In a previous post here at TSZ Mark Frank asked why people doubt common descent.
A more interesting question is why did Charles Darwin doubt common descent?
Stephen Meyer has written two books which I think adequately answer both questions.
Those two books are:
In this thread I am willing to discuss either book, but I’d prefer to limit discussion to Meyer’s most recent book, Darwin’s Doubt
While Signature in the Cell concentrated on the origin of life, Darwin’s Doubt concentrates on the “Cambrian Explosion,” the sudden appearance of numerous distinct phyla and their subsequent diversification.
Neo-Darwinism offers no realistic account of origins, with the difference being that Darwinists can in the case of the origin of life assert that their theory does not apply while that excuse fails to apply to the appearance of different animals in the Cambrian and their subsequent diversification.
Just to prove I can – [Edited 09/15/2013]
Deleted from the OP – [Edited 09/201/2013] – Just to prove I can. “The arguments are the same for both:”
I said what I meant. You incorrectly interpreted it. I corrected you. Be a big girl and accept corrections I give you about what I mean. Please don’t turn into another keiths where you insist I meant what you interpreted in spite of my corrections.
So? Did I claim that Darwinists have no valid evolutionary metrics whatsoever? The only metric I have claimed they don’t have is one you agree doesn’t exist. Please stay on point.
What a surprise.
There’s no false dichotomy William. Thus far no one has show any evidence of any other intelligence capable of manipulating inheritance. Again, science can only work with the evidence that exists, not with opinions by religionists.
Now, if the UD crowd or Dembski, or Behe, or Meyer, or Gauger, or whomever wants to get their wide, soft rears and actually posit an hypothesis about an alternative designer and propose some way to test said hypothesis, again, I’ll jump on board. But until then, there’s no burden on biologists under the ET paradigm to do so.
So your claim that there is no indirect evidence for intelligent selection is disingenuous at best because Darwinists haven’t even tried to find such evidence.
At worst, your claim is dishonest when in fact Darwinists must tell themselves to turn a blind eye to the prima facie evidence for design, as per Lewontin:
False again William. “Intelligence” is not the null. I realize that you do not fully grasp what that means, but it completely negates your rebuttal here.
…speaking of dishonest, nice quotemine of Lewontin. Geez William…
Your accusations of “quote mining” are dishonest; in context, they represent exactly what I used them to support – the fact that those people have admitted that life has the appearance (prima facie evidence) of design, and in Lewontin’s case, the turning of a blind eye to such appearance in obedience to ideological materialism.
I accepted your correction. Why don’t accept that you weren’t clear?
I have no idea what you are claiming, because your posts make so little sense to me.
But if all you are claiming is that Darwinists have no way of measuring the probability that there was no intelligent intervention in the emergence of life, then you are absolutely correct.
Nobody does.
But they do not mean what the references intended. That is the very definition of a quote mine: taking part of a quote and using it to either imply the writer was indicating something other than he or she intended OR taking part of a quote to support one’s own point. The latter is precisely what you are doing.
And the fact is, none of those folks actually supports your premise: all of them outright reject design. So why use them at all William? Because at some point they all note – to make their own counter points – that the world has the false appearance of design? That doesn’t really help you as much as you think it does.
And Lewontin does NOT state anything of the sort. THAT accusation is the result of buying into the quote mine.
Your lack of integrity to support your wishful thinking in this matter is just amazing William. Utterly disgraceful. Here’s specifically what Lewontin meant that you left out:
So you’re just plain wrong William. We do not turn a blind eye to design in obedience to ideological materialism; on the contrary, we reject obedience to ideological intervention because then there can be no science at all. What you’ve just quote precisely defeats the ID argument: there can be no metric for any god’s intervention because by definition, a “miracle” changes the variables every time.
Yes, it is. You are simply misunderstanding the word “random”. In the context of “random mutations” the “random” part simply means “orthogonal to reproductive success”.
