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ABIOGENESIS

Abiogenesis, the natural process by which life arises from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The transition from non-living to living entities was not a single event, but a gradual process of increasing complexity and without external direction, that involved molecular self-replication, self-assembly, autocatalysis and cell membranes.

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Things to remember about evolution
Massey University written by Professor Andy Lock.

1) Evolution is not progressive - Evolution is not designed to produce the best quality products, it only seeks to design adaptations 'that will do the job' most efficiently and economically. Therefore, evolution used the 'mammal template' throughout the development of all mammal species - eg. pentadactyl limbs, mammary glands, spinal curvature, pelvis structure - and made the necessary modifications to suit the niche that species lived in.


2)Evolution is not an argument for the status quo - Evolution does not dictate why things are the way they are. It must be remembered that some of an animals features may be trade-offs or by-products of the evolution of an unrelated adaptation.


3) Evolution provides constraints - What has gone before sets physical limits on what we can do now. This is seen in the fact that we learn some things much more readily than others. In this sense evolution has also constrained what things we are able to perceive and attend to.


4)Evolution provides complexity from simplicity - Species that depend on each other for food (predator - prey relationships) often enter into 'arms races', as they try to outdo each other.

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Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Swenet:
Doug, for present purposes it's irrelevant and off topic what Newton's religious views were. Repeating it 10 more times isn't going to affect the bottom line that I'm concerned with the fact that the worldview in question is dead. I'm not concerned with the name of that worldview.

Give it up. You know you're just trolling at this point. I could pick all sorts of beefs with words in your posts. I could say 'Egypt' is a Europeanized word and derail all your arguments, simply because you happen to use the word Egypt for convenience's sake.

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Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Swenet:
Again, notice how dense lioness is. Some sort of deep-seated reading comprehension problem that needs medical attention. I never said Newton subscribed to a chemical origin of life. I've not even mentioned Newton's name outside of the worldview that happens to bear Newton's name. Is lioness crazy and seeing things? I've already explained I'm not talking about Newton over several thread pages.

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Originally posted by Swenet:

Let's face it, Doug. The notion that chemistry is enough to explain life originates with a dated view of nature i.e. the Newtonian view.

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Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Swenet:

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The issue is that by saying "Newtonian" you aren't really talking about Newton as in breaking science from religion. Newton was an ardent Christian and spiritual and did not himself see the world as separated in such a way. So the whole idea of "Newtonian" did not come from Newton, it came from others AFTER Newton and again is partly the result of RATIONALISTS integrating themselves into Newtons concepts and promoting it as "Newtonian".

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Let's say Newton was as religious as the pope and that there was some kind of conspiracy to co-opt his name by 'rationalists'. How does Newton's name being co-opted by 'rationalists' affect the bottom line that the worldview I'm talking about is dead? It doesn't affect my argument at all. So guess what Doug, for present purposes it's irrelevant and off topic what Newton's religious views were. Repeating it 10 more times isn't going to affect the bottom line that I'm concerned with the fact that the worldview in question is dead. I'm not concerned with the name of that worldview.

Give it up. You know you're just trolling at this point. I could pick all sorts of beefs with words in your posts. I could say 'Egypt' is a Europeanized word and derail all your arguments, simply because you happen to use the word Egypt for convenience's sake. Only sad people resort to that type of manipulation. You and lioness are sad and manipulative people for trying to derail my argument based on nominal bs. It tells me that you both know you can't debate me and defend your own worldview, so you have to resort to picking beefs with widely used words. You think you sound smart but educated people see you're just trying obscure the bottom line with irrelevant non sense. Lol.

I've never seen someone try so hard to rationalize blatant trolling.

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Next came the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century and, for various reasons, science being prominent among them, people started to look for an alternative, more secular view of history. A candidate was soon on offer: the idea of progress. As opposed to the Christian notion of Providence — where our only hope for salvation was through God’s benevolent action in history — now with progress the hope was instilled that we through our own unaided effort can make things better, scientifically, medically, politically, culturally.

Almost immediately, people started to cash this out in the biological world. There had long been the idea of a chain of being, where all organisms can be put on a scale, a ladder or staircase if you like, from the most primitive grubs, up through the “lesser” animals, until we reach the summit, humankind. If you were so inclined, you could extend the ladder skywards to include angels and then God at the top. The chain of being was originally static, but soon it was made to move — a kind of escalator — and so the idea of evolution (it wasn’t called that until the mid-nineteenth century) was born. As we have progress in the social world, from the “savages” (as they were called) to Europeans — some debate about which Europeans, but the English knew the answer to that one, especially given that God is not just English-speaking but also an Anglican — so also we have progress in the organic world, as they used to say, from the “monad to the man.”

...

Fast forward to the middle of the nineteenth century when, in 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. It is generally agreed that Darwin did two things. First, he made common sense the idea of organic evolution, that all organisms including humans came into being by a slow, natural process of development, from much more primitive forms, which probably — Darwin implied this but was not explicit — emerged from non-living minerals. Second, he offered a mechanism for this change. More organisms are born than can survive and reproduce. There is a struggle for existence in which some win and some lose. Winning and losing is on average a function of the differences between organisms — some features help and some don’t — and so there is a natural equivalent to the breeder’s practice of selection, and this adds up to overall lasting change.

At what price was there progress up to humans? Darwin certainly believed in social progress, and it is pretty clear also that he believed in evolutionary progress. But he saw a problem with this idea, a problem that is still with us today. Natural selection doesn’t select for what’s best in any absolute sense, but just what’s best at surviving relative to the conditions that organisms find themselves in — whatever wins in the struggle for existence, wins. If there is lots of food, bigger animals win; if food is scarce, smaller ones win. Given that brains are high-maintenance features, there is absolutely no binding necessity that they evolve, even less that they get bigger and bigger through evolutionary history. At the same time, the raw building blocks of evolution — what we today call “mutations” — are random, not in the sense of being uncaused, but in the sense of not appearing to order. While you might need a new skin color for camouflage to survive, there is no guarantee that you will get it. So the problem is this: If natural selection doesn’t select what’s best in an absolute sense and mutations are never guaranteed, can there be any direction to evolution?

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Posts: 8895 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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Here is a 2017 report significantly updating and substantiating ongoing talk that the universe is a holographic projection. May be interesting for those who have been following the development of this hypothesis over the years. (It was discussed once on ES).

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Substantial evidence of holographic universe

A UK, Canadian and Italian study has provided what researchers believe is the first observational evidence that our universe could be a vast and complex hologram. Theoretical physicists and astrophysicists, investigating irregularities in the cosmic microwave background (the 'afterglow' of the Big Bang), have found there is substantial evidence supporting a holographic explanation of the universe -- in fact, as much as there is for the traditional explanation of these irregularities using the theory of cosmic inflation.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/holographic_principle.htm

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Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Doug:
The problem is the "bottom line" worldview you keep calling out doesn't exist the way you claim it does. You keep pretending that "science" is stuck in these "camps" based on "Darwinian" models of "newtonian" physics and that is simply an exaggeration and oversimplification of what is going on.

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Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Doug M:
The problem is the "bottom line" worldview you keep calling out doesn't exist the way you claim it does. You keep pretending that "science" is stuck in these "camps" based on "Darwinian" models of "newtonian" physics and that is simply an exaggeration and oversimplification of what is going on.

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Originally posted by Swenet:

Let's face it, Doug. The notion that chemistry is enough to explain life originates with a dated view of nature

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Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Swenet:

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Originally posted by Doug:
The problem is the "bottom line" worldview you keep calling out doesn't exist the way you claim it does. You keep pretending that "science" is stuck in these "camps" based on "Darwinian" models of "newtonian" physics and that is simply an exaggeration and oversimplification of what is going on.

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You are just making empty declarations and claims right now. If I'm exaggerating things, prove it. Nobody is going to take your word for it, just because you say it's so. I've already posted multiple quotes stating that Newtonian worldview is the default worldview of mainstream science. What have you posted to contradict this. outside of your own assertions?

