Parody or not? You decide (then tell me). Hat tip to Denyse O’Leary at Uncommon Descent. Check out the comments here! Whatever, it’s a slick video. Congrats to the makers.
149 thoughts on “Evo – Devo”
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Pretty standard explanation of evo-devo. Is there supposed to be some comfort for creationists in it?
That reminds me. I wonder if DiEb will have time to provide us with another of his informative analyses.
John Harshman,
I guess that is for Creationists to say.
I take to be intended as entertainment, but not as parody. It’s just introducing a topic in an entertaining way.
Neil Rickert,
I’m happy to take John Harshman’s assurance here.
In the beginning there was a cell…
Nobody has any idea what was before the cell but one thing is certain: the first cell came to be by natural processes; it was definitely not designed…
Who can argue with this kind of science?
J-Mac,
Many years ago, I was a biochemistry student, both marvelling at the elucidation of the genetic code and wondering how, if it only coded for proteins, how did everything get organised. It’s a whole new and fascinating story.
Who does that science? Quote them here so we can see that indeed there are people who do this science.
What’s your point Allan?
I love how evolutionists pretend this is no problem for their 100 year old belief.
“What? What’s the problem? Its just evo-devo…Look, look, its nothing. Just some small details. We’ll figure it out. I didn’t cross my fingers. That was a twitch! We’ll figure it out better than anything’s ever been figured out. Plan? Ha, what makes you think there is a plan. What, you don’t think there’s a slight reproductive advantage to having every part of your body develop into something different? You forgot the niche. And time, don’t forget time! Its nothing..nothing to see here. Its got a name for crying out loud. Its nothing!”
Do you want me quote science that doesn’t exist?
It’s a materialistic philosophy based on bias beliefs…
If there was even hope for this philosophy/belief to become science, there would be scientists doing it…
How can they assemble a cell if they can’t even reassemble a living cell with the broken cell membrane that its content leaked out?
Do you really believe that sheer dumb luck could’ve done a better job? Maybe if you are delusional… lol
The extra layer of explanation that evo-devo provides. Have a look here to start with.
How is this related to my comment regarding the origin of the first cell?
There is no problem if you have a very, very strong belief…. which Hirschman must have or else….
The A Capella Science guy calls all of his song videos a “parody” referring to them being based on somebody else’s music. It’s not about being a parody of the science. In this case it’s a “parody” of the “despacito” song. Take a look at the A Capella Science yourtube channel. See how most of the songs titles have the word “parody.”
So you mocked as ridiculous, a way of doing science, that you now admit does not even exist and nobody actually does?
Well done J-mac. You are truly a stable genious.
Who, in the science of the origin of life, actually holds to that philosophy? Can you quote them?
You just admitted nobody does science that way, so clearly you can’t. Right?
Okay, so it’s settled. You invented a boogey man scientist who has a “materialist bias” when doing origin of life research, but who does not in fact exist.
How can they assemble a stone if it dissolves in acid?
Could it be that stones just don’t form in acid, but under other conditions? Could it be that stones form by cooling magma in geological processes in the Earth’s crust and mantle?
Could it be the same with life and the first cells? They didn’t form by spontaneously assembling in test tubes, but under some special conditions we just haven’t found? That, like stones, there are such conditions, but they are much more rare?
I don’t know what you mean by sheer dumb luck. But in the right environment, and with the laws of physics and chemistry, why not?
Why are you even blathering about the first cell in this thread? It seems to be you’re actually off-topic here. Perhaps you should create a new thread if you want to say something about the origin of cells?
Why don’t you explain to us what the problem is? I don’t see it. Yes yes I know, you think I’m blind and deluded bla bla bla. Just get on with it, explain what the problem is.
In the beginning of what?
That you don’t know what was before the cell doesn’t mean that nobody knows. I know. Before the cell there was no cells. Quite simple, actually.
What’s the alternative? Unnatural processes? How can those unnatural processes be studied? Have people made experiments with those? How?
Of course not. That’d be nonsense. All of the designers I know are made of cells. How could they exist before the first cell existed? Maybe at some point we will have designed silicon/metal-based designers, but we precede them, meaning that ultimately the first cell cannot come before the first designers.
I think it’s more philosophy than science. But you’re welcome to help and give us a hint as to how to approach, scientifically, the question of the origin of the first cell in a sensible way, yet involving unnatural processes and “designers” whose cells precede the first cell, etc., etc. It sounds absurd and backwards, but you seem rather convinced. So?
phoodoo,
So you think evo-devo is a problem? I thought it was a research area dealing with both, figuring out evolutionary relationships by comparing developmental patterns and the genes involved, as well as trying and figuring out how the developmental processes evolved. Quite a rich research area.
Maybe you mean that we haven’t figured everything out. If so, then I’ll say there’s a lot of “problems,” and I don’t see anything wrong with that. The field is giving very interesting results, but it would be boring if we knew everything already.
