Meyer’s Mistake

Quite apart from any factual errors, about which I’m not at all qualified to judge, here is what seems to me to be  Meyer’s fundamental logical error IMO:

According to Darwin’s theory, the differences in form, or “morphological distance,” between evolving organisms should increase gradually over time as small-scale variations accumulate by natural selection to produce increasingly complex forms and structures (including, eventually, new body plans).  In other words, one would expect small-scale differences or diversity among species to precede large-scale morphological disparity among phyla.

 

(Darwin’s Doubt, Chapter 2)

He illustrates this by asking us to comparing this figure, which he says is what we do see:

Figure_2.12

With this (appallingly badly drawn) one:

Figure_2.11_MeyerWhich he claims Darwin’s theory says we ought to see.

And he says:

 

The actual pattern in the fossil record, however, contradicts this expectation (compare Fig. 2.12 to Fig 2.11b).  Instead of more species eventually leading to more genera, leading to more families, orders, classes and phyla, the fossil record shows representatives of separate phyla appearing first followed by lower-level diversification on those basic themes.

Well, of course it does, Dr Meyer!  You have just, in Chapter 2 of your fat book made an absolutely fundamental error of understanding of the entire principle of phylogenetics and taxonomy.  No, of course you wouldn’t expect phyla to follow “lower-level diversification on those basic themes”.  How could it possibly?  And how could you possibly so fundamentally misunderstand the entire point of Darwin’s tree and its relationship to the nested hierarchies observe by Linnaeus?

All branching events, in Darwin’s proposal, whether the resulting lineages end up as different phyla or merely different species, start in the same way, with two populations where there once was one, and a short morphological distance between them.  It is perfectly true that the longer both lineages persist for, the greater the morphological distance will become.  But that isn’t because they started different, or because the phyla come later.  It’s because what we call phyla are groups of organisms with an early common ancestor,  whose later descendents have evolved to form a group that has a large morphological distance from contemporary populations who descended from a different early common ancestor.

So when a phylum, or a class, or even a kingdom first diverges from a single population into two lineages, the “morphological distance” from the other lineage will be very short.  We only call it a “phylum” because eventually, owning to separate evolution, that distance becomes very large.

I’ve amended the drawings in the book as below, and, instead of labeling the trees by what a contemporary phylogeneticists might have called them, I’ve called each tree a phylum, and I’ve drawn round the organisms that constitute various subdivisions of phyla in colours from orange to green to represent successive branchings.  Rather than the little bunch of twigs marked “families” by Meyer, I’ve indicated the entire clade for each subdivision, or tried to.

Figure_2.11_Meyer_EL

In Meyer’s version, he called the early sprout “ONE SPECIES”, which a contemporary phylogeneticist (Dr Stephen Chordata perhaps) would have called a “species”.  But by the time of the next tree (which I think is supposed to incorporate the first), and Dr Chordata’s distant descendent comes along, she may call it an entire “genus”, and become rather more interested in the “species” that she observes it contains.  Move along one to the next tree on Meyer’s time-line and an even more distantly descendent will call the whole tree a “family” containing “genera” and “species”.  What was a “genus” to her great^10 grandmother will be several genera to her, and so on.  And with each multi-generation of palaeontologist, the descendents of what were close relations in her ancestral palaentologist’s day are now separated by a wide “morphological distance.

So of course, if we look at the fossil record as these speciation-events were happening and try to categorise the organisms in terms of their modern descendents, we will find a great number of different phyla, and far fewer species. Of course they have different body plans, because they lived at a time when many different lineages from the first populations of rather amorphous multi-cell colonies were still around, some with not much symmetry, some with bilateral symmetry, some with five-fold symmetry, and many that didn’t go very far and left no extant lineages.  Because of course Meyer also forgets the big extinction events, which are the other part of the answer to why one particular branch “exploded” while the others were never seen again.  It’s even in his terrible Figure 1.11.  Which he may not have been responsible for drawing, but he should at least have looked at.

ETA: the other drawing, fixed:

Figure_2.12_EL
ETA2:

Another extraordinary example of Meyer’s complete failure to understand what a clade is, or that the words “phyla” and “class” refer to clades. Coloured emendations are mine (orange/red for Meyer’s “phyla”, blue for Meyer’s “class”):

Meyer_7.3_EL

I’d have expected an urbane, Cambridge-educated guy like Meyer to know the [ETA: spot the erroneous] singular of “phyla” but that’s minor compared to his crashing howler of an attempt to demonstrate what the term means.

