Certain commentators seem surprisingly agitated about pursuing the idea that there is no ‘theory of evolution’. Some mean there is no single theory, although on examination the things they see as separate are frequently simply different components of the same broad process. Or, alternatively, they are referring to evolution in other senses, or in non-biological contexts. Others say there is no theory at all, as if that against which they argue does not even exist.
A theme has emerged that TSZ is somehow suppressing their concerns. So, in the spirit of suppressive dictatorships everywhere, here is a thread for people to say whatever they want about this vital topic. Hopefully without pasting in vast swathes of something already posted elsewhere – a link will suffice.
Here, for my part, is my very broad summary of ‘the’ theory of evolution: Genetic changes (mutation, recombination) are subject to a sampling process, correlated to a greater or lesser extent with their effects on survival and reproduction. This process leads to a simultaneous increase and decrease in frequency for the variants in the population, through to, in the limit, extinction or fixation of a variant. This process proceeds indefinitely, subject to the fuel of new variation. All commonly accepted*** ‘theories of [biological***] evolution’ of which I am aware place emphasis on different components, influences and consequences of this basic process. None, so far as I am aware, are at odds with it, which might be expected if there really were ‘different theories’.
*** The caveats are inserted to try to head off anticipated ‘gotchas’, in a possibly forlorn attempt to reduce opportunities to make semantic capital out of a phrase whose intent should be easy enough to understand without them. This is not ‘biologism’: the ToE which upsets people is (are?) the generally accepted biological one.
I’m attacking ID’s lack of substance which is completely inside the rules. Feel free to give us ID’s testable hypotheses or plans for future research. I won’t hold my breath.
Just about. I can discuss it further in the moderation issues thread. Please take it there if you have further complaints.
Why even say something that blatantly false?
Design fits form and function to need, while biology fits form and function to heredity, albeit adapting it to need. It’s entirely different. Of course there can be caveats brought up (design sometimes kludges an old form), but the fact is that biology is exceedingly beholden to heredity in a way that design never is.
You’ve had this pointed out to you numerous times, but the mere fact that your preferred belief isn’t in conformance with the facts hardly stops you from repeating the same blatantly false crap unendingly.
Glen Davidson
Alan Fox,
What Frankie is claiming is successfully testing the blind watchmaker or universal common descent has never been achieved. On the other hand DNA repair, a human design concept, has been tested.
Just back this up with evidence.
Merely claiming things doesn’t really support your precious beliefs.
Glen Davidson
And as per usual he’s completely wrong. It’s been tested repeatedly and passed every test. You have been shown many of them already.
DNA repair isn’t a human design concept. DNA repair existed a few billion years before humans evolved.
Frankie’s “blind watchmaker” is not something I understand as having resemblance to the modern theory of evolution.
GlenDavidson,
Design concepts in biology:
translation
transcription
alternative splicing
protein destruction
DNA repair
replication
Glen, do you disagree that the above follows design concepts and their use is repeated through life?
I have pointed this out to you repeatedly yet you don’t seem to get it 🙂
How do they follow design concepts? Why do you think repeating ID bullshit is meaningful? Why are necessary aspects of life just plain “design” to you without any sort of meaningful evidence or argumentation?
Granted, you don’t learn.
Perhaps if you ever learned proper inference, science, and backing up one’s claims with evidence, you might at least know how to change your baseless claims in response to the evidence.
Naturally, you ignored the actual fact that biology is beholden to heredity in a way never seen in design, in order to simply repeat your BS claims for the thousandth time. The obvious reality that you don’t care about the facts won’t make the facts go away.
Glen Davidson
I think you are misreading him. Evolution IS a blind, unguided process because environmental change (which evolution more or less tracks, and which is therefore a part of the overall theory) is ITSELF a blind, unguided process.
So what he means is, evolutionary biological change is said not to be externally directed by a Mind, toward a goal that Mind has in Mind. And according to theistic doctrine, everything there is, was, will be, and can be is by definition guided by that Mind toward a predetermined goal.
Theistic evolutionary biologists (which certainly exist) regard their research as inquiry into the Mind Of God (their version), because deeper understanding of how nature works IS deeper understanding of the purposes and methods of their god(s).
GlenDavidson,
How in the world do you think this statement possibly refutes my claim that the cell follows design concepts.
The fact that biology is beholden to heredity is irrelevant.
No, those are just things that happen. We give them names.
You could support your claim by taking each of those “design concepts” and demonstrate their usage in a field other then biology.
You might as well say “eating food” is a design concept.
Well, so what? There has to be something and whatever it was you’d claim it as “evidence”. But when you don’t have to support you claims anything can be “evidence” I suppose.
Search google for “design concepts in biology” with quotes and there are a grand total of 5 results. 2 from UD. 1 from ARN and 1 from a book review.