Maybe you mean that you think there’s things we will never figure out. Well, I’m pretty optimistic, but maybe there will be things that will not be satisfactorily solved. Maybe there’s things we will not solve at all. Are you suggesting that open questions, and questions that might not be solved, represent some kind of problem for whatever you mean by evolutionists? Problem in what sense? Do you think that having open questions and questions that might never be solved makes a difference about the fact that we share common ancestry with other life forms? Is that what you mean? How exactly would that work? How does it work in your mind? What’s exactly the conflict between having open questions, even questions that might not be solved, and the facts pointing to our common ancestry with other life forms?
Try and give it some thought.
J-Mac has shown that he understand that nature is not the same as “sheer dumb luck.” That we don’t think of nature as “sheer-dumb-luck.” Yet, he goes back to that shit again and again. As if after advancing his understanding, he just stumbled all the way back where he began, maybe by sheer-dumb-bad-luck.
This.
You first.
Did you even read what I wrote?
Why do you comment if you’re not willing to check the answers and engage in a conversation?
Evo-devo begins with a cell as if the processes leading to its appearance were so obvious, so easily understood so as not even worth mentioning…
Unfortunately, the reality is the opposite.
Materialist can pretend all they want but the facts are inescapable: for sheer dumb luck to assemble the first cell, it would have to resolve not only several chicken and egg paradoxes. It would also have to be much smarter than Nobel Prize winner Szostak, or Venter who still haven’t figure it out how to recreate a living cell being aware already of the necessity of all cell’s components to be present at the same time, including the cell membrane, for the cell to stay alive…
This very truth about the impossibility of a cell to be created by natural processes is the inescapable testimony not only against materialism… It is a testimony against the total lack of common sense and logic that materialists have to follow to put on a show that everything is okay with their belief system…
Anybody in the right frame of mind knows nothing is okay but the ‘commitment to materialism is absolute because they can’t, at any cost, allow a divine foot in the door’ even if it means lying to themselves…
This very fact proves that no amount of evidence will convince any materialist to change his mind… This is a deliberate denial and rejection of the truth, which boggles my mind as to why someone would insist to deceive the public and himself…
Why waste time trying to change someone’s mind who doesn’t want to change it? It’s pointless….
Yep, I read what you wrote. That’s why I am waiting for you to show that you have actually thought about it.
If you think Evo-Devo is not a problem for undirected Darwinian evolution, clearly you haven’t thought about it in the slightest.
I actually thought about it. But I cannot guess what you think. I don’t read minds. I told you what I think. I told you that there might be questions that we will never answer. I told you that doesn’t make our common ancestry with other life forms any less true. So, if what you’re thinking is not the fact that there’s questions to answer, or the possibility that we might not be able to answer some questions, then what is it?
Well, here you show that you have some deep misconception. You wrote an oxymoron. Darwinian evolution is not undirected. Darwinian evolution is explicitly about an interplay between life forms variability and their environment.
So, if your problem is with “undirected Darwinian evolution,” then the problem is with your misconception, and your misconception is not a problem between evolution and evo-devo. It is not a problem for whatever you mean by evolutionists. Your misconception is your problem. It’s an easy fix though. All you have to do is try and understand.
Actually, you’re getting this wrong. Evo-Devo has to start somewhere where there’s less holes in our knowledge. Otherwise the field could not get started. So, how the first cell came to be is an interesting question, and the subject of some research, but it’s not what evo-devo deals with. Evo-devo focuses on more approachable questions, like the relationships between life forms as revealed by their patterns of development and by the genes involved in both the similarities and departures in those patterns; or like inferring the evolutionary histories of the genes involved, the tandem duplications; etc. That they don’t focus on the first cell is obvious. The research field is called evo-devo, not origin of life.
Fortunately. If I review a grant application, and the person told me their doing evo-devo, and then the project is about the origin of life, I reject the application because the person doesn’t even know what evo-devo means.
You seem rather impermeable to understanding. Scientists don’t think that nature consists on sheer-dumb-luck. Lipids in water self-assemble in what could be considered primitive membranes. They don’t do that because of “sheer dumb luck,” but because of their physical-chemical characteristics.
If you start with false premises, like that about sheer dumb luck, then you’ll get to false conclusions. The lack of logic is not on materialism or physicalism. The lack of logic is in your approach and lack of understanding.
A divine foot in the door? Is that what you’re proposing out of your poor understanding of nature as if it is just sheer-dumb-luck? You hold to a huge misconception about what nature is like, and you hold to a huge misconception about what “allowing a divine foot” implies. A divine foot doesn’t explain anything. It’s based on mere fantasies. Open questions do not mean that we have to accept a fantasy in lie of accepting that we don’t know something, or even that we might never know something. A gap in our knowledge is just that, a gap in our knowledge. Pretending that such gap means that some magical fantasy being did it is nonsensical.
You mean like some guy insisting on mischaracterizing natural processes as being “sheer dumb luck”? Like some guy who won’t see how nonsensical it is to think that god-did-it when confronted with the conclusions of their own misunderstanding?
I suspect you’re right about that guy. If the guy won’t understand, once and for all, that “sheer dumb luck” is a mischaracterization, or that gaps in knowledge doesn’t mean god-did-it, what’s the point of trying?