But the system would work, and does work, with intelligently selected mutations. The system doesn’t require that the mutations arise from some process orthogonal to reproductive success.
Although, interestingly, the reason that evolutionary algorithms so often work better than algorithms where the variants constrained to be “improvements” by an intelligent human, is that intelligent humans are a lot less smart than they think they are, and allowing orthogonal variants that may confer no obvious advantage, and even a disadvantage, allows a much larger configuration space to be short, and some very unexpected solutions to be found.
William J. Murray,
So what? They are not ‘known’ not to be produced by some completely unimagineable force either. Anyone who thinks they might be is welcome to prove it or STFU. In the meantime, we follow the general trend of assuming that coins, lottery balls and much of the unrolling of lives happens ‘by chance’, likewise mutational errors, recombinations (which require in the first instance that two particular individuals actually meet and mate …). If the claim that Life (some or all of it) was designed requires appeal to such sophomoric notions as ”no-one can prove that anything happens ‘by chance'”, you are getting desperate.
No – the evidence of a genetic continuum is simply a fact to be accounted for. IF a designer was involved, it used or made it look like a genetic continuum. IF unguided processes were involved, they would generate a genetic continuum all by themselves – unless it is impossible to even replicate without God’s hand. None of that ‘assumes the consequent’ – yet another example of your pretentious use of philosophical terms.
For all you know, living systems are beyond the capacity of any intelligence in or beyond the universe. What a great game this is. “For all we know …” I feel a song coming on.
You read that off a cornflakes packet. Punctuated equibria are not postulated to operate by any mechanism other than a lineage of begetting – a genetic continuum. The Cambrian explosion is not evidence of lack of a genetic continuum (the evidence of a genetic continuum bridges the phyla and kingdoms, whatever has been preserved in fossils). Orphan genes are not evidence of a lack of a genetic continuum, except that those genes themseves had an origin somewhat later than the rest of their genome-fellows. Which is entirely to be expected. You think all genes are postulated to have been present In The Beginning? Stop embarassing yourself and learn the science, if you are going to argue on it.
‘Appearing to be designed’ is not evidence of anything but that it has that appearance to those to whom it does. But we have, in any case, moved on from that position. Heliocentrists may continue to insist that the sun does what their eyes tell them. Meantime, work with slide rule and rocket has provided ample evidence to all but committed denialists that there is an explanation that explains both the object and our first impressions of it.
But the longer Darwin quote (and the elided sentences from the others, bar Denton who already knows the answer) – cautions against being too swayed by obvious appearance. And restoring the quotes shows that they were not advocating turning a blind eye, but avoiding leaping to intuitive conclusions. ID is that leap with a fancy name.
Design is not ‘obvious’ to everyone. I am very familiar with the working of cells, and the chemical details, and to me they are too complex to be designed.
ITYM geocentrists.
Too complex to be designed is a good phrase. Another way of saying this is there are too many dimensions of fitness to be evavuated by a finite being.
Intelligence is of little value. Omniscience would help. But differential reproductive success integrates any number of dimensions. It’s omniscient in that respect.
William,
Just thought I’d let you know you are really onto something with this particular argument. Others do agree!
JoeG also finds it a compelling argument and uses it frequently:
“There isn’t any evidence that mutations are random search” at @Joe’s blog
To wit:
If you were wondering why your argument seems to be gaining so little traction then I’d suggest it’s because it’s no more then a more erudite version of Joe’s argument and as he’s been making it for about a decade,as far as I can tell, that means you are somewhat late to the party.
So far I don’t think you’ve said anything more profound on it then he has already said many times over.
William,
Correct, apart from the bit about gray areas (which don’t exist with a dichotomous metric). Since false positives and false negatives are possible, your earlier statement is incorrect:
“ID” and “chance & natural” are not necessarily two sides of the same metric. CSI itself demonstrates your error, as I explained above.
You’re wrong. It’s that simple.