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Darwin’s ideas circulated widely. They were quickly taken up by a variety of scientific, cultural, and political projects. Colonialism, racism, capitalism, socialism, atheism, materialism, sexism, feminism, modernism, and, of course, the life sciences, all claimed the Darwinian mantle. What united them was the insight that the human species was just another biological organism, fully subject to the natural order of things. A strong corollary was that we retain the primitive attributes of our ancestors: we all have a beast within; our humanity is a thin veneer. And indeed, Darwinism brought to the fore emerging ideas in Western intellectual life, ideas that claimed no order beyond the natural order—that provided no privileged place for theology or metaphysics—that saw our place in the world coming solely from the world itself.

Social Science

Darwinism became a touchstone for the emerging social sciences of the late nineteenth century. Social critics such as Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) argued that “survival of the fittest” (his phrase) justified laissez-faire capitalism, where all competed against all in the “struggle for existence” (Darwin’s phrase). Spencer portrayed the human social world as the sphere of unrestrained competition, with all attempts to mitigate that struggle as hindering the evolutionary process, being out of synch with nature.

Karl Marx (1818-1883) and his collaborator, Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), also claimed Darwin, but for scientific socialism. They laid out a pattern of social evolution—from primitive societies, through ancient empires, feudalism, and capitalism, to socialism—whose engine of change lay in the internal dynamics of the society, as it grappled with the human problems of getting and sharing the wealth of the world. Marx maintained that—just as Darwin had done—he was describing the inevitable changes in the evolving social and economic world, which he observed and understood as a scientist would.

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In July 2008, when BioLogos was but a new creation without so much as a website, I presented a paper at the C.S. Lewis Foundation’s triennial Oxbridge meeting. The paper was called C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design, and I boldly yet fearfully put a rolled-up copy in the hands of one Francis S. Collins, who was a plenary speaker at the conference.

I was already familiar with Collins, having read The Language of God when it appeared, and having been one of many people who plied him with further questions afterwards (in my case, in a handwritten note on my very best stationery). Reading over the paper today, there are a few things I would write differently now (namely I’d be a bit more nuanced in my descriptions of the Intelligent Design movement). But I was over the moon when Collins wrote to say he found my paper “well researched and articulately presented.” That fateful day at the conference eventually led to my present employment at BioLogos—nothing short of Providence.

C.S. Lewis is one of the patron saints of Evangelicalism, if there ever was one. Lewis’s works of apologetics, children’s literature, and science fiction are almost universally known and loved among Evangelicals. Lewis’s thoughts on science and faith are less well known, but he wrote extensively of science, and even of evolution, both in his popular works, like Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain, and in private letters.

I offer just a few Lewisian gems for reflection (see the paper for citations and discussion). First, on the nature of science itself:

Science works by experiments. It watches how things behave. Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really means something like, ‘I pointed the telescope to such and such a part of the sky at 2:20 a.m. on January 15th and saw so and-so,’ […] Do not think I am saying anything against science: I am only saying what its job is [….] But why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything behind the things science observes--something of a different kind--this is not a scientific question.[1]

For Lewis, science isn’t equipped to answer some of the most fundamental and important questions of all, such as, Why there is something rather than nothing? and Is there a God?

Perhaps surprisingly, Lewis makes this same point when talking about evolution:

We must sharply distinguish between Evolution as a biological theorem and popular Evolutionism or Developmentalism which is certainly a Myth. [...] To the biologist Evolution […] covers more of the facts than any other hypothesis at present on the market and is therefore to be accepted unless, or until, some new supposal can be shown to cover still more facts with even fewer assumptions. […] It makes no cosmic statements, no metaphysical statements, no eschatological statements.[2]

The real danger is not evolutionary theory, then, but Evolutionism—the all-encompassing worldview. Lewis was right to want to put Evolutionism to rest once and for all. (This is certainly a goal BioLogos shares with the ID movement, even as we disagree about the science of evolution.)

What about human evolution? Lewis famously envisioned an evolutionary scenario for Adam and Eve in The Problem of Pain, but I offer this quote because it is less well known:

Just as my belief in my own immortal & rational soul does not oblige or qualify me to hold a particular theory of the pre-natal history of my embryo, so my belief that Men in general have immortal & rational souls does not oblige or qualify me to hold a theory of their pre-human organic history-if they have one.[3]

In other words, so what if we had non-human biological forebears? We are still immortal, rational, ensouled creatures made in God’s image.

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Genetic mutations are the driving force of evolution, and now scientists have managed to study the effect of mutations in exquisite detail by watching what happens as they pop up in single cells.

Only about one percent of mutations were bad enough to kill off the cell, according to a report published Thursday in Science. Most of the time, these small changes in its DNA appeared to have no effect at all.

Mutations have been studied for centuries, says Lydia Robert, a researcher at INRA, an agricultural research institute in Paris, France, who notes that they can have medical impacts ranging from antibiotic resistance to cancer.

But research on mutations basically has focused on large-scale effects in populations.

"You have a test tube with millions of bacteria, for instance, and you try to measure some property which is an average of all the cells in the population," says Robert.

In contrast, she and her colleagues wanted to study mutations in single cells.

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Posts: 8895 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Doug:
I agree with you that there are misconceptions and flaws with European belief systems. However, the way you describe them is what I disagree with them. You keep trying to shoehorn science into being monolithic even when it has never been like that. In reality, Western science and western views of the world are constantly changing.

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Darwin himself is part of that process and his views changed and his biggest impact was in the idea of general evolutionary theory. I agree on that. However, I disagree that many of his other views such as directionality were ever as influential as general evolutionary theory. General evolutionary theory is still part of modern science but it has changed since the time of Darwin. Science is not stuck in a time warp.

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The ideas you yourself are speaking of are part of modern science, not separate from it. And in many ways they always have been part of science or before that natural philosophy, metaphysics and cosmology. These ideas have always been there and therefore what you are talking about is not new.

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Not saying I agree with this, but that these ideas still exist and aren't going anywhere even with new discoveries in science.

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Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by the lioness,:

http://extendedevolutionarysynthesis.com/why-evolution-may-be-smarter-than-we-thought/


Intelligent design without a creator? Why evolution may be smarter than we thought

by Richard A Watson

27 February 2017


Interestingly, Alfred Russel Wallace (who suggested a theory of natural selection at the same time as Darwin) later used the term ‘intelligent evolution’ to argue for divine intervention in the trajectory of evolutionary processes. If the formal link between learning and evolution continues to expand, the same term could become used to imply the opposite. [/QB]

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will not directly comment on this attempt to make Wallace into an intelligent design advocate, except to reproduce his own words on the matter (from another of his books, Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, 2d ed.):


--"Some of my critics seem quite to have misunderstood my meaning in this part of the argument. They have accused me of unnecessarily and unphilosophically appealing to "first causes" in order to get over a difficulty--of believing that "our brains are made by God and our lungs by natural selection;" and that, in point of fact, "man is God's domestic animal." An eminent French critic, M. Claparède, makes me continually call in the aid of--"une Force supérieure," the capital F, meaning I imagine that this "higher Force" is the Deity. I can only explain this misconception by the incapacity of the modern cultivated mind to realise the existence of any higher intelligence between itself and Deity. Angels and archangels, spirits and demons, have been so long banished from our belief as to have become actually unthinkable as actual existences, and nothing in modern philosophy takes their place. Yet the grand law of "continuity," the last outcome of modern science, which seems absolute throughout the realms of matter, force, and mind, so far as we can explore them, cannot surely fail to be true beyond the narrow sphere of our vision, and leave an infinite chasm between man and the Great Mind of the universe. Such a supposition seems to me in the highest degree improbable.

