Eye Mock Stupidity

I’m all in favor of mocking stupidity, and here’s something definitely worth mocking.

In arguing for evolution, author Alan R. Rogers appeals to the Nilsson and Pelger paper on how simple it is to evolve an eye. He writes:

If eyes evolve, they must do so often and easily. Could it really be so easy?

Dan-Eric Nilsson and Susanne Pelger have answered this question. They constructed an evolutionary story much like the one that I told above.

– The Evidence for Evolution. p. 42.

And what did he write about the story that he told above?

This story is of course a fabrication. p. 40

I’m serious! Can it get any more stupid than that?

Do evolutionists believe fabrications? When it comes to how to evolve and eye it would certainly seem so.

524 thoughts on “Eye Mock Stupidity

  1. John Harshman: I don’t think it did. I suspect that the authors of that piece are speaking metaphorically while you are not. They aren’t talking about some deliberate agency of animals in their own evolution, while I suspect you are.

    The author of that piece was Stephen Talbott and here are some of his remarks on agency:

    The mechanistic, programmed organism is a deception. It turns out that nothing is controlled in the required way. The relevant processes — generally involving trillions of diffusible molecules making their way in a watery medium — remain “on track” only because the organism, as a unified center of agency, is being-at-work-staying-itself. It is wisely coordinating, redirecting, revising, and sustaining the overall form and coherence of countless interactions, including all those interactions involving what once was thought to be the explanatory program.

    The hidden importation of cognitive capacities we saw in the use of words such as “stimulus” and “response” occurs throughout the vocabulary of biology, and can be observed in physiological research as well as in behavioral studies. Terms such as “regulate” and “control,” ubiquitous in the technical literature, imply a recognition of needs, a reckoning with contextual significances, and a power of intelligent direction and coordination of complex molecular processes…

    …Nothing could be more evident than that whatever happens under the name of natural selection must arise within the “natural history of life.” The phrase “natural selection” adds nothing at all to this reality. What it does do, with its connotations of agency, is make it easy to project certain philosophical prejudices upon the pattern — for example, the belief that we are looking at a blind evolutionary mechanism acting upon machine-organisms and capable, with remarkable facility, of creating the observed diversity of life…

    …Yet the urge to project our assumptions upon that pattern via the selective agent-mechanism imagined as shaping it has been difficult to quell. This urge complements our strange willingness to lose sight of the only true source of agency we observe on earth, which is the organism. Once we reduce this organism to a machine, and once the machine is reduced to genes suffering occasional random modifications, there is no life left to account for the meaningful change we see.

    So the agent of change has been projected upon a theoretical abstraction. Having been put out of sight, the narrative life of organisms no longer interferes with the evolutionist’s theoretical niceties. Yet the fact remains: natural selection represents nothing other than the pattern of living activities within shifting environments. As an abstraction, it cannot even work with this pattern; it is just another name for it…

    …Does it make sense to dismiss as illusory the compelling appearance of intelligent and intentional agency in organisms?

    It is evident enough that the answers to such questions could crucially alter even our most basic assumptions about evolution. But we have no answers. In the current theoretical milieu, we don’t even have the questions. What we do have is the seemingly miraculous agency of natural selection, substituting for the only agency we ever actually witness in nature, which is the agency of living beings.

  2. Rumraket: I don’t have access to those pages, so the context is missing. Nobody should take your word for anything. You have no compunction lying by omission.

    Alan can’t see rules breaking posts by atheists that are one post removed from his own.

    I guess he is a very slow reader.

  3. John Harshman: I don’t think it did. I suspect that the authors of that piece are speaking metaphorically while you are not. They aren’t talking about some deliberate agency of animals in their own evolution, while I suspect you are.

    Just as an aside, Talbott isn’t talking metaphorically. He has a much broader conception of “agency”. His philosophical inspiration comes primarily from the Romantics, in particular Coleridge, but he’s also informed by Schelling and Goethe.