ETA:3 Note: As Mung has pointed out, Meyer shows that he does know the singular of “phyla”, he just doesn’t get it correct it in this particular diagram. However, as I have said elsewhere (and above), this error is minor compared with the howler of including only a group of of descendents in his circled “phyla”, not the whole branch, which as I’ve said, undermines his entire argument.

442 thoughts on “Meyer’s Mistake

  1. Elizabeth:

    He is not talking about the Darwin’s proposed mechanism of adaptive evolution.

    On the contrary, that is precisely what he is talking about.

  2. hotshoe:

    …he wrote a whole book about how it couldn’t be evolution.

    You’ve read the book then?

    hotshoe:

    Meyer IS a creationist – although perhaps not a YEC, still a creationist – and because of his creationism, he does not believe that phyla originated by unguided natural evolution. He believes in the un-evidenced alternative, that they were “created” by the god usually recognized as the christian god. It doesn’t matter what method he imagines god used to create those phyla, but whatever method it was, he wrote a whole book about how it couldn’t be evolution.

    The claim that phyla originated by unguided natural evolution is untestable.

  3. Mung:

    [hotshoe says] Meyer IS a creationist – although perhaps not a YEC, still a creationist – and because of his creationism, he does not believe that phyla originated by unguided natural evolution. He believes in the un-evidenced alternative, that they were “created” by the god usually recognized as the christian god. It doesn’t matter what method he imagines god used to create those phyla, but whatever method it was, he wrote a whole book about how it couldn’t be evolution.

    The claim that phyla originated by unguided natural evolution is untestable.

    So what? “Untestable” has nothing to do with Stephen Meyer’s reason for refusing to accept that unguided natural evolution is the likely – or even a possible – explanation Before any question of testability arises, Meyer has already made up his mind: god is the answer.

    Even though the god-answer is definitely untestable, even though it is completely without evidence in the real world, even though christians have been looking for god in action for hundreds of years with zero success … that’s Meyer’s answer an d he’s sticking to it.

    Since he’s ready made up his mind, it’s no matter to him what the actual science says or doesn’t say. Evidence of evolution is just stuff for him to plow through to get to his predetermined conclusion, anyways.

    So what’s your point, Mung?

  4. You willing yet to discuss all the scientific evidence and explanations Meyer left out of DD Mung? Or are you still focused on being the good little groupie and blindly regurgitating the half-truths, distortions, and quote-mined lies that Meyer included?

  5. Mung linked to Klinghoffer’s statement that

    It started months before publication of Darwin’s Doubt, when of course no one had read the book, with Jerry Coyne (University of Chicago) and Joe Felsenstein (University of Washington) reassuring blog readers that they already pretty much knew what Meyer’s arguments would be. – See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/10/a_taxonomy_of_e077351.html#sthash.X2jyEWCj.dpuf

    Klinghoffer is simply Making Stuff Up. I never said anything of the sort. That was a reference to a Panda’s Thumb post of mine. Doesn’t Mung read things before commenting on them? 🙂

    Of course I’m just shattered not to have Mung’s respect.

  6. Mung, The claim that phyla originated by unguided natural evolution is untestable.

    Untrue (did Joe G give you that one?). ‘Unguided natural evolution’ being a genetic succession of parents and offspring, with occasional genetic modification and fixation of that modification both resulting from non-intentional processes, and ‘phyla’ being a human construct used to group modern organisms into distinct sets at a certain depth of nesting based on shared characteristics. And into which, with varying degrees of success, fossil organisms can potentially be placed, from our retrospective viewpoint.

    One can test a hypothesis by looking for a consequence one would expect to see if it were true. In the case of the ‘natural’ process, one would expect to see evidence of a genetic and morphological continuum linking apparently disparate groups. One would also expect to see rates and amounts of genetic change consistent with processes whose current rates of change are known, and (where one had access to fossil evidence) a morphological succession consistent with that same hypothesis.

    It is true that this does not entitle one to rule out some kind of guidance (though the kind of guidance required to mimic a phylogeny arising purely from generational descent would be elaborate, to say the least). But one can test the hypothesis that natural processes alone are up to the job. Are supernatural processes up to it?

  7. Mung:
    ok, Elizabeth, so you claim that Fig 2.11 was “appallingly badly drawn.”

    And to illustrate your claim you submit an appallingly badly drawn figure of your own. Your drawing has no species at all. It also has no families. In your drawing everything is a genus except for the very first species, whichyou have re-labelled a phylum. And you extend every phylum in your drawing to include the original “species”(not an actual species, but really a phylum).