Now, in referring to the origin of man, and its possible determining causes, I have used the words "some other power"--"some intelligent power"--"a superior intelligence"--"a controlling intelligence," and only in reference to the origin of universal forces and laws have I spoken of the will or power of "one Supreme Intelligence." These are the only expressions I have used in alluding to the power which I believe has acted in the case of man, and they were purposely chosen to show, that I reject the hypothesis of "first causes" for any and every special effect in the universe, except in the same sense that the action of man or of any other intelligent being is a first cause. In using such terms I wished to show plainly, that I contemplated the possibility that the development of the essentially human portions of man's structure and intellect may have been determined by the directing influence of some higher intelligent beings, acting through natural and universal laws. A belief of this nature may or may not have a foundation, but it is an intelligible theory, and is not, in its nature, incapable of proof; and it rests on facts and arguments of an exactly similar kind to those, which would enable a sufficiently powerful intellect to deduce, from the existence on the earth of cultivated plants and domestic animals, the presence of some intelligent being of a higher nature than themselves."

Wallace was a spiritualist, but spiritualists believe that existence, though in part nonphysical, is understandable on the basis of law, not intervention. Thus Wallace was neither entirely a Darwinian, nor at all an I.D. advocate.

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Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by the lioness,:

http://extendedevolutionarysynthesis.com/why-evolution-may-be-smarter-than-we-thought/


Intelligent design without a creator? Why evolution may be smarter than we thought

by Richard A Watson

27 February 2017


Interestingly, Alfred Russel Wallace (who suggested a theory of natural selection at the same time as Darwin) later used the term ‘intelligent evolution’ to argue for divine intervention in the trajectory of evolutionary processes. If the formal link between learning and evolution continues to expand, the same term could become used to imply the opposite. [/QB]

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will not directly comment on this attempt to make Wallace into an intelligent design advocate, except to reproduce his own words on the matter (from another of his books, Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, 2d ed.):


--"Some of my critics seem quite to have misunderstood my meaning in this part of the argument. They have accused me of unnecessarily and unphilosophically appealing to "first causes" in order to get over a difficulty--of believing that "our brains are made by God and our lungs by natural selection;" and that, in point of fact, "man is God's domestic animal." An eminent French critic, M. Claparède, makes me continually call in the aid of--"une Force supérieure," the capital F, meaning I imagine that this "higher Force" is the Deity. I can only explain this misconception by the incapacity of the modern cultivated mind to realise the existence of any higher intelligence between itself and Deity. Angels and archangels, spirits and demons, have been so long banished from our belief as to have become actually unthinkable as actual existences, and nothing in modern philosophy takes their place. Yet the grand law of "continuity," the last outcome of modern science, which seems absolute throughout the realms of matter, force, and mind, so far as we can explore them, cannot surely fail to be true beyond the narrow sphere of our vision, and leave an infinite chasm between man and the Great Mind of the universe. Such a supposition seems to me in the highest degree improbable.

Now, in referring to the origin of man, and its possible determining causes, I have used the words "some other power"--"some intelligent power"--"a superior intelligence"--"a controlling intelligence," and only in reference to the origin of universal forces and laws have I spoken of the will or power of "one Supreme Intelligence." These are the only expressions I have used in alluding to the power which I believe has acted in the case of man, and they were purposely chosen to show, that I reject the hypothesis of "first causes" for any and every special effect in the universe, except in the same sense that the action of man or of any other intelligent being is a first cause. In using such terms I wished to show plainly, that I contemplated the possibility that the development of the essentially human portions of man's structure and intellect may have been determined by the directing influence of some higher intelligent beings, acting through natural and universal laws. A belief of this nature may or may not have a foundation, but it is an intelligible theory, and is not, in its nature, incapable of proof; and it rests on facts and arguments of an exactly similar kind to those, which would enable a sufficiently powerful intellect to deduce, from the existence on the earth of cultivated plants and domestic animals, the presence of some intelligent being of a higher nature than themselves."

Wallace was a spiritualist, but spiritualists believe that existence, though in part nonphysical, is understandable on the basis of law, not intervention. Thus Wallace was neither entirely a Darwinian, nor at all an I.D. advocate.

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https://evolutionnews.org/2016/06/alfred_wallace/


Alfred Russel Wallace — Intelligent Design’s Lost Ancestor, Now Found
David Klinghoffer
June 2, 2016,

historian colleague Michael Flannery explains:

Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Swenet:

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Originally posted by Doug:
I agree with you that there are misconceptions and flaws with European belief systems. However, the way you describe them is what I disagree with them. You keep trying to shoehorn science into being monolithic even when it has never been like that. In reality, Western science and western views of the world are constantly changing.

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How is saying mainstream science operates within the Newtonian worldview the same thing as portraying science as a monolith? I have never criticized science in this thread. I have criticized MAINSTREAM science. I don't see how criticizing MAINSTREAM science is the same as attacking science.

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Darwin himself is part of that process and his views changed and his biggest impact was in the idea of general evolutionary theory. I agree on that. However, I disagree that many of his other views such as directionality were ever as influential as general evolutionary theory. General evolutionary theory is still part of modern science but it has changed since the time of Darwin. Science is not stuck in a time warp.

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I said they are stuck within their worldview, not in specific beliefs.

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The ideas you yourself are speaking of are part of modern science, not separate from it. And in many ways they always have been part of science or before that natural philosophy, metaphysics and cosmology. These ideas have always been there and therefore what you are talking about is not new.

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Quote me saying these ideas are new or not a part of science.

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Not saying I agree with this, but that these ideas still exist and aren't going anywhere even with new discoveries in science.

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What the point of posting this? The author is not a part of mainstream science. My criticisms are not directed at him/her. And you're proving my point. The author is fearful to present his/her ideas.

Don't tell me Darwinists are not a little faith based club then post a quote confirming people are feeling fearful of presenting their ideas. You can't contradict yourself that overtly and then tell me I'm misrepresenting how mainstream science works.

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Originally posted by Swenet:

EDIT
Actually, the quote isn't specific enough as far as the reason why the author was fearful. But still, Darwinism is founded on academic fraud and falsehoods. And they go to great lengths to protect their doctrines so that people who don't share their beliefs are often unwilling to speak up.

A Critique of Darwinist Icons (Icons of Evolution)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te3aShKST1A

And you can't get through to these people. They have been approached about problems by people inside and outside their fields and they refuse to listen. You claimed to have watched this lecture a couple thread pages ago. So you know very well my concern is not to simply paint them as monoliths. My concern is that they operate like the medieval Catholic church in terms of their approach to contrary evidence and confirmation bias. This is not the same thing as saying they are monoliths in specific beliefs. Although they are certainly monoliths in worldview.

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The further back in time you go, the patchier our understanding of life on Earth gets. That's because fossils from those early years are extremely hard to come by and interpret, for a number of reasons. Now, British scientists have used a different method known as a molecular clock to plot out a rough timeline of all life on Earth, tracing the first organisms back to about 4.5 billion years ago.

The fossil record is relatively rich back till around the Cambrian Period, when life exploded in diversity about 540 million years ago. Before then life was much simpler and didn't necessarily have the kinds of hard tissues that fossilize well, so the record largely rests on trace fossils – things like tracks and burrows that indicate the presence of life, rather than their bodily remains.

The fossil record gets murkier towards the Archaean period, over 2.5 billion years ago. The oldest confirmed fossils are about 3.4 billion years old, but other potential evidence includes a 3.5 billion-year-old hot spring in Australia, 3.7 billion-year-old stromatolites in Greenland, and the oldest (but most contentious) could be as ancient as 4.3 billion years.

"There are few fossils from the Archaean and they generally cannot be unambiguously assigned to the lineages we are familiar with, like the blue-green algae or the salt-loving archaebacteria that colors salt-marshes pink all around the world," says Holly Betts, lead author of the new study. "The problem with the early fossil record of life is that it is so limited and difficult to interpret – careful reanalysis of the some of the very oldest fossils has shown them to be crystals, not fossils at all."

While fossils are great as propping up our overall understanding of the timeline of life, they can't paint a complete picture. After all, life had to have developed enough to leave fossils behind in the first place.