    I’ve had some conversations with Talbott about Darwinism. I get the impression that he thinks there’s some distinction to be drawn between what evolutionary theory says qua scientific theory and how some people treat Darwinism as Epicurean metaphysics.

    I don’t think that Talbott thinks that we currently have any good alternatives to evolution when it comes to empirically grounded scientific theories, but he resists the ways in which Darwinism is used to justify a mechanistic metaphysics.

  4. Alan Fox:
    CharlieM,
    Charlie, with respect, that is not answering my question. Telling me evolution is a poor explanation for some observed feature of living organisms is not telling me anything other than I already know.

    I am not telling you that evolution is an explanation for anything, poor or otherwise. Evolution is an observation which is in need of an explanation.

    What alternative explanations are there that can better account for the structure of buttercup flowers?

    The drawing I provided was of buttercup leaves not of flowers. The leaves of the individual plant all came from a common source, the seed; and they can be seen to have a progression of form. But the progression is not in incremental steps, it jumps from one to the other. Each is a material manifestation of an overarching form.

    Goethe believed his archetypal plant was the overarching form from which all plants are the material manifestation. If that is the case then the plants we see need not arise through incremental steps but, as in the buttercup leaves, the sequences have gaps.

  5. CharlieM,

    I stand corrected. But I still don’t know what either you or Talbott means by “agency”, or how “intelligence” at the level of basic metabolism differs from non-intelligence. Please, no more extended quotes that don’t clarify. Try explaining in your own words, hopefully intelligible words, what you mean.

  6. Kantian Naturalist: Just as an aside, Talbott isn’t talking metaphorically. He has a much broader conception of “agency”. His philosophical inspiration comes primarily from the Romantics, in particular Coleridge, but he’s also informed by Schelling and Goethe.

    Not to mention Steiner and Barfield.

  7. Mung:

    Joe Felsenstein: People (other than you) say that differences in genotypes, leading to differences in phenotypes, leading to differences in viability and fertility, are the sources of natural selection.

    What does it mean to say those are the sources of natural selection? Do you mean they are the causes of natural selection? What else could it mean to say they are “the sources of natural selection”?

    [Joe again:]
    But making it sound to the unwary reader that natural selection is a mysterious circular concept, as you are doing is purely misleading.

    I merely inquired as to whether natural selection is a cause or an effect.

    Your own usage appears to waffle back and forth, as if you are really rather uncertain. Perhaps an “I don’t know” is in order.

    Differences in fitness are the cause of natural selection, or we can say that they are natural selection. I can’t see that it makes any difference which of those we say. If it made a difference I would be concerned, but it doesn’t. Similarly we can say that random collisions of molecules cause Brownian Motion, or we can say that they are Brownian Motion. For any practical purpose, It doesn’t matter which.

    I don’t think there is some big issue in science there that needs to be settled.

    Nor is there any reason to spend time on whether “cause” is a viable concept in view of quantum mechanics — I can’t see that that affects any argument or calculation about the effects of natural selection that we do using fitnesses.

    If there is a confusion there on my part, it concerns angels dancing on heads of pins, and I don’t think that it has any real-world consequences.

  8. Rumraket: The simplest explanation for the pattern is the one he gives.

    Missing the point, again. That the original first snail had no eyes is not an explanation for why snail eyes are so different. And if snails had no eyes at all it wouldn’t explain that either. It’s a statement posing as an explanation, but it lacks any explanatory content whatsoever. Evolutionists are so freaking gullible.

  9. Mung and Vincent have both proposed massive saltation as a solution to the “problems” of evolution. They accept common descent, but they don’t think complex structures can be built gradually, one small change at a time. Why? Well, because that’s what Darwin proposed, and Darwin must be wrong!