    This a greater “howler” than anything in Darwin’s Doubt

    No, it isn’t Mung. Or rather, if it is, then please show me how.

    It my position that Meyer has started off by saying that a “phylum” is only a “phylum” once it contains a set of organisms that are “morphologically distant” from organisms in a different phylum, and thus excluding organisms near the root of the phylum where it split off from the neighbouring one – then claiming that we don’t see any precursors to that phylum.

    By doing, as Meyer does, and defining organisms in neighbouring phyla, but near the root of each, as merely “species” at that point, you are making the same error.

    However, if we accept that idiosyncratic definition of “phylum” as something like “organisms living at a specific time, with a shared characteristic body plan”, then that doesn’t help him, and “disparity” to mean “lots of phyla”, then disparity DOES follow diversity.

    As I keep saying, he can’t have it both ways.
    Of course he can still have his argument there is a shortage of fossils at the nodes of the crown groups of phyla, or from a stem group, but that’s a different issue. Other people who are qualified can speak, and have spoken, to that.

    My point is a simple logical one, that his argument in Chapter 2 is fallacious, and the formal fallacy is that of equivocation.

  8. Lizzie:

    It my position that Meyer has started off by saying that a “phylum” is only a “phylum” once it contains a set of organisms that are “morphologically distant” from organisms in a different phylum, and thus excluding organisms near the root of the phylum where it split off from the neighbouring one – then claiming that we don’t see any precursors to that phylum.

    I guess this is your wording, a quote would be helpfull. I also guess that this is your interpretation, that fits your claim. I do not think Meyer redefined “phylum”. He used the actual definition of the word. And that definition do not allow to include the immaginary life forms at the root. How do you immagine the common ancestor of annelida, chordata and arthropoda? If it is included in one phylum can´t be included in the others. Unless your proposal is that it belongs to all the phyla. But that would be your personal taxonomy. Taxonomist prefer to create groups with only one specie before to have life forms that can be classified in two different groups.
    Stop to talk about errors of the use of phyla in Meyer and move to talk about what predicts darwinism, it would be more interesting and you look more intelligent.

  9. Mung:
    Elizabeth, do you believe Meyer is a Young Earth Creationist?

    Since Meyer is an ID-pusher, the null hypothesis is that he’s some flavor of Creationist. Some ID-pushers are indeed correctly known as Young Earth Creationists, while other ID-pushers, who don’t have a problem with Earth being 4.5 gigayears old, would therefore be correctly known as Old Earth Creationists. And of course there are still other flavors of Creationism that still other ID-pushers might belong to—Day-Agers and so forth. I don’t happen to know which Creationist camp, YEC or OEC or what, Meyer fits into… and I don’t see that it much matters, really.

    I’m curious, Mung: What difference would it make if Meyer was a Young Earth Creationist in particular, as opposed to being an OEC or a Day-Age Creationist or whatever else?

  10. Blas: I guess this is your wording, a quote would be helpfull. I also guess that this is your interpretation, that fits your claim. I do not think Meyer redefined“phylum”. He used the actual definition of the word. And that definition do not allow to include the immaginary life forms at the root. How do you immagine the common ancestor of annelida, chordata and arthropoda? If it is included in one phylum can´t be included in the others. Unless your proposal is that it belongs to all the phyla. But that would be your personal taxonomy. Taxonomist prefer to create groups with only one specie before to have life forms that can be classified in two different groups.
    Stop to talk about errors of the use of phyla in Meyer and move to talk about what predicts darwinism, it would be more interesting and you look more intelligent.

    Well, tell me how you think that Meyer defines “phylum”? He certainly is not using the standard biological definition, because in his drawings he circles neither a crown group nor a crown+ stem group.

    One definition he gives is:

    The term “phyla” (singular “phylum”) refers to divisions in the biological classification system. The phyla constitute the highest (or widest) categories of biological classification in the animal kingdom, with each exhibiting a unique architecture, organizational blueprint, or structural body plan.

  11. Lizzie: Well, tell me how you think that Meyer defines “phylum”?He certainly is not using the standard biological definition, because in his drawings he circles neither a crown group nor a crown+ stem group.