We can’t prove that the Mexican crocodile god doesn’t grasp a hold of and move every object thrown, fired, or otherwise ejected. He just likes parabolas.
From an earlier thread:
William,
No, what I argue in that thread is that the specific pattern we observe — the objective nested hierarchy — is exactly what we would expect to see if evolution were unguided, but not at all what we would expect to see if ID were true.
Unguided evolution blows ID out of the water. It fits the evidence literally trillions of times better than ID.
I’d be interested in hearing your responses to the Bob stories above.
PS “Arbiting” is not an English word.
That is because the language available to to Darwin was already teleological. We could substitute the phrase “environmental feedback” and not significantly alter the theory at all.
If you still cannot see your error, William, ponder this:
any metric that can have false positives but not false negatives (or vice versa) breaks the symmetry that you insist is inviolate.
CSI happens to be a delicious, irony-meter-breaking example
And, his argumental trajectory moved from Artificial (human) Selection to ‘Natural’. He wouldn’t have called it ‘selection’ otherwise.
It was by analogy with intentional selection, without being intentional selection. Ever since when, people have been desperately trying to make capital out of the word. Let’s remove that issue by calling it Ungensplatnisch.
Yikes! IPD, Y!
Aardvark:
huh? no non-teleological language before Darwin?
You know of some? For
A concept that was entirely new?
William,
I’ll ask again.
Do you believe can be such a thing as a fair die?
I.E A die that when thrown has an equal chance of landing on any side.
How do you know it’s fair?
petrushka,
I don’t understand your question(s). Is there evidence of non-teleogical language prior to Darwin? Yes, there is, and it long predates Darwin. Darwin did not invent the argument against teleology.
OMagain:
If Wm cannot prove that a single die is fair it follows that no die is fair? How so?
And casinos make their money on craps tables how, by employing unfair die? How do they know the die are unfair.
“The” argument against teliology is that it is non- productive.
Feel free to cite counterexamples.
I was hoping you’d explain your earlier comments. If you’re not going to do so I have nothing further to say to you.
Here’s what you posted:
What concept do you claim was entirely new? Non-teleology? Heck, Darwin used Owen’s arguments against teleology. Such arguments did not originate with Darwin, and that’s a fact.
Once you clarify what you mean, we can perhaps move on to my knowledge of additional cases that demonstrate that your claim is patently false.
So Elizabeth misrepresents Meyer, and the rest of you haven’t even read the book and so can’t even lay claim to misrepresentation.
And this is “The Skeptical Zone.” Not sure why.
I have not misrepresented Meyer, Mung, and you have not demonstrated that I have.
He clearly misunderstands the concept of a phylum, as is clear from the drawings, and that they are not simply artist’s errors, is clear from the text that accompanies them.
He simply does not understand the relationship between phylogenetics and taxonomy, and as a result makes inferences that are nonsensical. This mistake undermines the entire case on which his book is based.
At their roots, phyla are as “morphologically close” as any other pair of sister taxa are at their roots, including subspecies.
Morphological distance between taxa increases over time, in perfect consistency with common descent. It does not “precede diversity” as Meyer claims.
Did I say that? I don’t think so. Try to concentrate.
I did not mention casinos nor the use unfair die can be put to. I’m simply asking a question of William, and you if you care to answer it.
Williams continued avoidance of this simple question tells me that he knows what the next question will be, should he answer it.
Elizabeth:
Then make that argument and defend it.
What you claimed in your OP was that Meyer did not even know the difference between phyla and phylum. That gaffe of yours has been exposed, but you can’t even manage to correct it. It still persists:
How long do you intend to maintain this fiction?
You’ve not actually shown that you know. Just saying it does not make it so.
Please, you never defend any argument you make. Calling others out on your own failings is pure projection.
As Lizzie says, Meyer misunderstands the concept of a phylum, as is clear from the drawings. It’s that simple! And nothing you’ve said or can say will change that. But I’m willing to listen anyway, what have you got?
