Further to the OP Munging ID it seems that there is still a significant amount of confusion as to whether ID could be, or even is, compatible with common descent… Moreover, Mike Behe has been quoted by Paul Nelson here at TSZ as one of the very few from among the Discovery Institute (DI) who “supports” common descent, common ancestry or descent with modification…
While I doubt we would be able to get Mike Behe to post at TSZ, for the reasons I have already mentioned in the moderation issues in the past, unless his book critics decide to post here and he would be provoked to respond, let’s just watch some of the videos where elaborates on those very issues:
Intelligent Design and Common Ancestry – Michael J. Behe, PhD
Another issue related to common ancestry is the that some members of DI, including Mike Behe and Ann Gauger apparently accept the possibility of “guided evolution”… which in my view would be an oxymoron…I must stress however that I have not seen any real details about that coming from either of them, so I don’t really know what they mean by “guided evolution”…Perhaps Behe’s upcoming book will provide us with some insight on the theme…Have they come to a similar conclusion Jonathan Wells has with the embryo development (cell differentiation) where the information beyond DNA would have to be added in the process? I don’t know at this point…
I have also mentioned it in the past that ID supporters, as well as logically thinking creationists, must accept some sort of “micro-evolution” or descent with modification within “kinds”…
The example of that type of evolution, or rather devolution, is the “evolution” of dogs from wolves by the breaking genes or the decreasing gene functions…
Other possible “evolutionary changes” leading to dog evolution from wolves could be compared to the antibiotic resistance evolution that had already existed in the some genomes before the antibiotics were even developed…
I rest my case.
Rum is spamming agian. I think he is in the thermalvents trying to recreate life…
Somebody stop him!!!
https://youtu.be/fWALVlpbpDA
J-Mac,
I truly cannot believe how unaware you’re of your limitations J-Mac. You couldn’t even understand the sentence: “Junk DNA is not a Darwinian prediction.” Such a simple, straightforward, sentence, and it goes way over your head. Sad.
ETA: Oh! I see! It took you around 16 minutes to understand that sentence! Poor reading comprehension, but better than nothing. Now, how long before you understand the sentence after that? It’s been a while now, so I’m guessing you’ll never understand it.
Go on then, put us out of our misery, where is it?
It’s true. It is, however, a prediction of population genetics. It was (and still is) resisted by people more properly described as ‘Darwinian’. Many of them are not even aware of the population genetic argument.
What we are seeing here is your deep confusion between ‘Darwinism’ and the more general ‘evolutionary theory’ (voice at the back: “WHICH EVOL…”). And your ignorance of history. You don’t want to be taken for a Creationist, but you quack and walk in a very similar manner to those ducks. Which is satisfyingly ironic, given your own confusion about the subtleties in opposition. Lumpers and splitters, indeed.
I feel there must be a special corner of Heaven reserved for those who have managed to keep plugging on through pure obtuseness – like walking to Santiago on your knees, or something.
“I showed them”
“Yes, you certainly did, my child”
“I said ‘alleles don’t have offspring””
“Heh. That’s a good one. Although … oh, never mind”
“I told them fitness is what survives…”
“Is it? Well, it’s more …”
“… and something about whales, and frogs sometimes get stood on, and so there’s no junk DNA and every gene is as fit as every other and …”
“Well … Oh, is that Gandhi? ‘Scuse me …”
Allan Miller,
😂
Yep. That was my very next sentence, but poor J-Mac’s mind was unable to process any further.
Why do you mock at something you know is true? Darwinism is one evolutionary theory among others.
LoL. I wouldn’t want to live there but I do plan to visit.
Nah. We’ve been over this. When I say ‘evolutionary theory’, I think you know damn well what I’m referring to. You’ve got textbooks on it and everything. Darwinism is not separate from it, though Lamarckism and Charlieism are. But nor is the whole of it correctly described as ‘Darwinism’.
Did Lamarckism or Charlieism predict junk? No? So care to hazard a guess what did? Without needing to be led to it by the nose? I’d love to see you jump on casual use of ‘Darwinism’ with as much vigour once in a while.
So Darwinism plus what? Random mutations and not-random mutations?
How much is the Darwinism part worth?
Nothing. It’s a dumb term used by the ignorant, in the modern age. If we refer to the views of the man himself it most closely aligns with Common Descent, gradualism and the primacy of selection, but since it doesn’t put numbers on any thresholds, it’s hard to say precisely what is and isn’t, given he’s not here to check with.
In terms of genetic understanding, he was ironically quite Lamarckian … which is why it’s better to discuss actual concepts than lazy labels, if people can bear to get to grips with what they really are.