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Posts: 8895 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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Perhaps surprisingly, Lewis makes this same point when talking about evolution:

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We must sharply distinguish between Evolution as a biological theorem and popular Evolutionism or Developmentalism which is certainly a Myth. [...] To the biologist Evolution […] covers more of the facts than any other hypothesis at present on the market and is therefore to be accepted unless, or until, some new supposal can be shown to cover still more facts with even fewer assumptions. […] It makes no cosmic statements, no metaphysical statements, no eschatological statements.[2]

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The real danger is not evolutionary theory, then, but Evolutionism—the all-encompassing worldview. Lewis was right to want to put Evolutionism to rest once and for all. (This is certainly a goal BioLogos shares with the ID movement, even as we disagree about the science of evolution.)

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Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

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During my years as a physical science undergraduate and biology
graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, I believed
almost everything I read in my textbooks. I knew that the books contained a
few misprints and minor factual errors, and I was skeptical of philosophical
claims that went beyond the evidence, but I thought that most of what I was
being taught was substantially true.
As I was finishing my Ph.D. in cell and developmental biology, however, I
noticed that all of my textbooks dealing with evolutionary biology
contained a blatant misrepresentation: Drawings of vertebrate embryos
showing similarities that were supposed to be evidence for descent from a
common ancestor. But as an embryologist I knew the drawings were false.
Not only did they distort the embryos they purported to show, but they also
omitted earlier stages in which the embryos look very different from each
other.
My assessment of the embryo drawings was confirmed in 1997, when
British embryologist Michael Richardson and his colleagues published an
article in the journal Anatomy and Embryology, comparing the textbook
drawings with actual embryos. Richardson was subsequently quoted in the
leading American journal Science as saying: "It looks like it's turning out to
be one of the most famous fakes in biology."
Yet most people remain unaware Of the truth, and even biology
textbooks published after 1997 continue to carry the faked drawings. Since
then, I have discovered that many other textbook illustrations distort the
evidence for evolution, too. At first, I found this hard to believe. How could
so many textbooks contain so many misrepresentations for so long? Why
hadn't they been noticed before? Then I discovered that other biologists
have noticed most of them, and have even criticized them in print. But their
criticisms have been ignored.
The pattern is consistent, and suggests more than simple error. At the
very least, it suggests that Darwinism encourages distortions of the truth.
How many of these distortions are unconscious and how many are
deliberate remains to be seen. But the result is clear: Students and the
public are being systematically misinformed about the evidence for
evolution.
This book is about that evidence. To document it, I quote from the peer-
reviewed work of hundreds of scientists, most of whom believe in Darwinian
evolution. When I quote them, it is not because I want to make it sound as
though they reject Darwin's theory; most of them do not. I quote them
because they are experts on the evidence.
Wherever possible, I have avoided technical language. For those who
want more details, I include extensive notes at the end of the book referring
to the scientific literature. The notes are not intended to be exhaustive
(except where they list sources of quotations), but to aid readers who want
to pursue matters further.
The chapters are followed by two appendices. The first critically
evaluates ten widely-used biology textbooks, from the high school to the
graduate level. The second suggests warning labels, like those used on packs
of cigarettes, that schools might want to place in their teaching materials to
alert students to the misrepresentations.
Many people were kind enough to review and comment on the
manuscript. Those who assisted me with technical details in the indicated
sections or chapters include: Lydia McGrew (Introduction); Dean Kenyon
and Royal Truman (The Miller-Urey Experiment); John Wiester (the
Cambrian explosion, in The Tree of Life); W. Ford Doolittle (molecular
phylogeny, in The Tree of Life); Brian K. Hall (Homology); Ashby Camp and
Alan Feduccia (Archaeopteryx); Theodore D. Sargent (Peppered Moths); Tony
Jelsma (Darwin's Finches); Edward B. Lewis (genetics of triple mutants, in
Four-winged Fruit Flies); and James Graham (human origins, in The
Ultimate Icon). Listing these people here does not imply that they endorse
my views. On the contrary, many of them will disagree with my conclusions
and recommendations. But for these fine people, science is the search for
truth, and I am indebted to them for helping me get the facts straight, Of
course, any errors that remain are my fault, not theirs.

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Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

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As work continued in the 1800s, the physical and chemical basis of the
electrical activity associated With nerves would come to be well understood.
For our purposes, the key point is that what was originally viewed as a purely
biological phenomena, and one that fit well within the vitalist view, is now
understood to be, at bottom, an electrical phenomenon resulting from physical
and chemical processes not different in kind from those found outside of biology.
And so this area of biology is seen, at bottom, to fit in well with the overall
mechanistic, Newtonian understanding Of physical and chemical processes.
As a second brief example, consider the early years of organic chemistry. Before
the early 1800s, the standard view was that what would come to be called
"organic" compounds could only be produced by living organisms. Moreover,
organic chemistry was originally viewed as closely tied to vitalism, in that the vital
fluid or vital force believed necessary for life was generally viewed as required to
produce organic compounds. And for a number of years, this seemed to be a
reasonable view, supported in large part by the fact that no one was successful in
producing organic compounds other than by means involving living organisms.
However, in 1828 Friedrich Wohler (1800—82) managed to produce urea,
which is clearly an organic compound, from an inorganic compound. Chemists
were soon able to produce other organic compounds from inorganic ones,
including increasingly complex organic compounds. By the mid- 1850s this
feat became routine, and this too substantially undermined the vitalist view of
the sharp distinction between living and nonliving things.
A final example involves work in evolutionary theory, largely in the early to mid
1800s. The end result would be that life in general, for example the variety of species,
would be seen to be the result of natural processes operating according to natural
laws. Darwin himself was deliberately working within a Newtonian approach. Much
as Newton's laws of motion govern the behavior of objects over time (moving
planets, falling objects, and the like), Darwin wanted to find laws governing changes
in species over time. parts of the story of the development of evolutionary theory will
be taken up in detail in part III of this book. So for now we will just summarize by
noting how Darwin's approach nicely illustrates how much of an influence
Newton's science, and the relatively new Newtonian worldview, was having on
other branches Of science. Newton's approach — of looking for precisely specifiable
laws governing the behavior of whatever it was the particular science was investi-
gating — had come to be seen as the proper way to do science.
This is again a very brief sketch of these developments, but it illustrates the
sorts of major advances that were made in biology in the period from roughly
1700 to 1900. And, importantly, these examples illustrate how biological phe-
nomena came to be viewed, at bottom, as no different from nonbiological
phenomena. Although there were still a few defenders Of vitalism even into
the early 1900s, by this time it was pretty clear that the mechanist view was
correct. Discoveries in the twentieth century, for example in genetics, sealed the
case, and provided a good understanding Of how living phenomena arise from
molecular-level events. In general, by the early twentieth century, biology,
chemistry, and physics were united, and came to be viewed as investigating
the same Newtonian world, although at different levels.