    One definition he gives is:
    The term “phyla” (singular “phylum”) refers to divisions in the biological classification system. The phyla constitute the highest (or widest) categories of biological classification in the animal kingdom, with each exhibiting a unique architecture, organizational blueprint, or structural body plan.

    I do not see nothing wrong with that definition, nothing that make wrong his drawings and nothing similar to what you said.

    “a “phylum” is only a “phylum” once it contains a set of organisms that are “morphologically distant” from organisms in a different phylum, and thus excluding organisms near the root of the phylum”

    And is hard to get Meyer definition of Phyla looking at his drawings because in the first he is depicting what we found in the fossil record and in the second shows what a CD pattern will look like over time not including the phyla. What is clearly wrong is your drawings calling phyla all the tree. Do you relize the the axis of both graphs are different? Do you reralize that according to your graph all the ancestor of all phyla belong to all the phyla? Do you know that that is taxonomicaly wrong?

  12. Mung:

    Elizabeth, do you believe Meyer is a Young Earth Creationist?

    Elizabeth:

    I assume not.Is he?

    I’ve never even thought to ask him the question. I would think that all evidence I have is to the contrary.

    So do you think he is a special creationist?

    Please bear with me, I’m trying to find where we have common ground here. You seem to think that he believes species were created independently.

  13. Mung, there’s a fine line between created independently and designed.

    Until there’s a theory of how design works and how it is implemented, saying that something was specially created and saying it was designed amount to the same thing. They exist because some designing entity wanted them to be there in that form.

    Since ID says absolutely nothing about how or where or when or why, we are left with intentionality. Someting exists because a designer caused it to exist.

  14. Mung:
    Mung:

    Elizabeth:

    I’ve never even thought to ask him the question. I would think that all evidence I have is to the contrary.

    So do you think he is a special creationist?

    Please bear with me, I’m trying to find where we have common ground here. You seem to think that he believes species were created independently.

    I don’t know what he believes or thinks. That is one of my points (although not my main point). He seems to think some other explanation involving an intelligent designer is a better fit to the data than the Darwinian one (common descent with modification plus natural selection) but doesn’t actually present his model.

  15. Blas: Do you reralize that according to your graph all the ancestor of all phyla belong to all the phyla?

    No,not all the ancestors of the phyla belong to the phyla. But all the organisms on that branch belong to that phylum, and all the circled organisms plus all non circled organisms between the last common node of the circled organisms belong to the crown group. The remainder belong to the stem group. Not all organisms in the stem group will be easy to assign to one phylum or another because at that level the morphological distance between phyla will be less than it is later.

    So if Meyer is trying to convey (as he says he is) what the expectation is under Darwinian theory, then he is not doing so.

    But it is pretty hard to figure out just what the diagrams are trying to convey because they are so bad.

  16. Elizabeth:

    I don’t know what he believes or thinks.

    I was just struck by your modifications to Fig 2.12. They seem to indicate that you think it important to indicate your concept of what the lineages might look like, as if Meyer had somehow failed to do so and as such he was implicitly questioning that the genera at the top shared a common ancestor with other genera of the same class or that the classes did not share a common ancestor with other classes .of the same phylum

    If Meyer is not a YEC, and he doesn’t think each species was specially created, doesn’t it follow that he accepts common descent? So why do you think he doesn’t?

    You’ve labelled his argument as one against common descent, and I would like to know why you think Meyer is arguing against common descent. If I was writing against common descent, I’d attack the claims made to support the hypothesis of common descent, and I just don’t see Meyer doing that in his book.

    Have you never encountered a staunch YEC who argues against common descent? Seriously, does Meyer’s argument look like the arguments they make?

    Anyways, why is this important? Because until we can agree what the book is about we’re not likely to have any sort of constructive debate about it.

  17. Elizabeth:

    But it is pretty hard to figure out just what the diagrams are trying to convey because they are so bad.

    Perhaps they are “so bad” because you are misinterpreting them and conflating them.

    No,not all the ancestors of the phyla belong to the phyla. But all the organisms on that branch belong to that phylum, and all the circled organisms plus all non circled organisms between the last common node of the circled organisms belong to the crown group.

    And your decision to draw the phylum all the way to the base line was purely arbitrary. You don’t know how many phyla each branch represents, and Meyer did not make that mistake, and if you think he should have that’s just too bad. He explicitly stated that the drawing did not include higher taxonomic groups, but you can’t accept that.

    If you read Meyer as Meyer, you’d see that the groups descended from the common ancestor had not diverged enough to warrant classification as different classes, much less as different phyla.