In other news, Dan Graur recently adjusted his views on junk DNA to no less than 75% down from 90% when he claimed that if ENCODE is right evolution is wrong…
“An Upper Limit on the Functional Fraction of the Human Genome
Dan Graur
Genome Biology and Evolution, Volume 9, Issue 7, 1 July 2017, Pages 1880–1885, https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evx121
Published: 11 July 2017 Article history
Abstract
For the human population to maintain a constant size from generation to generation, an increase in fertility must compensate for the reduction in the mean fitness of the population caused, among others, by deleterious mutations. The required increase in fertility due to this mutational load depends on the number of sites in the genome that are functional, the mutation rate, and the fraction of deleterious mutations among all mutations in functional regions. These dependencies and the fact that there exists a maximum tolerable replacement level fertility can be used to put an upper limit on the fraction of the human genome that can be functional. Mutational load considerations lead to the conclusion that the functional fraction within the human genome cannot exceed 25%, and is probably considerably lower.”
Evolutionary estimates based on evolution…How can you ever go wrong?
No, it’s still at 90%, try reading for comprehension. In your case I’m guessing it’s 99.9% junk and one mutation away from doing the photosynthesis
You should be clearer as to what you are going to do if ENCODE turns out to be right…
After all even Graur is taking it back …reluctantly… and since evolutionary assumptions based on the assumption that evolution must be true have gradually been proven false you might consider coming up with a backup plan…If not, you should definitely help Larry Moran to write his 90% junk DNA book…😉
He isn’t
I sense something strange here…Could it be that the junk DNA in the okapi is transforming it into a zebra? If not, could it be evolving into dazzebra?😂🤣😉
Whatta bloody dazzebra!
dazz,
J-Mac cannot read more than one sentence every 10 minutes, and (s)he’s often incapable of going beyond the first sentence. So, no surprise there.
Yeah, It’s the Bill Cole effect. Only that it could take it’s name from any other creatard really
If its not Darwinism how is he or anyone supposed to damn well know what you are talking about?
Its not random mutations plus natural selection? So perhaps its guided mutations plus natural selection? Perhaps its guided mutations and no selection?
Darwinism is dead! The baby Jesus rejoiced. The demise of Darwinism took place in 1968. No true scientist disputes this fact. Even the ones who don’t know what Darwinism is, or what Neo-Darwinism is.
Mung,
Seems funny someone came up with the term Neo-Darwinism, when no one knows what is Darwinism.
Its like Neo-Catism.
Neo-Darwinism is a term invented by those ignorant Creationists. So it’s no wonder at all that people indoctrinated into the cult of Darwin don’t know what it means.
J-Mac,
Are you familiar with the concept of an ‘upper limit’?
By trying to read for comprehension would be my advice. If two groups mean something rather different by a term, much talking-past seems inevitable, and it is better dropped.
Hmmm. So you use a term – ‘Darwinism’ – and you are dead set against that to which it refers, but you don’t know what the hell that is? And you want me to define it for you? You people are weird.
Allan Miller,
I think using the term “evolutionary theory” when you can’t even say what is the theory, to be more weird.
So define it, if you wish. But don’t expect everyone to concur with your definition. It means different things to different people. You use it as if it is one, clearly-defined thing, neatly summarising that which you oppose. But if someone dares to use the term ‘evolutionary theory’ as shorthand for the mechanisms and treatments one might find covered at length between the covers of your Futuyma, some clown has to pipe up and intone ‘which evolutionary theory’, as if it genuinely needs clarification.
Apart from the obvious, the difference between ‘evolutionary theory’ and ‘A theory of evolution’, its repetition isn’t intended to elicit clarifications (which after all have been given repeatedly) but to score points. There is (it would seem) a definite and consistent position, Darwinism, to which we all subscribe whatever we may say. But simultaneously, ‘there is no theory of evolution’. ‘Cos, y’know, those Darwinists can’t agree on anything.
You make the mistake I allude to in my last response. There is a difference between ‘evolutionary theory’ and ‘a theory of evolution’.
Define Darwinism. Should be easy; you use the word all the time, you must know what you mean.
Allan Miller,
Are all the mechanisms in the book by Futuyma?
What if we find out some of the mechanisms in his book aren’t true, does that falsify it? What if we find out there are other mechanisms, does that falsify it?
Or do you just get to change the theory at will, and claim its the same thing?
And in the magic book by Futuyma, can it just say, and so forth, and so on, to mean anything else we find?
And if the magic book says something like “changes in the DNA…” is that good enough to call it a mechanism? Or what if it says “adaptations” is that a mechanism? Or “genetic engineering”-is that a mechanism? Or, ‘organism-centric changes” would that count as a mechanism? Or gene flow-mechanism?
Mutation pressure-is that a mechanism? Because it sure sounds sciency.
Or what about heterochrony! That sounds like it has to be something useful! Mechanism?
But wait, let’s not forget Heterotopy. If heterochrony sounds cool, then who doesn’t think heterotopy doesn’t deserve some affection? Different mecanisms? same mechanism? Why not just call anything with a y at the end a mechanism just to make is easy.