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Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

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» Turf Control
The secular transformation of Charles is not unusual. Students encounter an
ever more powerful yet cunning force when entering the academic mainstream—
one for which believers are often unprepared. It is not simply ideological. It is
political. As such, it deserves attention.
The doctrines of naturalism and postmodernism have become institution-
alized in Western culture such that they go unquestioned and are accepted as
fact. Over time it has become obvious that those holding the intellectual reins
of power have proven no more open-minded than their creationist forebears. In
fact, the naturalists in particular carefully guard the turf of evolutionism, even
in the face of legitimate academic and scientific challenges to its validity.
"In technical circles, where the empirical flaws are common knowledge," says
Finley, who supports creationism on scientific grounds, "evolutionists debate
the possibility that a new naturalistic explanation of life may be thought up,
but in public presentations they preach doctrinaire evolution and pretend that
the empirical problems do not exist." Referring to the ape-to-man theory,
another group of scholars note that these observations are assumed and go
unchallenged. 2
Absolutely no secret is made of this ideological commitment to naturalistic
evolution. Recently, the American Association for the Advancement of Science
offered a seminar titled "Good Science, Bad Science: Teaching Evolution in the
States." Various states were graded on how favorably they handled evolution in
the classroom. A's were given to states that carefully hewed the ideological line.
Some received PS. One state, Kansas, was rated an F— , because it had the temer-
ity to refuse to claim that Darwin's notion of evolution accounts for all major
aspects of living things. The seminar, however, falsely accused Kansas of "remov-
ing all references to evolution. " Such is the hysteria surrounding any perceived
challenge to naturalism.
Any critique of naturalistic evolution seems to elicit a forceful dismissal.
When asked whether myriad scientific problems with naturalism should be cited
in the teaching curriculum, noted evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould had a ready
response: "We have no time to teach the conflicts." Valid opposition to evolu-
tion is given no voice. Scholar Henry Creechan notes, "Any scientist who rejects
evolution tends to be branded a religious fanatic, or similar. The media either
ignores them or discredits them by disparagement."
The commitment to naturalism is far more philosophical than scientific. In
the face of indisputable scientific evidence to the contrary, naturalistic theories
are stated as fact. And it doesn't end there. So committed are the devotees of
naturalism that when some of its claims do not stand up to rigorous scrutiny,
scholars have been willing to help the cause along in rather dubious ways.
» Fraud
Jonathan Wells, author of Icons of Evolution, makes a powerful case for stipulat-
ing a nonscientific bias present among naturalists. He points out that during
his academic career at the University of California, the very prospect of ques-
tioning prevailing scientific paradigms was unthinkable. No longer so for Dr.
Wells, once he noticed a set of drawings of vertebrate embryos (fish, chicken,
humans, etc.) that were used to support the doctrine that all living organisms
emanated from a common ancestor.
The drawings were fake. The renderings, known to be forgeries for over a
century, were foundational to Charles Darwin, who wrote, "I view all beings not
as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings." Darwin
held that differentiation among species occurred over time as organisms
adapted for surcival. He rooted his theory of evolution in embryology, finding
it to have "by far the strongest single class of facts" favoring his paradigm.
Ernst Haeckel assisted Darwin by providing drawings of various vertebrates
designed to indicate that they were virtually identical in their earliest stages of
development. Haeckel "doctored his drawings to make embryos appear more
alike than they really were." Haeckel's drawings have lingered in academic cir-
cles despite critiques by his contemporaries. Even when in 1997 British embry-
ologist Michael Richardson provided conclusive evidence that the drawings were
contrived, the drawings still held firm in academe- Beyond the fraudulent draw-
ings, Haeckel omitted the earliest embryonic stages, in which differences among
the vertebrates are more pronounced. As far back as 1976, embryologist William
Ballard stated that "only by semantic tricks and subjective selection of evidence"
and by "bending the facts of nature" could one claim that the earliest stages of
embryonic development are more similar than their adult forms. 10 Richardson,
comparing the textbook drawings with actual embryos, stated in the renown
journal Science, "It looks like it's turning out to be one of the most famous fakes
in biology."
Such evidence did not dampen naturalistic spirits. At the 2000 conference,
Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education,
boldly proclaimed that no one would seriously question "that embryos are more
similar than the mature bodies. "12 Little wonder, then, that although convinc-
ingly debunked, Haeckel-like drawings are everywhere. Wells reviewed all his
textbooks, finding such drawings "all obviously wrong." Although naturalist
Gould wrote that we should "be astonished and ashamed by a century of mind-
less recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number,
if not a majority, of modern textbooks," his scholarly hands were not clean.
Gould knew for decades that the drawings were false but remained silent, appar-
ently to protect the general theory of naturalism against formidable attack-
It only begins with Haeckel. "My search revealed a startling fact, however,"
notes Wells. "Far from being exceptions, such blatant misrepresentations are
more often the rule." so common is this academic fraud that Wells called them
"Icons of Evolution."
Wells found many instances of fraud. In the 1950s, British physician Bernard
Kettlewell theorized that peppered moths had gone from light to dark color
over the past century to be camouflaged by darkened tree bark and hence spared
from being eaten by birds. In the 1980s, it was determined that peppered moths
do not rest on tree trunks, but rather they fly by night and hide in higher
branches during daylight hours. Kettlewell had manufactured an artificial exper-
imental situation. Moreover, he "proved" his hypothesis by having photogra-
phers actually glue dark-colored dead moths to the bark of trees and shamelessly
presented the fabricated pictures as "Darwin's missing evidence."
Kettlewell —who to this day is regarded as having made a powerful score, as
his experiment is recounted in many introductory biology texts, often accom-
panied by photos of the moths on the tree trunks—has his defenders. One aca-
demic administrator asserted, "You get a better picture if you glue the moth to
the tree." Moreover, Canadian textbook author and apologist Bob Ritter
betrays the bias found in the politics of naturalism, arguing, "You have to look
at the [high school] audience. How convoluted do you want to make it for the
first-time learner? We want to get across the idea of selective adaptation. Later
on, they can look at the work critically."
Politics was also at work in the 1970s when Peter and Rosemary Grant found
that the beaks of finches in the Galapagos Islands increased in size by 5 percent
after a drought, assumedly because the beak Structures were strengthened by
having to crack hard seeds. This small finding was regaled in a 1999 booklet by
the United States National Academy Of Sciences as providing "a particularly
compelling example" of the origin of the species. Given that the change in size
occurred in a single year, the publication projected that "if droughts occur about
once every 10 years on the islands, a new species of finch might arise in only
about 200 years. "21
What the booklet did not report, however, was that the beaks returned to
pre-drought size after the rains came. "No net evolution occurred. "
Harvard biologist Louis Guenin was irate, believing that this suppression of
evidence verges on scientific misconduct. Using the metaphor of the securities
industry, Guenin stated in a 1999 issue of Nature that were a stockbroker to
highlight a stock moving up 5 percent in a given year without telling the unsus-
pecting investor that that same stock dropped 5 percent the following year, he
could well be charged with fraud.
Other students of evolution have detected a centuries-old bias in the form of
an intellectually rigged system. "Science, real science ... has been co-opted by an
ancient philosophical/religious doctrine the origins of which can be traced back
to at least 400—700 years before Christ. "24 These efforts to suppress "strong neg-
ative evidence ... are in gross violation of the scientific attitude," says Finley.2S
Darwin was unbending on the critical matter of the origin of the human
race in The Descent of Man. "My object is to show that there is no fundamental
difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties," he
wrote.26 He extended this parallelism to religion, using a dog as an example. That
a dog tends to imagine some hidden dimension to items moved by the wind
was, to Darwin, similar to "the belief in the existence of one or more gods."27
Darwin's theory, however, lacked a missing link between humans and ani-
mals. Then in 1912, Charles Dawson uncovered what appeared to be the miss-
ing link—part Of a human skull and part of the lower jaw of an ape—in a gravel
pit in Piltdown, England. It wasn't until the 1950s that a group of scientists
determined that "the jaw had been chemically treated to make it look like a fos-
sil, and its teeth had been deliberately filed down to make them look human.
Piltdown Man was a forgery. "
Modern texts rarely mention this fraud. If anything, Darwinians use the
forged finding as illustrative of the self-correcting nature of science. This cor-
rection, however, took four decades.
In decrying the politics of naturalism, Wells reviewed ten popular high
school biology textbooks, eight by established publishers. Similar to the Amer
ican Association for the Advancement of Science, he evaluated them on an
scale. An A signified that a "book had full disclosure of the truth, discussion of
relevant scientific controversies, and a recognition that Darwin's theories—like
all scientific theories—might have to be revised or discarded if it doesn't fit the
facts." An F "indicates the textbook uncritically relies on logical fallacy, dog-
matically treats a theory as an unquestionable fact, or blatantly misrepresents
published scientific evidence." Among the ten textbooks in question, none
received an A, B, or C. One rated a D+, and two a D -. The remaining eight were
accorded F's.
The cooked evidence is "good propaganda," Bethell points out. "So they
remain in the textbooks, even though no reputable scientists would stand behind
them, and our children are caught misinformation in the name of a 'higher truth,'
because ... as every educated person knows, evolution must be true."