    What I find so interesting is that in essence you agree with Meyer that the pattern is top down. Now you’re trying to justify what you know to be true with Darwinian theory, which is bottom up. That’s kind of funny.

  18. Elizabeth:

    He seems to think some other explanation involving an intelligent designer is a better fit to the data than the Darwinian one (common descent with modification plus natural selection) but doesn’t actually present his model.

    You seem to be taking a different stance here at TSZ from the one you took at UD. And if that’s because “natural selection” is seen as the mechanism which brings about diversity and eventually disparity, and it’s because you understand that Meyer is writing about proposed mechanisms for the origin of the phyla, including, of course, Darwinian phyletic gradualism, then we are much closer to being able to talk about Meyer’s book.

    But if you still maintain that he’s arguing against common descent we’re still very much apart.

  19. “Higher” taxa must precede “lower” according to the theory.

    Q: Meyer, or Elizabeth?

    A: That was Elizabeth.

    I assume she’s talking about neo-Darwinian theory, aka “the Modern Synthesis.”

    Now if the phylum must precede the species, then the phylum must have a real existence.

    You can’t get subdivisions of a set before you have the set.

    Q: Meyer or Elizabeth.

    A: Elizabeth

    The set is a phylum, I suppose, and the subdivisions, presumably, are classes, etc.

    Ergo, you’ve got to have a phylum before you can subdivide it into species.

    It follows that species don’t come first, but phyla, and that Darwinism is not a “bottom up” diversification beginning with species which further diversify into genera, which further diversify into families, as envisioned by Darwin and Dawkins, until eventually the species are do disparate that they are classified as separate classes and orders and yes, even phyla.

    That not the model put forth by Darwin, and Meyers is just wrong.

    Ignore the actual quotes Meyer provides.

  20. hotshoe:

    …because of his [Meyer] creationism, he does not believe that phyla originated by unguided natural evolution.

    Mung:

    The claim that phyla originated by unguided natural evolution is untestable.

    hotshoe:

    So what?

    Allan Miller:

    Untrue

    Really?

  21. Lizzie:

    No,not all the ancestors of the phyla belong to the phyla.

    Then is your draw wrong not Meyer´s

    Lizzie:
    The remainder belong to the stem group.Not all organisms in the stem group will be easy to assign to one phylum or another because at that level the morphological distance between phyla will be less than it is later.

    If you cannot assign a life form to one phyla or another it do not belong to neither. That is the way taxonomy works.
    And you are making Meyer´s point, according to darwinism we should found intermediates forms and we do not have them.

    Lizzie:
    So if Meyer is trying to convey (as he says he is) what the expectation is under Darwinian theory, then he is not doing so.

    It would be helpfull at this point that you explain which are the darwinist expectation and how fossil record fits that expectation, A couple of examples of CE will be enough.

    Lizzie:
    But it is pretty hard to figure out just what the diagrams are trying to convey because they are so bad.

    Well, we are moving from wrong to bad, that is animprovement.

  22. According to Darwinian theory, the only real entities are either populations or species, or varieties, or individuals, or higher taxa. The theory is rather vague, or incoherent.

    But let’s say that the real entities are species, just for grins. A species splits into two populations. The two populations fail to re-integrate and then diverge through whatever mechanism they can diverge by. Eventually the two populations come to be recognized as two distinct species.

    Not as two distinct phyla, as Elizabeth would have it.

  23. Mung:

    The claim that phyla originated by unguided natural evolution is untestable.

    Allan Miller:

    Untrue (did Joe G give you that one?). ‘Unguided natural evolution’ being a genetic succession of parents and offspring, with occasional genetic modification and fixation of that modification both resulting from non-intentional processes, and ‘phyla’ being a human construct used to group modern organisms into distinct sets at a certain depth of nesting based on shared characteristics.

    Setting aside for now your question-begging assumptions, what is a non-intentional process?

    If there’s a ‘universal acid’, it’s not the theory of natural selection, it’s the problem of intensionality.

    – Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini

  24. More testament that ID is simple an anti evolutionary endeavor, with no predictions or mechanisms of its own.

  25. Richardthughes,

    You haven’t read the book and don’t intend to read the book. You’re a “true skeptic” in perfect alignment with Elizabeth’s intentions when she established “The Skeptical Zone.” Congratulations.