Maybe there is an infinite number of mechanisms? That might be tough to falsify, I gotta admit.
phoodoo,
Struggling to define Darwinism, I see.
Phoodoo’s job apparently is to ask questions he supposes others cannot answer. Answering questions, especially those he poses himself, are not part of his brief.
ETA My comment is ambiguous but both interpretations make sense in hindsight.
Alan Fox,
Didn’t we already agree what Darwinism means? I have to repeat it?
Maybe that’s why you guys don’t know what anything means, you have short memories.
You and I? Where?
I certainly don’t recall offering a meaning for “Darwinism” or agreeing to someone else’s in this thread. The wikipedia definition seems OK:
Personally, I can’t see how anyone can claim Darwinism as an ideology without defining Darwinism as something else. What that something else might be is up to them to say.
Alan Fox,
Do you know there is more than one thread at TSZ?
Geez!
phoodoo,
Check the time stamps.
Alan Fox,
Ok. 9:40 Definition
11:10 You saying no definition.
Got it.
No wonder you wanted to be a moderator.
phoodoo,
You haven’t offered your definition. I have offered one that seems reasonable.
Do you agree with Wikipedia? Are you congenitally averse to having an opinion you can be clear on?
What?? Random mutations and natural selection.
Its the first time you have heard this?
But I get it, I get it, you want to say, “well, that’s not evolutionary theory anymore!” “Evolutionary theory is…….”
And then I just asked you what the mechanisms are then. And you said its hidden deep in a magic book by Fukuyma. So I challenged you on that.
But your side doesn’t really like to spell out what actual mechanisms are, because then you get called on. Or ignore it. You know, like you just did!
Its all right there in the posts Allan. I am sure others can see it.
Alan, did you take a serious blow to the head this morning? Was it the same blow that Allan took, how weird.
Try again!!:
See the part where I said let’s call this Darwinism? You are still confused?
Is there a doctor in your village?
OK, we have laboured to the point where ‘Darwinism’ is that part of evolutionary theory relating to mutation drift and selection, though not, apparently, drive, draft, transposition, recombination, speciation, introgression, coevolution, interacting levels of selection, pleiotropy, epistasis, transition-transversion bias, gene flow, hybridisation, endosymbiosis, WGD, karyotype change, phylogeny inference, molecular clock and so on. And it’s vital – vital, I say! – that we use this name for those first few things instead of the less equivocal and more specific ones already given. Because otherwise people might get confused.
Oh, and all the above are competing ‘theories of evolution’. Apparently.
Now what?
Whereas your side is clear about your designers purported mechanisms?
What they can’t see is any attempt from you to do what you are asking others to do.
It’s not possible to be confused regarding your version of Intelligent Design. It’s quite clear that “god did it” is sufficient for you.
A reminder!
No phoodoo, we have not agreed a definition of Darwinism. I have, as an example, quoted a Wikipedia article which I thought was OK. I’m sure there are many other ways of making the same point.
You, phoodoo, as is par for the course, have not offered your definition of Darwinism.
Unless this is supposed to be it. “So, mutation, drift, and natural selection. That’s the theory then.” I which case, as I said in the other thread I disagree. Darwinism is synonymous with natural selection in my book. Darwinian is synonymous with adaptive. Mutation and drift are random processes (both of which Darwin was ignorant of).
[v]ariations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection, and would be left either a fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in certain polymorphic species, or would ultimately become fixed, owing to the nature of the organism and the nature of the conditions. (Darwin 1872: 63; see similar claims on p. 120 and p. 176)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/genetic-drift/
Mung,
He was no slouch, that Darwin.
Was this all part of the magic Futuyma book?
Now what, exactly! So evolution is all this nonsense, plus three dots…
Is this science or a witches brew?
Atheist-” I believe in evolution”
Skeptic (the real kind, I mean)- “Well, how does it happen?”
Atheist-” Oh, you know, can be drive, draft, transposition, recombination, speciation, introgression, coevolution, interacting levels of selection, pleiotropy, epistasis, transition-transversion bias, gene flow, hybridisation, endosymbiosis, WGD, karyotype change, phylogeny inference, molecular clock, reverse flow bias with punctuated forelimbs transgressing unilaterally through osmotic grafting of polar regional co-inter-speciating with shazamic-like repositioning of niche trending and spazomatic glorification of mirage inheritance, and so on, and so on and so on…..
Skeptic(real kind)-“Is that a theory?”
Atheist- “Well, its random and non-random, except random when we need it, and not so random as to be absurdly random, so yes, I guess , so, and so on, and so on..”
Skeptic (again, the real kind I mean)- “Hmmmm…”
phoodoo,
But don’t forget the niche!
What little sense phoodoo used to make on miraculously rare occasion seems to have dried up completely. It’s now all incoherent rants.