Look, I’d love to join in on the fun, but I haven’t the slightest idea what this is about. Neither in the OP at UD, or its comment thread (do they only have a single commenter left at UD? Is he payed to fill up the entire comment thread?) or the comments here does it become clear what the issue is. I assume that creationists are not merely celebrating that they saw the word “planned”.
Perhaps a concrete example could help?
Wrong assumption. Creationists are merely celebrating that they saw the word “planned.”
No, That is simply not true.
They also saw the words “decide” and “encode”.
You've never had the slightest bit of evidence for ID/creationism. So an empiricist sticks with actual evidence of relatedness, while your inability to produce any sort of evidence for your claims endlessly points to how intractable meaningless belief is for the true believer.
Yes you try to fool people with, well, no evidence at all.
It’s why people generally ignore your rants. That, and the fact that you don’t even begin to understand what empiricism is about.
Glen Davidson
You’re right. My mistake. Oh, and “parody.” Let’s not forget “parody.” 😀
Riiiiight.
If you think Evo-Devo is a problem for undirected Darwinian evolution, clearly you haven’t thought about in the slightest.
In the latests report, a guy called Dionisio at U.D. went from being exited by the use of words such as “planned,” “decide,” and “encode,” to posting abstract after abstract of articles, somewhat focused on authors of the “extended synthesis.” Hard to understand what the point of that exercise might be.
Whereas on this site … silence.
But from reading the comments from the other commenters (they are somewhat hard to find) it seems that the use of computer analogies (program, code and regulation) is indeed what caused this outburst of joy. The watchmaker has been re-educated as a computer programmer, I guess.
Right. You have absolutely no idea how it happened, you couldn’t even come up with a just so story of how it could have come to be through a Darwinian process, you don’t know if there will ever be an explanation, but by golly you know one thing-its not a problem!
That’s almost as nutty as Entropy saying undirected Darwinian evolution is an oxymoron. I think he is one Oxy too many.
That’s a nice steaming pile of assertions. Well done phoodoo, you really showed us.
What’s “it”?
1. I have very good ideas about how it happened, and could come up with zillions of just-so-stories.
2. Not only I have very good ideas, I also have good foundations for those ideas, at least in general terms.
3. You’re trying to restrict the answers by artificially circumscribing them to “a Darwinian process” (at least you dropped the “undirected” word from this paragraph). I prefer to talk about the answers as “natural processes,” but, of course, that would make it pretty close to tautological. So maybe I should accept some restrictions, for example, evolutionary processes, instead of Darwinian.
The point is: there’s answers, pretty good ones, at least in general terms.
I had the courtesy of explaining to you why that phrase is an oxymoron, a contradiction of terms. Here it goes again:
If you don’t understand what that means, I could explain. Just ask.
If you think you understand, and you still don’t think that “undirected Darwinian evolution” is an oxymoron, then I’d appreciate if you explained why. Make it very clear, please. You keep assuming that I read minds. I can assure you that I don’t. You write comments loaded with assumptions only you know about, and then, when someone answers, you quit. You don’t engage, you don’t clarify. I don’t understand why not. Maybe the problem is that you don’t know what you’re talking about yourself. Maybe you prefer not to revise your hidden assumptions.
So?
…but I am keeping them secret.
Hi phoodoo
See what entropy wrote? He’s talking about the niche. Remember the niche, phoodoo. Remember the niche!
Normal people don’t need to be spoonfed everything. At this point are you surprised people don’t bother to support their claims when talking to you? You either don’t understand it or dismiss it outright. So, as I’ve said before, it’s just pearls before swine…
OMagain,
Yep. If phoodoo won’t make the slightest effort to understand, for example, why “undirected Darwinian evolution” is an oxymoron, or to clarify why he still thinks it’s not an oxymoron, then why should I add to what he won’t try and understand?
The irony of course is their claim that something so complex as the cell could not come about without intelligent intervention never seems to address the fact that their solution to that problem involves something markedly more complex then a cell – a god. So they just push back the explanation to something that conveniently does not require an explanation for it’s origin (so they say). And to them that’s a “better” answer!
Those that don’t want to understand will never understand what you are saying to them.
OMagain,
So many irony levels! They avoid dealing with them though, by using that very same technique. Instead of clarifying their “points” when asked, they go somewhere else to hide.
I couldn’t keep them secret if I wanted.
So, do you understand why “undirected Darwinian evolution” is an oxymoron? If you do, and you disagree, please explain why you disagree. If not, then what’s what you’re having trouble understanding?
Entropy,
Since I so rarely agree with phoodoo about anything, I think I should speak up in this particular case. By “undirected Darwinian evolution”, phoodoo means “Darwinian evolution that is undirected by an intelligence.”
Phoodoo is right. That’s not an oxymoron.
Phoodoo’s real problem, as Rumraket noted, is this:
(Note Rumraket’s use of the purportedly oxymoronic phrase.)
If you take “undirected” in the straightforward sense in which phoodoo intended it, the phrase “undirected Darwinian evolution” is not an oxymoron.
Corneel,
He’s got to keep up with the times, or he’ll end up unemployed.
If evolution is in fact directed, and we’re presumably the desired end-product then what were the dinosaurs all about?