  26. I’m referring to your comments, Mung. You’re not really offering a ‘better explanation” for the the Cambrian, are you? Should you wish to try, we can chat. I wont be buying Myers book, because I think it would be unethical for me to fund the DI, and I have a few good fiction books already lined up.

  27. Mung: hotshoe:

    …because of his [Meyer] creationism, he does not believe that phyla originated by unguided natural evolution.

    Mung:

    The claim that phyla originated by unguided natural evolution is untestable.

    hotshoe:

    So what?

    Allan Miller:

    Untrue

    Really?

    Quotemining participants in this thread, Mung? Really? Or is the problem just that you did not read more than the first two words of what we wrote? Can’t or won’t read for comprehension?

    So what? “Untestable” has nothing to do with Stephen Meyer’s reason for refusing to accept that unguided natural evolution is the likely – or even a possible – explanation. Before any question of testability arises, Meyer has already made up his mind: god is the answer.

    Aaaaand …

    Untrue (did Joe G give you that one?). ‘Unguided natural evolution’ being a genetic succession of parents and offspring, with occasional genetic modification and fixation of that modification both resulting from non-intentional processes, and ‘phyla’ being a human construct used to group modern organisms into distinct sets at a certain depth of nesting based on shared characteristics. And into which, with varying degrees of success, fossil organisms can potentially be placed, from our retrospective viewpoint.

    One can test a hypothesis by looking for a consequence one would expect to see if it were true. In the case of the ‘natural’ process, one would expect to see evidence of a genetic and morphological continuum linking apparently disparate groups. One would also expect to see rates and amounts of genetic change consistent with processes whose current rates of change are known, and (where one had access to fossil evidence) a morphological succession consistent with that same hypothesis.

    It is true that this does not entitle one to rule out some kind of guidance (though the kind of guidance required to mimic a phylogeny arising purely from generational descent would be elaborate, to say the least). But one can test the hypothesis that natural processes alone are up to the job.

    See, there is no contradiction between Allan Miller’s comment and my comment.

    To amplify, it matters not one bit to the paid hacks of the DI like Stephen Meyer whether unguided evolution is “testable” or “untestable”. They don’t care at all, because they’ve already made up their minds that unguided evolution did not do the job. Since they don’t care at all, you have no excuse for bringing up the question of whether or not unguided evolution is “untestable” – it’s totally irrelevant to any discussion of Meyer and his unscientific book. Nonetheless, since you did bring it up, Allan did you the courtesy of answering that unguided evolution is testable.

    Allan and I, as well as Lizzie, and probably most others here, agree that divine interference (so-called intelligent design) masquerading as completely unguided natural evolution cannot be ruled out.

    But that’s not the case Meyer – or any other IDiot – wants to make. He doesn’t want to make a case that divine interference is merely indistinguishable from natural evolution. He wants to make the case that god directly caused the appearance of a few dozen new kinds (AKA “body plans” AKA “phyla”) which did not – could not – arise from less-disparate less-complicated ancestors by unguided mutation/natural selection. He wants to make the case that some advanced entity (AKA “the Designer” AKA the christian god) was needed to insert “information” into something (the already extant would-be ancestors of Cambrian phyla? or something else altogether? a brand new creation out of thin air? it’s not clear where/into what cell that information was injected according to Meyer; nor can any other IDiot make it clear) in order for that something to be complex enough to diversify into a whole new phylum.

    Talk about untestable! No one can imagine a test, not even as a thought-experiment, which could apply to an unknown and logically-unknowable someone that performed some unknown action by some unknown and unspecifiable method upon some unknown perhaps-living-or-perhaps-inanimate something which then, supposedly, by some unknown chain of events from that action, leads to the appearance of ancestral phyla-representatives in the Cambrian fossil record.

    If the concept of “testability” mattered to Meyer or any other IDiot, none of them would accept that untestable nonsense about some-designer-didit.

    Ha. God made it look just as if natural unguided evolution did it. Checkmate, atheists!

  28. Oh has Mung been Quotemining? Perhaps he and Sal can have a reconciliation after all.

  29. Mung:

    You haven’t read the book and don’t intend to read the book. You’re a “true skeptic” in perfect alignment with Elizabeth’s intentions when she established “The Skeptical Zone.” Congratulations.

    Richardthughes:

    You’re not really offering a ‘better explanation” for the the Cambrian, are you? Should you wish to try, we can chat. I wont be buying Myers book, because I think it would be unethical for me to fund the DI, and I have a few good fiction books already lined up

    You can’t even spell his name correctly. But you’re a true skeptic. Lizzie will be proud.

  30. hotshoe:

    “Untestable” has nothing to do with Stephen Meyer’s reason for refusing to accept that unguided natural evolution is the likely – or even a possible – explanation. Before any question of testability arises, Meyer has already made up his mind: god is the answer.

    You’ve read the book, then? No? So you’re a “true skeptic” in “The Skeptical Zone” tradition? Lizzie would be proud of you.

  31. I also make grammatical, and punctuation errors. Feel free to roll out these red herrings also, they may yet become the vanguard or ID thinking / theory. 🙂

    Are you looking for ‘death by cop’, Mung? Not happening, unless you post porn. Elizabeth at UD maked ID look bad. You at TSZ…. makes ID look bad.

  32. I think I need to start a new thread, just for those who haven’t actually read the book, and especially for those who think they don’t need to read it.

    I think I’ll name it “Darwin’s Audacity”

  33. Mung:

    You can’t even spell his name correctly. But you’re a true skeptic. Lizzie will be proud.

    Yeah, everyone knows that you can’t discuss Meyer’s ideas that he has widely disseminated online in interviews and articles and presented before in the film Darwin’s Dilemma unless you give the DI money for this latest recycled version of his same Creationist stupidity.

    That Mung, he loves the truth!

  34. Mung:

    I think I’ll name it “Darwin’s Audacity”

    You could call it “Fanboy Mung’s Blustering Distractions And Evasions From All Questions About Meyer’s Stupid Cambrian Claims”

    Or maybe just “Mung’s Dung” for a shorter, catchier version. Both say the same thing.

  35. Mung:
    … A species splits into two populations. The two populations fail to re-integrate and then diverge through whatever mechanism they can diverge by. Eventually the two populations come to be recognized as two distinct species.

    Not as two distinct phyla, as Elizabeth would have it.

    So close, and yet …
    If we were there at that moment, knowing nothing else but only that we see two separated non-interbreeding populations, we might not have any way of guessing/predicting that the two had stumbled upon a significant-enough difference that it was a “phylum-level” disparity. A slight degree of radial symmetry? The other, a slight degree of bilateral symmetry? Who would guess, without future knowledge, at that moment that it was the basic division into two separate body plans, ie phyla? But if we were there knowing what we know now, we could recognize that those two recently-separated, still almost-identical sister populations were the founders of two separate phyla. Each population at that moment would be the only living representatives of one brand-new phylum (as well as the only representatives of their respective orders, families, etc. — but only a pedantic taxonomist would insist on naming all the intermediate taxa levels for those two new phyla, when there were no other members of their orders etc to compare/contrast them with).

    The separation occurs as a “speciation event” but it occurs at the phylum level. There is no contradiction with what Lizzie has been saying all along.

    Later on, we see that descendants of those first phyla-representatives continue to diverge, making the phyla-level disparity more obvious even to an untrained eye. Phyla-level difference comes first (even though it might not be obvious to anyone except the experts), then comes the diversification of phyla descendants into the many species we now label as such.

  36. How do we know that a god is the a priori answer for Meyer without reading his book? This stupid game despite the fact that everyone knows. These inconsistent half-protests of secular disinterestedness that we get from cdesignproponentists are coquetry at best.

    A problem the DI gang have is that when they are being explicitly religious creationists to creationist audiences what they say and write is a matter of public record. We know that the god of the Israelites is the a priori answer for Johnson, Dembski, Meyer, et al because they have said so.

    Dembski got his ‘ID is the logos of John’s gospel’ line from Johnson. That Jesus is his lens on the world was documented on this blog. The creationist history of the DI was briefly covered in the same post. Mr Mulling projects many a word, bleating about defamation, but Dembski in fact outs himself in his own book. They all out themselves with their own words.

    Meyer was, in Johnson’s words, “a key Wedge figure”. So what? So, a la the other lovers of pre-medieval society who are the main men at the DI, Meyer wants science to be “consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.” In other words, YHWH is always the a priori answer for those who want Christianity to influence science. Not just science but everything.

    Meyer was on conservative radio just last month complaining that Darwinism is the foundation of materialism. Yes, a philosopher of science really said that. He was blaming materialism, or scientific naturalism, or the theory of evolution – it’s all the same thing to him – for every perceived ill in American society. What he really has a problem with is secularism. Not just secular science but any secular values.

  37. Mung,

    Setting aside for now your question-begging assumptions, what is a non-intentional process?