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Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Swenet:
I love this interview. And I love how this man (Fodor) kept steering and refocusing the conversation back to his bottom line. As you can see even in this thread, these conversations keep getting trolled and derailed because people are trying to distract from the bottom line every chance they get. Even when you tell them to stop distracting from your point, they still do it. You tell them ten times in a row to stop, they still do it in their next post. That tells you about the trolling and manipulation you're up against when you talk about this in public.

No diss to Suzan. She was just trying to do her job as a journalist and get the information out while the establishment was dragging her name through the mud for drawing attention to growing dissent towards natural selection as the answer to all evolution. So respect to her, too, for bringing attention to this. But I respect Fodor for not allowing himself to get distracted from his bottom line. Fodor understood how you debate these academic trolls and how you deny them ground to troll you. Under no circumstance do you allow anyone to distract you from your bottom line.

Jerry Fodor Held High Ground to Evolution’s Militant Fundamentalists
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jerry-fodor-held-high-ground-to-evolutions-militant_us_5a3ec86ae4b0d86c803c722f

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Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by sam p:
They also don't see that it is consciousness which confers the ability to survive and not "fitness".

There is no outside intelligence or force in change in species. It largely random and driven by behavior.

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Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by the lioness,:

quote:

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Originally posted by sam p:
They also don't see that it is consciousness which confers the ability to survive and not "fitness".

There is no outside intelligence or force in change in species. It largely random and driven by behavior.

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So species can transform from one to the other but it's internally driven by the consciousness of animals, their behavior.

Not an outside consciousness or force
an inside one

Swenet that's an interesting concept.

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Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Sam P:
Fodor seems to give "Evolutionists" a lot more credit than I do. Darwin was simply wrong and biologists hang on like a Pavlov's dog with a bone.

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I agree. There is also the problem that Darwin seemingly lied and watered down his materialist beliefs publicly. It seems like he walked his beliefs back depending on who he was talking to. There is a discrepancy between his private notes and his correspondences and autobiography. I say that to say this. In the article there seem to be suggestions of Darwin not really being a Darwinist. But this seems to ignore that in his day, materialists weren't free to fully express themselves publicly (e.g. Darwin's wife was deeply religious). Based on this it seems shaky to give Darwin credit for not being as hardcore materialist as some of his modern followers. He might have just done that to soften the 'blow' of his theory. But some are trying to make it seem like this proves that Darwin was 'ahead of the curve'. That Darwin has been distorted by his followers and that you can somehow find Darwin's "true beliefs" by reading Darwin deeply That seems like a very devotionalist and religious thing to say. I hope that is not what Lewontin meant.

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They don't see the cause of change in species even when it's right before them. They also don't see that it is consciousness which confers the ability to survive and not "fitness".

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Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

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University of Missouri—educated biologist and physician Dr Carl
Werner and his science graduate wife, Debbie, have completed a huge
project of photographing fossil specimens in museums and comparing
them with photographs of modern-day animals. Their work has been
published as two 260-page illustrated works complete with high-quality
color photographs under the titles Evolution: the Grand Experiment, Volume
1, and Living Fossils — Evolution: The Grand Experiment, Volume 2. The
latter work provides prima-facie photographic evidence that, like the coel-
acanths, the fossil specimens of organisms that have survived through to
the present time are essentially unchanged — hence the title Living Fossils.
Their examples, photographs of fossils and museum displays of creatures
and plants found in the same strata as the dinosaurs, are presented along-
sidc photographs of their currently living counterparts and include brittle
stars, sea urchins, sea biscuits, starfish, sea cucumbers, crinoids, feather stars,
shrimp, lobsters, crayfish, crabs, horseshoe crabs, termite nests, dragon-
flies, katydids, water skaters, waterbugs, woodwasps, beetles, scorpionflies,
mayflies, crickets, cockroaches, scallops, clams, mussels, cockscomb oysters,
snails, nautiloids, elephant tusk shells, lamp shells, sea cradles, earthworms,
tube worms, sponges, corals, sturgeon fish, coelacanths, lungfish, garfish,
bowfin fish, eels, herring, orange roughy, angel sharks, rays, hagfish, sala-
manders, alligators, crocodiles, boa constrictor snakes, lizards, turtles, avocet
(a modern-day type bird found fossilized with a Tyrannosaurus rex and a
Triceratops dinosaur at Hell Creek, Montana), various mammals, Sequoia
seed cones, Cook pine cones, redwood branches, cycads, maidenhair tree
(ginkgo), ferns, horsetails, mosses, rhododendrons, lilies, sassafras, poplars,
and other trees and plants
The examples that Carl and Debbie Werner have collected arc not
exhaustive but rather serve to show that there are many examples of ani-
mals and plants that we know lived at the same time as the dinosaurs existed,
where the surviving species look the same as the fossils. That is, they show
no evolution. Dr. Werner also reports that between 100 million and 200
million fossils have been collected and are in museums worldwide. During
the course of his research and filming of the Evolution: The Great Experi-
ment video series, he has met with and interviewed many museum curators
and discussed the fossil evidence, much of which is not on display but in
museum storerooms. For example, many readers may not be aware of the
large number of mammal species found with dinosaurs. Paleontologists
have found more than 430 mammal species in the dinosaur fossil layers,
which show that these animals coexisted with the dinosaurs. However,
Dr. Werner reports that he did not see a single complete mammal skeleton
from the dinosaur layers on display in any of the 60 museums he visited.
He also reports that the dinosaur rock layers provided representative fossil
examples of all the major animal phyla living today, including birds, which
are supposed to have evolved from the dinosaurs. They also provide fos-
sils from every major plant division living today. From his comprehensive
study of the fossils in museums, compared with living plants and animals, he
concludes that the fossil record does not provide the evidence that evo-
lution has occurred.

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I have discussed how the textbooks assert that the fossils provide direct
evidence for evolution and that popular science writers like Richard Dawkins
claim that there is abundant evidence from the fossils for evolution. But
when we examine the actual evidence, we discover that the fossil evidence
for evolution is seriously lacking. This lack of evidence has been recognized
by paleontologists for some time. For example, the authoritative Harvard
University paleontologist Professor Stephen J. Gould conceded that there
was an absence of fossil evidence for the intermediary stages required for
the major evolutionary transitions. He also admitted the uselessness of any-
thing short of completion in every stage of evolutionary development by
asking, ' 'Of what possible use to a reptile is 2 percent of a wing. Other
shortcomings in the fossil evidence have been pointed out by the eminent
Ilarvard University—educated paleontologist Barbara J Stahl.
I have discussed how Dr. David M. Raup, curator of geology at the
Field Museum of Natural Ilistory in Chicago and past president of the
Palaeontological Society, points out that geologists do nor actually find evi-
dence for evolution in the fossil record. Dr. Ariel A. Roth, who served as
the editor for the journal Origins for more than 20 years, writes in the con-
clusion of his extensively footnoted 380-page book on the evidence for our
origins, "It surprises me that the concept of evolution persists in view of
the paucity of firm evidence to support it."'
This knowledge of the major shortcomings of the so-called evidence
for evolution is not being taught to biology students nor made widely
known to the general public. In fact, the standard reference textbooks for
biology and evolution continue to omit any in-depth discussion of these
major objections to the theory. Ilarvard University professor Stephen J.
Gould also points out that the evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks
are based mainly on inference, not on the evidence of fossils"

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Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Swenet:
Doug, if you have to ask me to name Darwinists, you obviously didn't watch the lecture. Why lie? You have not watched the lecture and all your posts show it.