No, it’s you that is not getting that simply pointing out things gets nothing done. As evidenced by the thing you keep pointing out but nobody keeps taking any notice of. Ever. Look at the results for “design concepts in biology” and tell me who else agrees that your idea is support for ID.
Smiley Face.
The “intelligent design” movement is still treating The Blind Watchmaker, a 1987 work of popular science, as the ultimate and infallible statement of the modern synthesis. ID activists are heavily invested in taking the side of Paley (nominally secularized) against Dawkins, whom they represent as second only to Darwin among evolutionists.
Glen, I think you are making this same error. To the theist, ALL OF REALITY is, and must be, a part of their god’s design. If biology is beholden to heredity, that must be part of the Designer’s methods. If mutations are best modeled by random processes, that MUST BE because the Designer does it that way. All observations, no matter what they are, reflect the Designer’s methods and intentions because, well, because they do. Period. ANYTHING that is a fact, is a fact about the Designer.
You can’t refute a claim that you’ve not provided any evidence for other then a list of things that happen.
I claim that the fact that these things happen:
That demonstrates that the cell does not follow design concepts.
Please refute that claim.
Yes, it’s completely absent from the OP. It’s as if the WEASEL program never existed. It’s as if Allan’s theory of evolution could care less about explaining “the appearance of design.”
Or the origin of new species, for that matter.
False. Everything that is in fact bad is a fact about the sinfulness of humankind, beginning with the Original Sin of Adam and Eve.
What design is beholden to heredity like biology is?
Look, this is just digging deeper into denialism, as if life exhibiting the entailments of unthinking evolution means nothing either to design or to evolution. You’re simply unable or unwilling even to consider that the evidence is evidence, only to repeat your unsupported claim that life follows design principles.
It follows evolutionary principles, as the hereditary constraints indicate. That you can’t or won’t see that is your problem, not ours.
Glen Davidson
Take a drink everyone.
OMagain,
transcription…design concept copying or printing…human example printer
translation…..design concept..code translation…….human example computer
alternative splice….design concept…..group bit arrangement….HE the english language
protein destruction…design concept….control feedback…….HE heating and air-condition control
DNA repair…..design concept …..error correction detection ……HE computers
replication……desing concept ……copying……………HE 3D printing
I’ve replied in Moderation Issues.
There are bad facts?
Good one! Omagain amusingly forgot about the creationist mastery of false analogy, so he was really asking for it!
But I don’t even mind that, if the theist isn’t a denialist with respect to the evidence.
If evolution is God’s design process, so be it. I mean that it’s fine for them if they like that, not that it should be taught in schools or any such nonsense, or if they try to claim that I must agree that scientifically all evidence points to God in order to be intellectually honest.
If they see God’s hand behind it all, though, I don’t have a problem with that. Just look at evolution in order to see how God did it (set it in motion, etc.), and it’s no more concern to me than if they’re New Age or whatever.
What’s annoying and a potential threat are those who pretend that life is full of design principles and that evolutionary entailments that go against actual design principles are of no consequence.
What if they’re on a jury that’s listening to your case, with such a deep scorn for the principles of proper inference?
Glen Davidson
petrushka,
So does hitting the ground after falling off a cliff … !
I don’t really see the problem here. When an allele is in single copy, it is at greater risk from drift, and merely has a potential to get its advantage realised by greater numbers. But it’s the same allele, with tye same effect, as when it hits 100% frequency, when everyone pats it on the back for its adaptive foresight – “never doubted ya, buddy!”.
Alan, Dawkins, not me, labeled in the blind watchmaker. It follows from what Charles Darwin had published in 1859 and all subsequent refinements. Natural selection is alleged to be that blind watchmaker, capable of creating the appearance of design observed in biology. Natural selection is both blind and mindless. It doesn’t plan. Genetic drift is also blind and mindless-
6. “Blind watchmaker” thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through an unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms.
Random means happenstance, as in all mutations are alleged to be accidents, errors and mistakes.
38 Nobel Laureates say:
So, contrary to Alan, the blind watchmaker is this alleged modern theory of evolution and always has been since Charles Darwin. Just the details have been changed along the way.
And how does your position explain heredity? Yours is given starting populations of biological organisms capable of reproduction, the very specified complexity that needs an explanation.
Flint,
The Dawkins evolutionist tactic of a one line discount to an apposing argument. Can you possibly back up the claim that the analogy is false?
The theory of evolution is like a diamond. I like that.
Umm, Tom, if any newer version of evolutionism includes evolution by design, then please reference it. If all versions of evolutionism claim that all mutations are accidents, errors and mistakes and that by differential removal and accumulation explains the diversity of life, then they are all blind watchmaker scenarios.
ID is OK with the premise organisms were intelligently designed to evolve, as in adapt, and they evolve by design. Spetner’s non-random evolutionary hypothesis was first published in 1997. It seems that the only justification for calling all mutations accidents, errors and mistakes is a total commitment to materialism.
Can you?
colewd,
On the contrary, it is the reason it appears purposive. Concentration and dilution of heritable traits must result in an excess of favourable over unfavourable ones – exactly as if designed for that purpose.
I agree that theories are supposed to be explanatory, and that the theory presented in the OP doesn’t even attempt to explain anything. It’s more like an observation. Or an axiom. It’s just stating facts.
So the purpose of computers is code translation? Support that claim.
Also searching google for “code translation” and “design concept” together returns no relevant results. So far the only supporter of your claim is you. While that is not necessarily an invalidation (everything has to start somewhere) it does show that the onus is on you to support your case rather then rely on others refuting it.
As after all, where has that latter tactic got you?
Here we go again. Some human designs are roughly analogous to things we see in nature, therefore what we see in nature was designed.
Cole just cannot understand the fallacy in his “logic” no matter how many hundreds of times it is explained to him.
Read his blog- his claims of front-loading are supported there. The list of contributors to natural selection’s ability to produce the diversity of life is zero. The list of contributors showing that unguided processes such as natural selection and drift can produce vision systems is zero.
The list of people giving lip service to “evolution” doing something is vast. They call upon gene duplications followed by mutations to make a different function not realizing only planning can pull of such a thing- there isn’t enough time for culled chance mutations to do it and no one knows how to test such a concept.
Methinks you are bluffing and don’t have any idea what the alleged modern theory of evolution really says and you have no idea what the research really says.
OMagain,
Error correction and detection is a design concept used in communication systems and computers.
Cells use this design concept to repair their DNA.
Your claim is falsified.
Can you give an example of such an ‘explanatory theory’ and an example of the sort of explanation that has been derived from that theory?
Yes, and it’s interesting that axiom can be implemented in silicon and useful, novel and monetizable results generated. Imagine if the (relatively) puny numbers of cpus were replaced with trillions of living creatures (cue Douglas Adams) over billions of years, also implementing such an axiom.
Why?
Before error correction existed, was the cell not designed then?
Lawn sprinklers cause water to fall on grass supplying the grass with its moisture needs.
Rain clouds use this design concept to water grass.
IDiot arguments by analogy are just that stupid.
Mung,
This is an Americanism that has always eluded me. I could not care less about explaining that – though in fact it does so very successfully, due to its tendency toward retention of successful ‘solutions’ and discard of those less so.
Last time I expounded my soundbite version of evolution (which did include speciation) as the mysterious ‘Contributor #4’ on the Turing Test thread, you chided me for going over a paragraph! I can’t win.
It certainly seems to be a pattern, from your comments, that my OPs never contain what you would have put in them if you’d written them. There is a simple remedy.
That some designed things and some undesigned things do the same thing falsifies nothing. It proves or disproves nothing. You can design a thing to do the same as a thing that does something that is itself undesigned. For example, a waterfall. Ornamental waterfalls do not prove that waterfalls were designed, do they?
Hold the presses!
Are you guys trying to say that theories have histories? And that a theory can posit more than one mechanism? And that sometimes scientific concepts are analogical constructions from non-scientific domains?
Oh, you wacky evolutionary biologists! What will you think of next?
Basically, it’s sermonizing. If you really think that your preacher is making sense by saying that the wind you can’t see but produces results you can see is like God who you can’t see by produces results that you can see, you’re a tad off of the scientific path.
Essentially, ID is a load of sermonizing, complete with the bad analogies.
Glen Davidson
Streamlining is a design concept used in submarine hulls
Fish use this concept to move more efficiently through the water
Therefore fish are designed.
How about it colewd, is that ID logic correct?
OMagain,
Error correction is only one example of human design concepts in cells.
Another interesting design concept is the use of the mathematical sequence used to create an environment where so much diversity can be achieved. This concept is used in DNA, protein production and alternative splicing.
In addition I don’t know if there is evidence that life occurred without a repair mechanism.
Can you spot the elements introduced in this post missing from “the theory” presented in the OP?
For example, the OP doesn’t mention phenotype, or alleles. Nor does it address the causes of the changes in the population, even though it makes reference to effects.
In a thread about theories of evolution there seems to be quite a lot of spewage about ID. The way to get rid of ID is to demonstrate you have a mechanism cable of producing life and its diversity. The diversity part is the field of evolution so perhaps you should start by formulating a scientific version that deals with the diversity of life including the many protein machines observed.
Attacking straw man versions of ID will never help you support the claims of your position.
The error correction in cells is not a human design concept. DNA error correction existed billions of years before the human concept (or humans) came along.
Now watch colewd go LA! LA! LA! and repeat the same strawman claim another dozen times