    I’m sure you know what intention*** is, and therefore how a process could be described as lacking it.

    ***
    A course of action that one intends to follow.
    or
    An aim that guides action; an objective.

  38. Mung:
    According to Darwinian theory, the only real entities are either populations or species, or varieties, or individuals, or higher taxa. The theory is rather vague, or incoherent.

    Well, that may be your value judgement.

    But let’s say that the real entities are species, just for grins. A species splits into two populations. The two populations fail to re-integrate and then diverge through whatever mechanism they can diverge by. Eventually the two populations come to be recognized as two distinct species.

    You do get it! Yes, the process of speciation is key. All the rest is retrospective. Taxonomy vs Cladistics. The new tool of DNA comparison across extant species now reinforces and perhaps outweighs comparative morphology.

    Not as two distinct phyla, as Elizabeth would have it.

    No, you don’t!

  39. hotshoe:

    but only a pedantic taxonomist would insist on naming all the intermediate taxa levels for those two new phyla, when there were no other members of their orders etc to compare/contrast them with).

    You mean someone like Lizzie that lead the discussion about the mean of phyla and phylum?

    hotshoe
    The separation occurs as a “speciation event” but it occurs at the phylum level.There is no contradiction with what Lizzie has been saying all along.

    Meyer´s point first specie then phyla. The “mistake” according Liddle.

    hotshoe
    Later on, we see that descendants of those first phyla-representatives continue to diverge, making the phyla-level disparity more obvious even to an untrained eye.

    Meyer´s point again. First diversity then disparity. The “mistake” according Liddle.

    hotshoe
    Phyla-level difference comes first (even though it might not be obvious to anyone except the experts), then comes the diversification of phyla descendants into the many species we now label as such.

    At this point when you try to say that you have the cake after eat it, it would be helpfull to show us how do you immagine the evolution of an arthropod and how that fits with the fossil record.

  40. I haven’t read Velikovsky. That makes him an important thinker. I haven’t read Mein Kampf.

  41. Blas

    it would be helpfull to show us how do you immagine the evolution of an arthropod and how that fits with the fossil record.

    What would be really helpful is if you could explain how Meyer’s Cambrian claims fit in with the rest of the fossil record. The 3 BY of fossils we have before the Cambrian, including almost 100MY of multicellular fossils. The 500MY of fossils after the Cambrian including the Great Ordovician Diversification and the subsequent 5 major mass extinctions and re-radiations.

    No one else from the ID camp will touch the question. Mung sure won’t. How about you Blas?

  42. Blas:
    … it would be helpful to show us how do you imagine the evolution of an arthropod and how that fits with the fossil record.

    Don’t ask me to “imagine” it! I don’t have to “imagine” it, I can study the actual work by the actual scientists who are experts in arthropod evolution and fossils. I can read. So can you. Start here:

    pdf, arthropod fossil record

    P.S. Blas, you really need to use blockquote. You’re behaving rudely when you don’t.

  43. hotshoe: Don’t ask me to “imagine” it!I don’t have to “imagine” it, I can study the actual work by the actual scientists who are experts in arthropod evolution and fossils.I can read.So can you.Start here:

    pdf, arthropod fossil record

    That link shows many cambrian arthropods. Not how a non arthropod became an arthropod and do not shows how all the arthropods evolved in its differents forms.

  44. Hey, look, Blas, you can learn! You learned how to use blockquote to avoid pointless rudeness in one attempt! Hooray!

    Now, if you’ve read and comprehended all 17 pages of that paper, you next can learn for yourself about arthropod evolution by reading each of the many references they cite, and by searching the web for additional material on the subject. See, it’s easy to learn; you just have to be willing to put in a little effort. Just like learning to blockquote – you can do it!

  45. thorton:

    OK, we’ll add Blas to the big list of IDiots who demand excruciating detail from evolutionary theory but can’t answer the simplest questions about the IDiot claims they’re pushing.

    And posts like yours will continue to be “tolerated” here at TSZ because no host in her right mind would expend all the effort required to remove all such posts generated here at TSZ to Guano.

  46. hotshoe:

    Hey, look, Blas, you can learn! You learned how to use blockquote to avoid pointless rudeness in one attempt! Hooray!

    I think it’s unreasonable to expect Lizzie to moderate all the content at her blog. She’s obviously outnumbered by all the faux skeptics posting under her banner.

    But really, who is taking advantage of her hospitality here?

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