Does it matter to you? You’ll be done here soon anyway, and back when the latest list of questions your claims have prompted have faded into old threads. But I’m thinking about compiling a list just so the scope of your tactics become clear.
Either Meyer does not understand (since anyone can copy and paste a definition), or he does understand and deliberately got the diagram wrong, or he knew how to do it but forgot.
The concept that wss entirely new was a non-teliological explanation for bioiological diversification. Granted Darwin was not alone.
The concept that was new was the idea that chage is not caused and has no goals.
Which differentiates Darwin from earlier evolutionary theorists.
Actually she corrected it quite clearly in the comments. Your reading ability is defective if you didn’t see it.
How long do you plan to avoid answering my question? Should modern science regard Louis Agassiz as the ultimate authority on the Cambrian fossil record even though he died 140 years ago? YES or NO?
Only a troll would refuse to answer.
Aardvark:
Sorry, I didn’t realize you intended that question to be taken seriously. I misclassified it as a rhetorical question. Obviously not. So what?
ok, I answered. Does that mean I am not a troll? Why didn’t you write only a non-troll will answer? Is this test for who is or is not a troll a scientific test, or just one you made up on the spur of the moment in hopes you’d be noticed, like a child throwing a tantrum?
Have you read the book yet? Only a troll would refuse to answer!
You people can’t even get your stories straight.
Aardvark:
Elizabeth:
Putting this thread on hold to concentrate on the contents of Chapter 2 and Lizzies resultant thread: Meyer’s Mistake.
I hope we can take this back up in the future. Maybe people will have read the book by then.
Until then:
– See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/09/what_is_the_wor076621.html
Taking it apart line by line.
Who is going to by a book supposedly on palaeontology, written by a layman, when all reviews by people who are experts in the field pan the book? You say you’ve bought the book. Have you started to read it yet?
Mung, I corrected, in the comments, my mistaken implication that Meyer did not know the singular of phyla. He just got it wrong in the diagram I posted, and elsewhere gets it right. I should have remembered when I did the ETA that he had got it right elsewhere, and indeed, explains it to his readers.
As you well know, that is not the mistake I refer to in my OP, and I have not misrepresented his argument, as is clear from the howler of an error in his diagram. Not the erroneous singular which is trivial, but in his attempt to circle the organisms that comprise a “phyla”.
Look at the diagram I posted, Mung. The very one in which he gets the singular of phyla wrong. What is howlingly wrong with the diagram is not the trivial matter of Latin grammar, which was clearly a slip, given, as you point out, his correct use fo the the singular elsewhere, as I said, and as I have now corrected in the OP, as well as several times in comments.
What is howlingly wrong with his diagram is that he circles only a contemporaneous group of organisms as belonging to a “phylum” instead of the whole branch. He does this both in words and diagrams throughout the book, and it completely undermines his case. A phylum is not something that emerges late in evolutionary history once two branches have diverged. It is something we observe retrospectively, and is the entire group of organisms that share a branch.
This means that his case that the fossil record contradicts the expectations under Common Descent is simply wrong.
I haven’t maintained it at all. As soon as you reminded me of his correct usage in Chapter 2, I readily conceded that he knew the difference, just failed to get it right in that diagram.
How long do you intend to avoid tackling his mistaken understanding of the concept of phyla?
Which is why it is impossible for a phylum to emerge.
Mung or someone asked whether the thought experiment on body plans assumed that the common ancestor of two phyla had no body plan.
This would be amusing if it weren’t serious. Perhaps Mung has never even considered that the common ancestor was single celled, and the the genes that make body plans already existed in single celled organisms.
In order to be true that, titaalik should be a fish and an anphibiam as you said. But that is taxonomically wrong titaalik is a fish or an anphybian or neither it can´t be both.
Why not?
So according to you it is possible that the single celled animals were using all the proteins in order to make all the body plans for his life as single celled and found new uses for them for the multicellular life?
Are you really asking this?