    So what’s the alternative? That God somehow produced tons of coordinated mutations at some strategic times in certain organisms and.. boom! worms giving birth to snails! squids giving birth to squirrels! I mean, why not? We all know one mutation at a time is too much for God, why not believe many many of them makes so much more sense? LMAO

    This is fucking hilarious. It’s even more ridiculous than YEC’s special creationism. It’s essentially the same crap, but with common descent compliance: kinds are created fully formed by means of reproduction.

    Can you imagine Mung’s face when he’s told his dog is pregnant? What if God has chosen her to produce the next round of evolution? What if she gives birth to a T-Rex? Where do I find T-Rex fodder? So many questions!

  10. Rumraket: The full quote is:

    Yup, and the author still wrote exactly what I said he wrote:

    We should find traces of common descent only among closely related animals.

    That statement is so obviously false, yet here you are trying to defend it.

  11. Alan Fox: I’d be less inclined to dismiss this hyperbole if you were able to give us an example or two.

    Read the thread Alan. It’s full of examples. And more to come.

  12. Alan Fox: I’m curious about (preferably scientific) alternatives, too. I’d hope there were more than just an aversion to ToE.

    It’s an aversion to made up stories and bad arguments, to self-contradiction, and in some case to downright falsehoods. Surely there’s a better way to present the ToE.

    Unless the author is just preaching to the choir, who just don’t seem to care about those sorts of things as long as it supports their atheism.

  13. Kantian Naturalist: I don’t think that Talbott thinks that we currently have any good alternatives to evolution when it comes to empirically grounded scientific theories, but he resists the ways in which Darwinism is used to justify a mechanistic metaphysics.

    No doubt he would be welcome here at The Skeptical Zone. 🙂

  14. dazz: Where do I find T-Rex fodder? So many questions!

    Would we expect to see such events in populations of bacteria, given their high low generation time I wonder? There must have been many many generations of mice bred and observed in labs now, any such events noted I wonder?

    Do you wonder any of this Mung? If so, what are your conclusions?

  15. OMagain: Would we expect to see such events in populations of bacteria, given their high low generation time I wonder? There must have been many many generations of mice bred and observed in labs now, any such events noted I wonder?

    Do you wonder any of this Mung? If so, what are your conclusions?

    Where do you think those mice came from? Bacteria reproducing, of course. It just happens when no one’s looking

  16. They accept the gradualistic evidence for evolution, but with abrupt changes. Somehow, life is extremely derivative in the manner that you’d expect of gradualism, only it all had to occur through miracles/saltations.

    It’s that old idea that will never release them, the idea that really it has to be God, or at least something directing it all. Of course, it might be convenient to invoke a miracle, it’s just impossible to make sense of how the information in life is derived–often with apparently with many point mutations–with the revolutionary intelligent changes that they want their favorite Designer to make.

    We just have the patterns of gradualistic branching in the clades, and nothing else, unless one wishes to isolate very ancient changes, like the appearance of eukaryotes, from the usual processes (which they do, of course, but can give no good reason to do so), from the rest of what is happening. We have protein families that reveal the patterns expected of gradual changes, looking much like the clades themselves in their gradualistic changes.

    I’m not denying certain “jumps,” like whole-genome duplications in vertebrates, which seem to have produced opportunities. But I doubt that the organisms that resulted from whole-genome duplication were really all that different from those with unduplicated genomes, since mere duplication doesn’t add much information. Very ancient changes were perhaps larger, too, when there was less constraint. However, sensibly the evidence for evolution is evidence for gradualism, at least compared to what IDists want there to be.

    The strangeness of evolution is that gradualism leaves us with results that are “design strange,” like birds developing rigid wing structure out of many bones that used to become articulated into dinosaur forelimbs. If the leaps of design were occurring in life, why not get rid of such derivative developments? Are we supposed to believe that snail eyes result from leaps, while bird wings gradually evolved?

    Why? It’s a logical possibility that both evolution and design have occurred, but it certainly won’t do to find the unexplained and decide that it is the result of design. What we never see is good evidence for design (rational, revolutionary leaps–not merely unexplained “gaps”), and do see the strange derivations of gradualistic evolutionary processes.

    Glen Davidson

  17. GlenDavidson: They accept the gradualistic evidence for evolution, but with abrupt changes.

    That’s half right. There is no evidence for gradualism. There is evidence for abrupt changes.

    GlenDavidson: I’m not denying certain “jumps,” like whole-genome duplications in vertebrates, which seem to have produced opportunities.

    No doubt you believe these “jumps” don’t themselves produce anything functional.

    Give n that there is no evidence for gradualist evolution, and there is evidence for “jumps” why keep clinging to a model that is obviously lacking in evidence?

    It doesn’t help the image of atheism to hold such irrational beliefs.

  18. What is there evidence for regarding evolution Mung? Why don’t we start from there? What do you accept as reasonably supported by evidence? Is there any aspect of evolution as currently understood that you think stands beyond reasonable dispute?

  19. Joe Felsenstein: Differences in fitness are the cause of natural selection

    No its not, differences in death are the cause of natural selection.

    And natural selection is differences in death.

    Its cause and what it is are the same thing, because natural selection is just an observation about varying deaths and birth rates. Its not a mechanism whatsoever.

  20. phoodoo:

    Joe Felsenstein: Differences in fitness are the cause of natural selection

    No its not, differences in death are the cause of natural selection.

    And natural selection is differences in death.

    Its cause and what it is are the same thing, because natural selection is just an observation about varying deaths and birth rates. Its not a mechanism whatsoever.

    You know not whereof you speak. Natural selection reflects both differences in death rates and differences in birth rates.

    You said it was “differences in death”. And then, to my astonishment, a sentence later you mention birth rates, not noticing that you left them out a moment before!

    Fitness reflects both, not just death rates.

    Your level of expertise is showing. You seem to be quote-mining yourself.

  21. OMagain: What is there evidence for regarding evolution Mung? Why don’t we start from there? What do you accept as reasonably supported by evidence?

    Why should I attempt to engage with you when you’ve obviously ignored what I just wrote in the post right above yours?

    Whole genome duplication and other “jumps” that we have evidence of. There’s nothing in evolutionary theory itself that demands strict adherence to gradualism.

  22. Joe Felsenstein,

    Most people are aware that in order to have death you must have birth first (perhaps that is a surprise to you).

    How does you wanting me to write longer sentences make natural selection a mechanism?

  23. Joe Felsenstein: Differences in fitness are the cause of natural selection, or we can say that they are natural selection.

    And you’re back to saying that natural selection causes itself. Why introduce differences in fitness at all, if you can just way natural selection instead? You seem to recognize that you need some term on the left, and some term on the right, where both terms don’t mean the same thing (differences in fitness is natural selection), but are really struggling to say something that isn’t just obviously silly.

    Do differences in fitness cause differences in reproduction, or are those the same thing too?

  24. Mung: Whole genome duplication and other “jumps” that we have evidence of.

    Mungtard equivocates “jumps” (note the usage of scare quotes) right there. All of a sudden “jumps” have nothing to do with phenotypic complexity. hehe

    Mung: There’s nothing in evolutionary theory itself that demands strict adherence to gradualism.

    And if that was true, Mungtard could be labeled as an evolutionist. Yes, those evil evolutionists he’s been targeting for years: he just happens to be one of them…oh, the irony

  25. phoodoo: Most people are aware that in order to have death you must have birth first (perhaps that is a surprise to you).

    How does you wanting me to write longer sentences make natural selection a mechanism?

    Oh great. The expert is giving lectures.

    Here’s a simple example: Genotype A has a 0.7 chance of survival to adulthood. If it does survive, it then has 3 offspring. Genotype B has a 0.8 chance of surviving to adulthood. If it does survive, it then has 2 offspring.

    Now, which has the higher fitness? Do we count the 3 and the 2? Or do we count for each individual only that it was born once?

    As for “mechanism”, we can talk about that once you climb down on how to compute fitness.

  26. Fitnesses on top of fitnesses! As far as Genotype A, the birds were feasting on it’s carcass as I passed by.

  27. Jelly bean genetics phoodoo. You’ll never understand evolution until you can predict which bean will will come out of which jar, including its color.

  28. “Behe’s most famous argument involves the bacterial flagellum … It is a complex affair, involving 30 proteins. According to Behe, all are essential and none has any other function … apart from their role in the flagellum.” (p 49)

    That’s false.

    “The arguments of Pritchard, Murphy, and Behe all fail in the same way – by taking a rigid view of function.” (pp. 49-50)

    That’s false.

    “Behe saw no value in flagellar proteins apart from their role in the flagellum.” (p. 50)

    That’s false.

    Alan Rogers: On the other hand, the truth is what we really care about.

    ROTFLMAO

    Nice one.

  29. Mung: Whole genome duplication and other “jumps” that we have evidence of. There’s nothing in evolutionary theory itself that demands strict adherence to gradualism.

    Horizontal gene transfer. Symbiosis. Genome restructuring. All of which we have actual evidence for.

  30. Mung,

    All of which we have actual evidence for.

    So you accept the parts which we you believe we have evidence for.

    So what’s left must be where ID operates. Would that be correct?

    I suppose it’s progress, of a sort.

  31. Mung: Horizontal gene transfer. Symbiosis. Genome restructuring. All of which we have actual evidence for.

    And we don’t have evidence for differences in fitness between ordinary genotypes?

    And we also don’t realize that even if those large events occur, the resulting individuals are a tiny fraction of a population, and to take over the population their descendants will need to change genotype frequencies … by ordinary evolutionary means including natural selection. And end up gradually rising in frequency in the population.

  32. Joe Felsenstein: And we don’t have evidence for differences in fitness between ordinary genotypes?

    And we also don’t realize that even if those large events occur, the resulting individuals are a tiny fraction of a population, and to take over the population their descendants will need to change genotype frequencies … by ordinary evolutionary means including natural selection.And end up gradually rising in frequency in the population.

    Those “large events” can’t produce an eye or any complex systems in one fell swoop, can they?
    Don’t let Mung move the goalposts. Gradualism doesn’t require a perfect continuum, seems to me all steps are discrete, some larger than others, but that doesn’t even begin to explain the kind of wild saltation they propose.

  33. Joe Felsenstein: And we don’t have evidence for differences in fitness between ordinary genotypes?

    If fitness means what someone PREDICTS or as you put it, “the expected” rate of offspring, than the only evidence you need for fitness is someone predicting.

    So sure, we evidence that people make predictions. But that has no affect on how many offspring any genotypes have.

  34. phoodoo,

    But that has no affect on how many offspring any genotypes have.

    Does anything have any effect on how many offspring are produced?

  35. Mung,

    That’s false.

    It’s true.

    Stalemate.

    Why not try supporting your claim?

  36. dazz: Gradualism doesn’t require a perfect continuum, seems to me all steps are discrete, some larger than others, but that doesn’t even begin to explain the kind of wild saltation they propose.

    We had this problem back about 1980 with the punctuationists. They would argue that there were big phenotypic changes. Us population geneticists would then say, OK, that is in individuals. Is there a saltation at the population level? ‘Cause it seems to us that the dramatic new phenotypes would have to spread through the population, and would not instantly go to 100% frequency.

  37. Joe Felsenstein:
    phoodoo:

    Did you answer my question about how you calculate fitness in the case of genotypes A and B? Perhaps you did, and I missed it.

    You still don’t get that I believe the entire premise evolutionists use for fitness is nonsense? Gee, I really thought I had made that clear by now.

    There is no such thing as calculating fitness in evolution, there is only, exists, and doesn’t exist. Whatever exists, that is good (fit I guess to you) and whatever doesn’t is less good (less fit to you, but not really because in order for you to defend the concept you have to let the meaning vary from predictions, to fruition, and to soon to be fruition, and to A posteriori revisionism).

    So my answer is that there is nothing to calculate. You could count what exists if you want, but for what?

  38. phoodoo,

    So let’s say we ignore how many offspring individuals have and just count the ones that survive as having fitness 1 and the ones that die as having firness 0. Can we get an average fitness of a genotype by averaging those survivals and giving the genotype a fitness of 0.8 if 80% of the individuals of that genotype survive?

    That OK with you?

  39. Joe Felsenstein:
    phoodoo,

    So let’s say we ignore how many offspring individuals have and just count the ones that survive as having fitness 1 and the ones that die as having firness 0.Can we get an average fitness of a genotype by averaging those survivals and giving the genotype a fitness of 0.8 if 80% of the individuals of that genotype survive?

    That OK with you?

    Joe, you don’t seem to realize that even in this one little paragraph you are already using two different definitions for fitness!

    But its even more funny than this. We are counting individuals that no longer exist as having 0 fitness, and counting every other organism that still exists as having fitness of 1. So after the ones that have fitness of 1 die, will they then have a fitness of 0 again? This is laughable Joe.

    So of course it is not Ok with me to declare fitness as an average of fitness. or to declare fitness as those that exist, and then later declare them unfit, and then maybe fit again if you decide it is so.

    Fitness is meaningless Joe! Everything that alive is fit, and everything that is not alive is not fit. That is a totally useless observation.

  40. phoodoo: So after the ones that have fitness of 1 die, will they then have a fitness of 0 again? This is laughable Joe.

    I guess I was unclear. I meant, die before getting to the age where they could reproduce. Those are the ones that get a 0.

    So, if 80% of individuals of a particular survive to that age, can we say that the fitness of that genotype is 0.80 ?

  41. Joe Felsenstein: I guess I was unclear. I meant, die before getting to the age where they could reproduce.

    When do they become 0 Joe, before they are dead or after they are dead?

    Again, I understand why you want to talk about genotypes as some measure of fitness, but we have been over this numerous times. Genotypes don’t reproduce, entire organisms do. If a genotype dies are you giving the zero to the genotype or to the individual that died?

    The problem for your fitness idea keeps compounding.

  42. Joe Felsenstein: Oh great. The expert is giving lectures.

    When you say this it really makes me laugh. Its like if someone was questioning the validity of water diving, and the water diviner says, “Oh great, the expert is going to lecture us all about water divining. How long have you been water divining, are you some kind of expert? Do you know how long I have been doing it? I suppose next you are going to lecture me about palm reading! Are you an expert on that too?”

  43. phoodoo: When you say this it really makes me laugh.Its like if someone was questioning the validity of water diving, and the water diviner says, “Oh great, the expert is going to lecture us all about water divining.How long have you been water divining, are you some kind of expert?Do you know how long I have been doing it?I suppose next you are going to lecture me about palm reading! Are you an expert on that too?”

    LOL, do you know who Joe Felsenstein is?

  44. phoodoo:
    dazz,

    Oh my goodness Dazz, this went totally over your head.

    Do you know who Jack Coel is?

    LOL

    I had to google him… found this video where he says…

    Jack Coel: “Call me a water dowser. I’m not a witch, I’m a Christian”

    Makes complete sense

  45. phoodoo: Genotypes don’t reproduce, entire organisms do. If a genotype dies are you giving the zero to the genotype or to the individual that died?

    The idea is that genes affect reproductive success of the “entire organism”. So a mouse that is sand-colored is going to do better (on average make it to reproductive age and have lots of mice-children, who themselves will do the same) in the desert.
    But if the mouse is dark brown in the bright desert sand, chances are greater that a predator will spot it, or spot a fraction of it’s children and eat them.

    http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/selection/comparative/.

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