And you post articles that answer questions you've been asking over several thread pages. You obviously don't even read your own articles. Here it is, from your own article:

quote:

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Perhaps surprisingly, Lewis makes this same point when talking about evolution:

quote:

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We must sharply distinguish between Evolution as a biological theorem and popular Evolutionism or Developmentalism which is certainly a Myth. [...] To the biologist Evolution […] covers more of the facts than any other hypothesis at present on the market and is therefore to be accepted unless, or until, some new supposal can be shown to cover still more facts with even fewer assumptions. […] It makes no cosmic statements, no metaphysical statements, no eschatological statements.[2]

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The real danger is not evolutionary theory, then, but Evolutionism—the all-encompassing worldview. Lewis was right to want to put Evolutionism to rest once and for all. (This is certainly a goal BioLogos shares with the ID movement, even as we disagree about the science of evolution.)

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While the word Darwinism is not used in this quote, it does talk about popular evolutionism. This is the same thing I've been talking about. Doug posts this article, then keeps asking me to substantiate the distinction, even though it's in is his article.

The problem with you, Doug, is that you are simply clueless about ongoing conversations and debates, which extends even to the articles you post. You are also in denial and indoctrinated, criticizing what you call "rationalism" not realizing you're knee-deep in it yourself. It shows in your line of questioning and inability to comprehend my arguments. It shows in your posting of articles that say the same thing you see wrong in my posts. It is not my responsibility to inform you about the ongoing conversations that are taking place and how the disagreements are structured. When I post, my audience is people who intend to research and verify/falsify or people who have already done research and who can hold an intelligent debate without getting confused over widely used words.

Stop wasting my time and your own time. You're obviously not going to read/comprehend anything (not even your own sources), so what is the point in asking me to substantiate something?

=============

I also reject all claims attributed to me in this thread from now on unless there is a quote showing I said it. If people are attributing something to me and it sounds absurd and there is no quote, it's deliberate. They're lying.

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This research will bring little cheer to contemporary creationists who, following a long and storied tradition, misuse the Cambrian explosion to attack evolution. Their most common line is that the leap of evolution during the Cambrian involved too many changes too quickly, that the Cambrian therefore represents a gap in the fossil record best filled by a supernatural explanation. For example, Henry Morris, the founder of the Institute for Creation Research, wrote in his 1974 book Scientific Creationism:

There is obviously a tremendous gap between one-celled microorganisms and the high complexity and variety of the many invertebrate phyla of the Cambrian. If the former evolved into the latter, it seems impossible that no transitional forms between any of them would ever be preserved or found. A much more likely explanation for these gaps is that they represent permanent gaps between created kinds. Each organism has its own structure, specifically designed for its own purpose, not accidentally evolved by random processes.

Following a string of legal defeats for the openly religious brand of creationism espoused by Morris, creationists used this concept of “specifically designed” organisms as a component of intelligent design creationism (IDC). IDC became a safe front for creationists to espouse scientific terminology while repeating religiously-motivated attacks on evolution.

Creationist rhetoric has changed, but their indignation toward the Cambrian explosion is the same. Phillip Johnson, one of the founders of IDC, wrote in his 1991 book Darwin on Trial:

The single greatest problem which the fossil record poses for Darwinism is the ‘Cambrian Explosion’ of around 600 million years ago. Nearly all the animal phyla appear in the rocks of this period, without a trace of the evolutionary ancestors that Darwinists require.

Morris and Johnson are both wrong about the science, of course, but that hasn’t stopped their flimsy claims from being endlessly reiterated.

Why are creationists so obsessed with this aspect of paleontology, and not, say, the fascinating fossil record of sloths? What special appeal does the Cambrian explosion have for them?

In the “sudden appearance” of organisms during the geologically brief Cambrian explosion, creationists imagine tangible evidence for the supernatural creation of animal “kinds.” To their eyes, these rocks record the moment of creation when Yahweh declared: “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds.” They point to Precambrian rocks with their lack of fossilized hard parts, then point to Cambrian layers with their copious fossils and say, “See! Right there: creation.” The story is not so simple, of course; we now know a lot more about life in the period before the Cambrian. The ancient lineages that eventually diversified extend far back in time, a long fuse leading to the eventual explosion.

While the rapid evolution during the Cambrian is described as geologically brief, it is important to define what that means. On human timescales, the shortest estimation for the length of the Cambrian explosion, about 10 million years, is incomprehensibly long. Moreover, the tiny Cambrian arthropods likely had much faster maturations and much shorter lifespans than humans. Our anthropocentric perception of the flow of time, in which a family might have only three or four generations per century, is very different from the number of generations Cambrian critters produced. Ten million years provides plentiful time, as Lee et al. showed. Yet creationists insist that there was not enough time for such biological complexity to arise, without ever defining why that time frame is insufficient.

Creationists will no doubt continue to pontificate about the Cambrian explosion. They create among their followers the illusion that they are remedying some deficiency in science, when in fact they contribute nothing to scientific discourse or peer-reviewed research. When actual scientific research, such as Lee et al., contradicts their unique interpretations, this gives them no pause. Their Cambrian dilemma is not about rates of evolution, but about how to hijack real science in the service of dogma.

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Posts: 8895 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Swenet:
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A Darwinist could say that behaviour as a driver of evolution is compatible with Darwinism as it (behaviour) is still determined at a deeper level by selective adaptation. So they could say the order of control you subscribe to, which is (correct me if I'm wrong):

consciousness → behaviour

They could say this picture is controlled at a still deeper level by selective adaptation:

selective adaptation → consciousness → behaviour

Thoughts?

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Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by sam p:
At the risk of sounding like a Darwinist here; yes.

Behavior is largely controlled through consciousness by the genes. But the specific genes in an individual are largely determined by chance and the behavior and consciousness of his ancestors. Diversity in the gene pool is largely the result of localized population bottlenecks which are the result of behavior, chance, and consciousness. When a local population changes it will still usually be able to interbreed with others of the parent species and their genes will be added to the gene pool.

All animals are fit and adaptive or they wouldn't reproduce. Of course this doesn't apply to humans to the same degree it once did.

Behavior is individual and based on individual consciousness. It is not pre-determined in any way. A bird has as much choice in its route as a human. But just like a human considerations about the best food source and access to water and amenities will affect the specific choice. If you like cherries then you naturally drive past the cherry stand. But your taste for cherries is innate and largely driven by genes.

Behavior is driven by consciousness expressed as free will with genes at its roots. [/qb]

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Epigenetics May Become "Evolution Heresy"

Neo-Darwinism relies on mutation and selection, but selection of what? Epigenetics is confusing the target of selection, raising fears of neo-Lamarckism.

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In Lamarck’s view, the evolution of life depends on variation and the accumulation of small, gradual changes. These are also at the center of Darwin’s theory of evolution, yet Darwin wrote that Lamarck’s ideas were “veritable rubbish.” Darwinian evolution is driven by genetic variation combined with natural selection—the process whereby some variations give their bearers better reproductive success in a given environment than other organisms have. Lamarckian evolution, on the other hand, depends on the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Giraffes, for example, got their long necks by stretching to eat leaves from tall trees, and stretched necks were inherited by their offspring, though Lamarck did not explain how this might be possible.

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What is the significance of these findings? Until the mid-1970s, no one suspected that the way in which the DNA was “read” could be altered by environmental factors, or that the nervous systems of people who grew up in stress-free environments would develop differently from those of people who did not. One’s development, it was thought, was guided only by one’s genetic makeup. As a result of epigenesis, a child deprived of nourishment may continue to crave and consume large amounts of food as an adult, even when he or she is being properly nourished, leading to obesity and diabetes. A child who loses a parent or is neglected or abused may have a genetic basis for experiencing anxiety and depression and possibly schizophrenia. Formerly, ]it had been widely believed that Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms—variation and natural selection—were the only means for introducing such long-lasting changes in brain function, a process that took place over generations. We now know that epigenetic mechanisms can do so as well, within the lifetime of a single person

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Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Swenet:
You keep changing your arguments to artificially justify your reason to keep coming back in a thread where your arguments are either irrelevant, off topic or strawman attacks. You're just like lioness in this regard. No wonder she keeps trying to cheerlead you. There is no reason for either of you to be in this thread. You're just conversational shadowboxing and adding to confusion.

