Evidence for God from Science

Darwinian response from the same link.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intellig ... e-details/


At this point, I imagine Matzke will want to cite a 2010 paper in Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), titled “There’s plenty of time for evolution” by Herbert S. Wilf and Warren J. Ewens, a biologist and a mathematician at the University of Pennsylvania. Although it does not refer to them by name, there’s little doubt that Wilf and Ewens intended their work to respond to the arguments put forward by intelligent-design proponents, since it declares in its first paragraph:

…One of the main objections that have been raised holds that there has not been enough time for all of the species complexity that we see to have evolved by random mutations. Our purpose here is to analyze this process, and our conclusion is that when one takes account of the role of natural selection in a reasonable way, there has been ample time for the evolution that we observe to have taken place.

Evolutionary biologist Professor Jerry Coyne praised the paper, saying that it provides “one step towards dispelling the idea that Darwinian evolution works too slowly to account for the diversity of life on Earth today.” Famous last words.

A 2012 paper, Time and Information in Evolution, by Winston Ewert, Ann Gauger, William Dembski and Robert Marks II, contains a crushing refutation of Wilf and Ewens’ claim that there’s plenty of time for evolution to occur. The authors of the new paper offer a long list of reasons why Wilf and Ewens’ model of evolution isn’t biologically realistic:

Followed by the devestating critique of an article that was praised by many Darwinian evolutionists .

Neo, I was a theistic evolutionist for 42 years, and while I respect your opinion and you, I personally don't see the evidences for Macroevolution . Too many things against it, the least being enough time for it to happen.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intellig ... e-details/

A 2012 paper, Time and Information in Evolution, by Winston Ewert, Ann Gauger, William Dembski and Robert Marks II, contains a crushing refutation of Wilf and Ewens’ claim that there’s plenty of time for evolution to occur. The authors of the new paper offer a long list of reasons why Wilf and Ewens’ model of evolution isn’t biologically realistic:

Wilf and Ewens argue in a recent paper that there is plenty of time for evolution to occur. They base this claim on a mathematical model in which beneficial mutations accumulate simultaneously and independently, thus allowing changes that require a large number of mutations to evolve over comparatively short time periods. Because changes evolve independently and in parallel rather than sequentially, their model scales logarithmically rather than exponentially. This approach does not accurately reflect biological evolution, however, for two main reasons. First, within their model are implicit information sources, including the equivalent of a highly informed oracle that prophesies when a mutation is “correct,” thus accelerating the search by the evolutionary process. Natural selection, in contrast, does not have access to information about future benefits of a particular mutation, or where in the global fitness landscape a particular mutation is relative to a particular target. It can only assess mutations based on their current effect on fitness in the local fitness landscape. Thus the presence of this oracle makes their model radically different from a real biological search through fitness space. Wilf and Ewens also make unrealistic biological assumptions that, in effect, simplify the search. They assume no epistasis between beneficial mutations, no linkage between loci, and an unrealistic population size and base mutation rate, thus increasing the pool of beneficial mutations to be searched. They neglect the effects of genetic drift on the probability of fixation and the negative effects of simultaneously accumulating deleterious mutations. Finally, in their model they represent each genetic locus as a single letter. By doing so, they ignore the enormous sequence complexity of actual genetic loci (typically hundreds or thousands of nucleotides long), and vastly oversimplify the search for functional variants. In similar fashion, they assume that each evolutionary “advance” requires a change to just one locus, despite the clear evidence that most biological functions are the product of multiple gene products working together. Ignoring these biological realities infuses considerable active information into their model and eases the model’s evolutionary process.

After reading this devastating refutation of Wilf and Ewens’ 2012 paper, I think it would be fair to conclude that we don’t currently have an adequate mathematical model explaining how macroevolution can occur at all, let alone one showing that it can take place within the time available. Four billion years might sound like a long time, but if your model requires not billions, but quintillions of years for it to work, then obviously, your model of macroevolution isn’t mathematically up to scratch.

Oh I also forgot to mention that in the fruit fly experiment that the fruit flies were subjected to more random mutations then mutual, so they in essence speeded up the process, plus they subjected them to conditions which evolutionists would term as harsh. The kind of harsh types of conditions that made life so tough for these insects that had to force them to evolve to survive. They didnt evolve and they didnt survive. The fact that they didnt survive long enough for these genes to be turned on or off shows that this isn't a viable pathway (at least in lab experiments).

PerciFlage wrote:

bippy123 wrote: Your using the classic evolution of the gaps theory. Even stephen J Gould understood the weakness in the fossil records and said that animals have long period of stasis follow by harsh environmental events that cause them to change abruptly. The fruit flies were bombarded with every harsh environment known to man and the results were that fruit flies didnt change into nothing but fruit flies. Now you can speculate all you want about Macroevolution being a slow process but that doesn't change the fact that the fossil record speaks volumes against it.

Again if punctuated equilibrium works then we should be able to observe it in the least complex of animals, bacteria, fruit flies etc etc.

bippy123 wrote: We have never observed it.worse yet the fossil record speaks volumes against it, but the problem here is that when we don't see the evidence for transitionals with gradualism they say its punctuated equilibrium , when we don't see punctuated equilibrium they say gradualism . It's a theory that can't be falsified at all. The grand ole evolutiin of the gaps argument.

To characterise Gould's work as demonstrating a lack of transitional forms in the fossil record requires you to misunderstand or misrepresent him.

Gould and Eldredge postulated punctuated equilibria as an explanation for the relative rarity of transitional fossil forms at the species level; that is to say, during events of speciation. Transitional fossil forms exist in abundance between clades/taxa, and to a lesser (but not even nearly non-existent) degree between species - both kinds of transitions would have been familiar to Gould, due to the fact that he researched and published about each of them.

It's simply not true to state that when we don't see the evidence for transitional forms it gets chalked up to punctuated equilibria, and when punctuated equilibria are not observed gradualism is the fall back position. Punctuated equilibrium is a more nuanced form of gradualism, not a theory set up in opposition to gradualism. Both punctuated equilibrium and more classical gradualism have their roots in opposition to theories such as saltation which propose that large scale changes tend to happen extremely rapidly - speciation events in a single generation, for example.

In other words Macroevolution becomes theory that's unfalsifiable at the level that matters most. It's simply not science . It's a philosophy that's meant to back one worldview, because at the level that matters most, the evidence is simply not there and since they assume evolution a priori hokas pokas, viola it had to be evolution.
The famous Macroevolution of the grabs theory using random mutation lol.

I used to swallow that line hook and sinker when I was an evolutionist , but the flimsy evidence woke me up.

Neo, I was a theistic evolutionist for 42 years, and while I respect your opinion and you, I personally don't see the evidences for Macroevolution

I think this says it all bippy. I was happy earlier to post 6-7 papers that favor evolution but I think it will be useless (at least for now).

The reason I say its useless is because I think I have studied evolution on a very small scale, layman style but even then I can see evidence all around me.
I think you may harbor some misunderstood concepts.

for example, I cleared you before that the fruit flies are NOT the sole example of evolution, sharks and crocs haven't evolved for 365 million years. Yet the Homo Genus has, we have mapped DNA to prove it. But you seem to be stuck on the fruit fly. And if mapped DNA does not convince you then I am not sure any other thing will.

You seem to be focusing on the time and fossil issue, while you completely ignore DNA. I am not sure why is that but DNA itself is irrefutable proof. Maths could be wrong and its equally plausible that our measured time scales could be wrong. But mapped DNA is 2+2, that can't be wrong, my friend. And I certainly failed to see the "devastating" side of the paper.

I certainly don't see how it is the best evidence here, and bringing male nipples into the equation is a cheap evolutionary trick. Lets say we don't even know the function of the male nipple, does that mean that we won't know it in the future?

Its not a cheap trick at all Bippy, I am not talking about an unknown vestigial organ and its function, WE DO KNOW WHAT FUNCTION NIPPLES PERFORM. And that is true for every baby who was nourished by his mother.

Again the fossil evidence doesn't show this at all, plus the mutations are so random that we have never seen a mutant survive.

In 42 years, its very hard, dont you think?
Every living creature on the planet is a mutant, Bippy. You are a mutated version of the homo genus called homos sapien.

This is precisely why I asked you twice, what would you call a mutated fly with no wings?
What would you call a mutated human with four legs and two arms?

You seem to be unaware of how important this question is to your understanding of biology.

I used to swallow that line hook and sinker when I was an evolutionist , but the flimsy evidence woke me up.

I think even when you were an evolutionist, you probably had the wrong ideas about it.