the MS, from the history-of-science perspective, is more properly called neo-darwinism. ES advocates are just concerned about some problems they think they see with the explanatory power of MS and so want to do to the MS what (historically) neo-darwinism did with classical darwinism. I'm still looking at it myself. I only raised the question because your comment about "fact(s) contrary to ToE." My first thought was just, "Wait, which ToE -- MS or ES?" because ES advocates are not ID advocates or creationists of any kind whatsoever. Again, more of a curiosity thing on my end. I just started reading on it not long ago myself, which is probably why the question popped into my mind.

[Philip]

Audie: Books schmadooks, when someone comes with a fact contrary to ToE I will be impressed.

And when she comes up with FACTS concerning HOW ANYTHING could have come into physical existence to evolve, TO BEGIN WITH, and how just the right things and conditions existed, and how such extraordinary things popped into physical existence - INSTANTLY, and designed and functioning as they did - without any intelligence behind it - THEN I will be impressed! She'd apparently rather obsess with endless yakety yak over how whatever processes might have played out, which would have been 11+ billion years after that invisible, non-physical, extraordinarily powerful - and clearly intelligent first SOURCE for ALL things, put those first physical things in existence and motion. As the FAR more important question has to do with the Source and CAUSE that would have made ANYTHING physical possible - especially as NO physical things existed, and that Source would explain the previous 11 billion years she has no clue about - THAT should be her obsession. Believe in evolution? Fine. Explain how it's ULTIMATELY even possible. WE all believe in life, that it's existed a very long time on this planet. We see processes at work. We know all about some of them, and others we know very little about. But we also should obsess and marvel over what possible source (Source!) could have made this wonderful universe possible. If one thinks evolution is proven fact - great! NOW it is time to move on to the far bigger picture and questions. That is, unless one doesn't care about that. Just don't posit mere SPECULATIONS about a Source that had to be non-physical and eternal, and from some other dimension, as facts. And key CHARACTERISTICS necessary for that unseen Source ARE known - which greatly narrows the list as to what boxes that Source HAD to check!

[Audie]

Sure, "Darwinisn" is a non-issue. The only way the history of science is relevant to the MS/ES discussion is insofar as the MS, from the history-of-science perspective, is more properly called neo-darwinism. ES advocates are just concerned about some problems they think they see with the explanatory power of MS and so want to do to the MS what (historically) neo-darwinism did with classical darwinism. I'm still looking at it myself. I only raised the question because your comment about "fact(s) contrary to ToE." My first thought was just, "Wait, which ToE -- MS or ES?" because ES advocates are not ID advocates or creationists of any kind whatsoever. Again, more of a curiosity thing on my end. I just started reading on it not long ago myself, which is probably why the question popped into my mind.

I have seen the "which ToE" presented as a snarky "gotcha", which you, (even if I am not) are better than that.

There is much to be learned about how evolution works, of course. No doubt many ideas current today will be out of date tomorrow.

"The" ToE, from my pov, is that life started out small, and from there proliferated into
what we have today, with an unbroken chain of succession from 3 billion or so years ago to today. Mysteries like the origin of life, what was going on during the "boring billion", the causes of extinctions etc, will be challenges for many years to come, maybe never to be solved.

I wonder, btw, if it seems to you that origins of more or less anything are by their nature somewhat mysterious and inaccessible.

[Jac3510]

So you're right that I wasn't intending a gotcha with the "which ToE" idea, and I know (sadly) that it is sometimes used that way. For what it's worth, my own approach to any subject is to try to understand it on its own terms first before I criticize it. That's why I pretty much always pass on commenting (in the sense of arguing against) on strictly scientific matters. I really don't have the training to understand what I'm criticizing, so I just don't.

What I do understand is that within the very broad understanding of evolution you laid out, there are different schools of thought--particularly with reference to mechanisms. So back to the history of science, classical darwinism held, for instance, that the basic unit of evolution was the individual and therefore ignored reproductive isolation as a significant factor when considering natural selection. Neo-darwinism, however, challenges and updates both of these assumptions, in which the population is the basic unit of evolution and so relies heavily on reproductive isolation, particularly when considering speciation. In the same way, there were other forms of evolution that were popular before classical darwinism won the day. Lamarkianism is probably the best known example, but orthogenesis and saltationism were contenders at one point as well.

Anyway, the point is that there are evolutionists (in the sense you use the term) who think that neo-darwinism is no longer a viable theory, much the same way that current neo-evolutionists believe that classical darwinism isn't a viable theory (e.g., it's pretty obvious that the individual is not, after all, the basic unit of evolution). Their chief concerns seem to be, as little as I can tell as I'm just learning about it, that neo-darwinism simply lacks explanatory power for several observed phenomena. To take only one example, I read that phenotypic plasticity has traditionally been rejected by MS as a significant source of evolutionary change; ES advocates, though, think they see real data that says that it is, and that, of course, has the potential to significantly change some of our understanding of the field. Again, MS advocates (or, more generally, evolutionists not familiar with the debate) might simply assume that we're getting a better understanding of that particular aspect of evolutionary biology. No big deal. But it is if you want to have a unified theory, and as evolutionary studies become more and more like physics, with more and more specializations, it's harder and harder to have an overarching, unified theory.

This isn't to suggest that evolution, as such, is false. That's another matter which, again, I will as usual decline to comment on. I simply don't have the training. But I don't think of myself as stupid, and so while I can't reasonably comment on something as big as evolution per se, I can maybe see that certain narrow understandings of the theory are, if not falsified, almost certainly insufficient in, say, explanatory power to reasonably affirm to be true. And since you tend to defend the theory, I was curious "which version" you were defending. Not that you have to have one, of course. As I said, it was a curiosity, not a "gotcha" in any way.

As to your question about my view of origins, my worry here is, as you might expect, philosophical. All any origins argument can hope to do is provide an inference to best explanation. And there's nothing wrong with that, of course. But that's far from a demonstration. What makes an explanation "best" necessarily relies on previous commitments, and all such commitments are necessarily value-laden. That includes "facts" themselves. All due respect to Popper, but he's just wrong. So it seems to me that origins are more or less mysterious depending on your starting points. And,yes, I know that all of that is a non-answer to your question. My point is that I don't fault you even a tiny bit for your thoughts on origins (as far as I understand your thoughts, anyway). But I also don't fault Phil even a tiny bit for his.

Well, that's not truly fair. I fault everyone in some minor ways insofar as I think that they haven't given proper consideration to what I happen to believe is important. But that's something of an academic point, isn't it? That's just a polite way of saying we disagree and I think we ought to agree. I mean, if someone actually held that God created the world five seconds ago (to use the famous thought experiment), I'd fault them heavily for it, just as I'd fault someone heavily who thinks that the steady state model of cosmology is actually true. But for those ideas that pass to me a basic smell test, I think it's easy enough to agree to disagree, and more basically, to recognize that we just have different starting points. So what's mysterious to me might not be to you at all given our different frames of reference. And vice-versa as well. Who's right? I have no idea. I'd like to think I am, but who's to say? Not me. I can only present my ideas as honestly as I can and let you do with them what you will.

[Jac3510]

My God, I am just not capable today of saying anything without writing a book. My apologies.

[Philip]

Jac: Who's right? I have no idea. I'd like to think I am, but who's to say? Not me.

I'm pretty sure that's the part she liked!

[Jac3510]

Can you blame her? It's probably the truest thing I wrote.

[Philip]

Jac: My God, I am just not capable today of saying anything without writing a book. My apologies.

Jac, you wouldn't be the Jac we all know and love if you didn't have that Gatlin gun keyboard! Hopefully better than Darwin's chimps gleefully typing away until they, one day, manage to write a Shakespeare multi-act play.

[abelcainsbrother]

So Darwin has been thrown under the bus now when it comes to evolution? Kind of reminds me of when atheistic evolutionists throw Kenneth Miller under the bus because he believes in God and evolution and went to court and fought hard to defend evolution against ID.