I summarized my points several times. You are clearly incapable of having an on topic debate. Your first couple of posts are on topic, then it's all downhill from there with your replies being all over the place, misrepresenting what people are saying. You don't even know what this conversation is about. Look here at an example of how derailed you are:

You keep making the point that these people in "mainstream" science are blind followers of Darwin.
--Doug M

I never said that mainstream scientists are blind followers of Darwin I said that mainstream science operates in the Newtonian worldview. There is a minority of non-Darwinian evolutionist thought in mainstream science, but they're still operating in the Newtonian worldview and therefore not worth differentiating in terms of worldview. I just posted an example of such non-Darwinian evolutionist thought when I posted Suzan's interview with Fodor. You're definitely trolling at this point, trying to justify posting here after stumbling over basic terms. You embarrassed yourself back there, just cut your losses and keep it moving. Don't try keep coming back with some new non sense as if you've been arguing it all along. No Doug. You're super see-through at this point. Every reply is just a desperate attempt to justify your presence in a debate no one is having.

Just cut your losses and go talk about the dangers of the word Nubia. This conversation is not for you.

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Vertebrates evolved in the Cambrian Period before 520 million years ago, but we do not know when or how consciousness arose in the history of the vertebrate brain. Here we propose multiple levels of isomorphic or somatotopic neural representations as an objective marker for sensory consciousness. All extant vertebrates have these, so we deduce that consciousness extends back to the group's origin. The first conscious sense may have been vision. Then vision, coupled with additional sensory systems derived from ectodermal placodes and neural crest, transformed primitive reflexive systems into image forming brains that map and perceive the external world and the body's interior. We posit that the minimum requirement for sensory consciousness and qualia is a brain including a forebrain (but not necessarily a developed cerebral cortex/pallium), midbrain, and hindbrain. This brain must also have (1) hierarchical systems of intercommunicating, isomorphically organized, processing nuclei that extensively integrate the different senses into representations that emerge in upper levels of the neural hierarchy; and (2) a widespread reticular formation that integrates the sensory inputs and contributes to attention, awareness, and neural synchronization. We propose a two-step evolutionary history, in which the optic tectum was the original center of multi-sensory conscious perception (as in fish and amphibians: step 1), followed by a gradual shift of this center to the dorsal pallium or its cerebral cortex (in mammals, reptiles, birds: step 2). We address objections to the hypothesis and call for more studies of fish and amphibians. In our view, the lamprey has all the neural requisites and is likely the simplest extant vertebrate with sensory consciousness and qualia. Genes that pattern the proposed elements of consciousness (isomorphism, neural crest, placodes) have been identified in all vertebrates. Thus, consciousness is in the genes, some of which are already known.

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Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental aspects and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to this doctrine the material creates and determines consciousness, not vice versa. Materialists consider that Matter and the physical laws that govern it constitute the most reliable guide to the nature of mind and consciousness.

Materialism contradicts with Idealism which considers mind and consciousness are first-order realities to which matter is subject and secondary. In philosophical materialism the converse is true: mind and consciousness are by-products or epiphenomena of material processes (the biochemistry of the human brain and nervous system, for example) without which they cannot exist.

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Posts: 8895 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Doug M:
OK. Replace Newton with Darwin. Its the same point. But of course you will claim that Quantum Science is not mainstream science.... Right.

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Originally posted by Swenet:

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The Copenhagen interpretation was recently summarized as “Shut up and calculate!” That’s blunt, but not completely unfair. It is, in fact, the right injunction for most physicists most of the time. The Copenhagen interpretation is the best way to deal with quantum mechanics for all practical purposes. It assures us that in our labs or at our desks we can use quantum mechanics without needless worrying about what’s really going on. Copenhagen shows us that quantum mechanics is a fully consistent theory and sufficient as a guide to the physical phenomena around us. Good!

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So until you can show men how science trying to understand the genesis of single cell organisms is "newtonian", your point makes no sense. Quantum theory is not going to explain how single cell organisms came to be or how the animal phyla were created. Calling basic science in evolution, including genetics, "newtonian" is just a strawman. There is no such thing as 'newtonian' genetics. Or "newtonian" biology. That is simply absurd.

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Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Swenet:
[QUOTE]Thanks for clarifying. The priority you give to behaviour sounds like you have epigenetics as important in evolution. Which I agree with.

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Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Swenet:
And notice how Doug and lioness keep colluding by using the same dumb arguments. Doug tries to act like he's ignoring her, but whenever lioness makes a super dumb argument, Doug says something similar. smh. Doug thinks people don't see how his arguments keep changing after people post things. At the beginning and end of a thread, Doug's positions have changed many times, but he never acknowledges it.

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Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by sam p:

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Originally posted by Swenet:
[QUOTE]Thanks for clarifying. The priority you give to behaviour sounds like you have epigenetics as important in evolution. Which I agree with.

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Yes, I do believe that epigenetics is real and important in species change.

But behavior has a very direct role in major changes because it is often the primary determining factor in whether an individual survives a population bottleneck. Most species change appears to occur when a large percentage of a population is killed. This can be random but very frequently some specific behavior will be shared either by the survivors or those which died.

There are several major causes but Darwinian Evolution is probably the least important in almost all changes. Bottlenecks, mutation, epigenetics, and mate selection are more important and consciousness is an important factor in all of these. Indeed, consciousness will also aid individuals when it is only a matter of speed, strength, or stamina.

Any theory of species change that doesn't account for the primary way by which an individual survives can't reflect reality. Darwinism doesn't even have a cart before the horse and wants us all to jump on.

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Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Doug M:
So until you can show men how science trying to understand the genesis of single cell organisms is "newtonian", your point makes no sense. Quantum theory is not going to explain how single cell organisms came to be or how the animal phyla were created. Calling basic science in evolution, including genetics, "newtonian" is just a strawman. There is no such thing as 'newtonian' genetics. Or "newtonian" biology. That is simply absurd.

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Posts: 8785 | From: Discovery Channel's Mythbusters | Registered: Dec 2009  |  IP: Logged | 

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Do simple creatures evolve into more complex ones? [/QB]

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Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by sam p:

An oak tree has surprisingly similar DNA to a man which implies not only that life is exceedingly old

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Posts: 42930 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010  |  IP: Logged | 

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Originally posted by Swenet:

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Originally posted by Doug M:
So until you can show men how science trying to understand the genesis of single cell organisms is "newtonian", your point makes no sense. Quantum theory is not going to explain how single cell organisms came to be or how the animal phyla were created. Calling basic science in evolution, including genetics, "newtonian" is just a strawman. There is no such thing as 'newtonian' genetics. Or "newtonian" biology. That is simply absurd.

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I'm glad you finally came out the closet and said this. I now have it on record. Look at how Doug has a habit of blatantly going against facts that are simply not debatable.

What do science writers have to say about Doug's opinionated denial?

So for now we will just summarize by
noting how Darwin's approach nicely illustrates how much of an influence
Newton's science, and the relatively new Newtonian worldview, was having on
other branches Of science. Newton's approach — of looking for precisely specifiable
laws governing the behavior of whatever it was the particular science was investi-
gating — had come to be seen as the proper way to do science.
This is again a very brief sketch of these developments, but it illustrates the
sorts of major advances that were made in biology in the period from roughly
1700 to 1900. And, importantly, these examples illustrate how biological phe-
nomena came to be viewed, at bottom, as no different from nonbiological
phenomena. Although there were still a few defenders Of vitalism even into
the early 1900s, by this time it was pretty clear that the mechanist view was
correct.

Notice how this science writer claims in the last sentence that mainstream science collectively agreed that the Newtonian view was correct. But somehow Doug is coming to their defense to deny something they're admitting freely. I mean, how much of a clueless ideologue can you possibly be? Doug is trying to defend people who proudly admit my description of them is accurate.

Only on Egyptsearch.

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Posts: 8895 | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged |