b. July 15, 1928
d. December 30, 2012
“Thus, we regard as rather regrettable the conventional concatenation of Darwin’s name with evolution, because there are other modalities that must be entertained and which we regard as mandatory during the course of evolutionary time.”
“I have concerns about scientists thinking that they’re God when it comes to biology.”
“A future biology cannot be built within the conceptual superstructures of the past. The old superstructure has to be replaced by a new one before the holistic problems of biology can emerge as biology’s new mainstream.”
“I do not like people saying that atheism is based on science, because it’s not. It’s an alien invasion of science.”
- Carl Woese
Suzan Mazur: Why do you think NAI chose to give you and your team $ 8M, since you are known as a challenger of Darwinian dogma? Is NASA finally acknowledging the Darwin approach is wrong?
Carl Woese: I would hope so because that’s very clear from our NASA Astrobiology Institute grant application.
Suzan Mazur: You’ve described the “disconnect between Darwinists, who had taken over evolution, and microbiologists, who had no use for Darwinian natural selection.” Do you have anything to say about the recent decision of Huffington Post to block publication of microbiologist James Shapiro’s response to Darwinist Jerry Coyne following Coyne’s attack on Shapiro’s thinking about a reduced role for natural selection in evolution?
Carl Woese: I think that’s immoral. Science must be free to examine what it sees. If you’re going to say everyone must follow the Darwinian line, that’s not free science.
Carl Woese, evolution skeptic.
Here’s an interesting finding, a propos of nothing much. Normal fungal colony development is rescued by a protein involved in mouse central nervous system development (it has human homologues also).
It’s easy to be bamboozled by an assumption of specificity. If it’s in CNS, then making a CNS is what it’s for, and there’s no possibility that this could come from something without a CNS.
Of course, what I need now is a precise history of both the mouse and the fungus back to the common ancestor, not just for this gene but for every other. Else Design, or we ride out that perennial classic, the ‘just-so story’ sneer, parroted from the mouth of St Stephen of Gould hisself, a noted evolution skeptic.
And how could that evolve, evilutionist?
The problems just never end, do they?
Glen Davidson
I remember asking Bill long ago for a detailed account of how a step-wise process like accretion can produce large celestial bodies starting from a nebula, over long period of times, and to produce the evidence for all the planets in the Solar System. Macro-gravitational events, you know. Still waiting. All he had is micro-gravitational evidence of apples falling from trees! We, gravitation skeptics, know that those evil Newtonists and Einsteinists have no theory of gravity, but they keep pushing their dogma and teaching those lies to our kids like it’s science.
Common Design is an entailment of Linne’s “archetype” thesis-
Linnaean taxonomy is a nested hierarchy and is based on the archetype thesis, which means it entails a common design. And said taxonomy doesn’t have anything to do with evolution:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evo_10
There’s one behind every tree!
Allan, I hope you realize that my post about evolution skeptics isn’t that people ought to be skeptical about evolution (though one might expect that here at TSZ we might find some actual skeptics), but rather that Alan Fox’s attempt to label me an evolution skeptic makes no sense.
What is an evolution skeptic? What are the traits?
Yes, we can find “evolution skeptics” even within the ranks of evolutionists if we look. In the same way, we can find them offering new theories of evolution.
Theories of evolution.
For a moment there I thought you wrote that Paul Nelson got a Nobel.
There are no complaints about moderation here.
Mung,
I think you have to stretch the notion somewhat. Anybody who offers an original paper to a field is extending theory to some degree, but they aren’t usually trying to overthrow it. The term does mean something more – especially when the person to whom it is applied tends to make statements that align closely with the Creationist playbook – ‘it’s never been observed’, etc.
If one takes that line, almost nothing in evolutionary history has been observed, so one implicitly is skeptical of the whole shebang, up until the point (varying somewhat by individual) at which it starts to look ludicrous to deny.
That’s my question to Alan Fox. What is his point of labeling me an evolution skeptic? I don’t say that God poofed the various “kinds” into existence from nothing. And I don’t say that evolution doesn’t happen. What are the characteristics of an evolution skeptic, exactly?
Alan?
LoL. Point taken. But let me say a couple things in my defense.
It’s never been observed is a whack at Patrick and others of like mind who often use that criteria when it comes to claims they find difficult to believe. Say it isn’t so.
Second, the more reasonable someone I am discussing things with becomes the more reasonable I become. I consider myself somewhat of a centrist. Think of it like bargaining. If you start out low I am going to start out high. Hopefully we can meet somewhere in the middle.
Wow, look at all the brave ID pushers falling over themselves to address this huge problem for ID!
What a bunch of impotent frauds, the lot of ’em.
It’s funny that evos think IDists should be on their asinine agenda. Let’s see- darwin’s concept came out over 150 years ago and yet no one knows how to test the claims he made/ 150 years and more resources than ID has ever had and still nothing to show for it- no testable hypotheses (based on the blind watchmaker thesis), which means no scientific theory.
Imagine that, wanting evidence to support claims. I can be such a dick.
Umm you don’t have any evidence to support the claims of your position, Patrick. You can’t tell us how to test the claim that blind watchmaker processes produced any vision systems.
Well, a good one first has to understand what they are being skeptical about.
By OM’s standard there aren’t any good ID skeptics. Nice own goal
See FranjenJoe. That’s how normal people react when they make an error.
Frankie,
“One has to determine design exists before one goes looking for the specific mechanism.”
No, one doesn’t. Looking for the specific mechanism can be a strong tool for determining if something is designed. If I see numerous stone columns with hexagonal cross sections of the same size my first impression would be that they were manufactured. My next step in concluding this would be to look for the mechanism of manufacture. Tool marks and the like. If I found tool marks, I could reasonably conclude that the columns were “designed”. If I didn’t, I couldn’t conclude “design.
Frankie,
“That is totally wrong as we do not start out as single-celled organisms.”
Does this mean that you are pro-choice?
It’s not as if you have any choice in the matter. 🙂
HT: keiths
My comment you responded to was your New Year’s gift. Glad you’re enjoying it.
Allan Miller,
Relevance is the judgement you brought to the argument so thats creating a straw man.
If there were 4^50000 or 10 orders of magnitude less does that change the argument? How about 4^5000 or 4^500?
Sure enough, Bill has no idea what a straw man is and is incapable of learning
Rumraket,
Good plan 🙂
It’s still an amazingly stupid argument because evolution doesn’t have to search the entire space of possible combinations. Each generation only has to search the space immediately around an already working precursor.
You claim is as stupid as saying if a person wanted to walk across a 1000 ft.by 1000 ft. plaza they’d have to search every 1,000,000 sq. ft. of space each time before taking a step.
colewd,
So you’d prefer if I thought everything you said irrelevant? ‘kay then.
No. You are just pulling numbers out your ass. If a sequence is inherited, the number of ways you could arrange it is … irrelevant.
dazz,
Dazz, I am looking forward to the day you can graduate from ad homenim arguments to real ones. I know you don’t have hope for me but I do for you 🙂
Blind watchmaker evolution isn’t a search. It’s too funny watching evolutionists mangle their own position.
Bill, we’re looking forward to the day you can stop posting your stupid strawman arguments and read/learn about actual evolutionary theory and processes. You are correct we don’t have much hope you can do it.
Allan Miller,
If all sequences are inherited yes but no one is making this claim. Are they?
Even Rumraket’s 80% claim leaves 4^100000 possible nucleotide arrangements that need to find function. His 90% claim leaves 4^50000 nucleotide arrangements that need to find function.
This is not an easy problem 🙂
(facepalm) How do you think traits are passed down from generation to generation?
Getting you to be honest and stop regurgitating this same stupid strawman is indeed not an easy problem.
All sequences are inherited, that’s what common descent implies. The divergence comes from modification (mutation-selection-drift)…. descent with modification. rings a bell?
Adapa,
Yep. This theory, story or fairytale, what ever it turns out to be, is clearly over my head 🙂
Pretty much the only honest thing you’ve posted this week.
dazz,
What is you proposed method of modification. A. The blind watchmaker B. Design
C. Neutral Mutations D. other or additional.
If there is no clear answer here, Joe is right, there is no real theory.
Before we keep discussing other topics, do you understand now why the sequence space is irrelevant to determine whether evolution can “stumble upon” function?
colewd,
Do you really think, for there to be a ‘real theory of evolution’, that there must only be One Single Cause?
No, for it to be a scientific theory it must make testable claims- valid tests.
There are any number of good websites which will explain the different processes that produce genetic variations in each generation. Many are written at the high school level so there’s an outside chance you may even understand them. Of course that presupposed you have a desire to learn, a fact not yet in evidence.
colewd,
So you just say ‘X% and all the rest is completely randomised’. This is just about as much bollocks as it is all randomised – (the “strawman” version).
What proportion of universal animal genes have no homologues anywhere? Not just homologues with the same function, but any kind of homologues.
How many alpha helixes, beta sheets, zinc fingers, coiled coils etc seriously needed to be evolved by randomisation, in a genome stuffed with ’em? Life is mining the same corner of protein space again and again and again. It is not retooling the lot de novo
Allan Miller,
I think we need a reasonable mechanism for emergent DNA sequences and not just through ideas against the wall and hope something sticks.
I think forming of these functional sequences is clearly outside the laws of physics and chemistry.
The new simulation theory that is being discussed by Tegmark, deGrasse Tyson, Musk and others solves the problem but this is clearly just an untested hypothesis at this point.
We do have them. Have had them for decades actually. Your willful ignorance and refusal to understand doesn’t affect reality one iota.
Allan Miller,
Your idea here is actually amazing but unless you could get advantage from an alpha helix it doesn’t help. Advantage is not reached until complex structures are formed.
What good does a heart do without lungs?
Ask a fish.
Glen Davidson
LMFAO
There seem to be plenty of ID-Creationists with a heart and lungs but no brain. They still manage to eke by.
Clearly Bill is trying to silently move the goalposts so that he can come back in a few days babbling again about search spaces and impossibly large sequences. He can’t pretend that was addressed or else he would need to go and explain his son that his straw-man is a failed argument against evolution
“What good is half an eye?”
(facepalm)
Only the dumbest YECs use that argument anymore. They can’t grasp that evolution doesn’t posit half an eye or half a heart. The earliest ancestors had rudimentary yet fully formed eyes and heart with less capability than in extant species.
Another straw-man from Bill. What a surprise.
Every egg that develops into a bird proves that there’s no physical barrier or unfeasability in the cell – bird transition, and that includes all of it’s organs. Fail, after fail after fail.