I believe if you probe both Provine and MacNeill, they will both agree with much of what I say. They recognize that evolution is a two faceted theory and only one really counts in the debate.

Natural selection is very most important in the facet that doesn’t count in the evolution debate but which is important for life on the planet. The natural selection process if given enough time will dig out of a gene pool, variations that are better than the current set of alleles when an environment changes.

As I said, very important for life but meaningless in the evolution debate. The facet that counts, macro evolution, is not effected by natural selection alone because the new capability is not present in the current gene pool and no process known including natural selection can dig it out or cause it to come into existence. Darwin once thought all the capabilities were present within the organism and could be teased out by natural selection over time. This was based on his experience with artificial selection. Obviously not true but to the uninformed it makes a great argument.

What is important for macro evolution is new variation and not just any old new variation but massive new variation that causes new systems to arise. That is why Allen MacNeill emphasized his 47 varieties of it. Because without the massive additions to the gene pool, macro evolution is not reachable. That is why many here emphasize that it is variation that is key to the evolution debate and natural selection is not an important factor. So when Provine says that ns is not important for evolution, I will bet he means macro evolution. This is also what the Edge of Evolution is about.

It doesn’t say that natural selection will not be involved but if ns has no new variation to work on, there will be no macro evolution and if ns does not work then the new variation will wither away. So for the general theory of Darwin, variation is king but ns must still be there. For the special theory of Darwin, ns is king and new variation is unimportant. But the changes are small and not important for the evolution debate.

Nevertheless, the special theory is important for life on the planet because it allows the millions of variants to thrive. Otherwise when you look out the window, it would be a very sterile world.

If you read the comment that prompted my response, you will discover that the purpose of my post was to exonerate you from the charge of saying that natural selection can “design anything.”

The only other point I have made on this thread is to acknowledge that Joseph is right about a point of his own: Provine and MacNeil believe that natural selection has no causal power, and you believe that it does. It’s a perfectly legitimate disagreement and there are plenty of people who will argue either way. That’s one of the things that is so entertaining about evolutionary theory–its fluidity.

The passage you quoted is not quite correct. The author admits that natural selection is a process (or whatever it is) that produces changes. However, there is no certainty that all will return to the original state or initial gene pool. In the process of adapting, the gene pool might lose valuable information and may not have the ability to return.

Natural selection tends to cull out alleles from a gene pool and as such the new population will not have the capability to return to where it was before unless another population exists that has the missing information. Then it could return through gene flow. Also if a sub population gets separated then this population the it may not have the ability to produce the original gene pool.

This continual loss of information through natural selection may eventually produce a population(s) that some day does not have the ability to cope with a new environment and the species may then go extinct.

It is not natural selection that is the great design. It is just one of the parts or one of the sub processes of the great design. Now watch everyone jump on me because I described it as a part.

Micro evolution is the great design and consists of many things including the physical structure of the cell, all the cellular processes for duplication and validation, variation generation within the genome, sexual reproduction and recombination, genetics in all its forms (which includes natural selection), epigenetics and whatever else affects the structure of the gamete and the morphology of the offspring. There are probably a lot of other processes.

All of these things let organisms adapt to changing environments whether it is the next island, the next ice ace, the next drought, a new predator etc. The end result is often a new variant that is better adapted to the environment. Over time this new variant may not be able to reproduce with the original species if it is still around.

Sometimes I do not use the precise word to express exactly what I mean so there may be some confusion in what I am trying to say.

—-Joseph: “Natural selection is a result, not a mechanism. It doesn’t design anything.”

Here, I think Jerry is simply saying that natural selection is a mechanism that has been designed to do what it does.

I wouldn’t think so, which is why I characterized the two points of view the way I did. It should be obvious that if a thing merely describes a series of events, then it cannot be the cause of those events.

“Shut up”, they explained.

A result can/ may be part of a process but that does not make the result a process in and of itself.

Now if you want to argue that natural selection does not exist (not just improperly defined) then we can agree to disagree.

The following is right in line with my way of looking at NS (see comment 19):

Natural Selection, which indeed occurs in nature (as Bishop Wilberforce, too, was perfectly aware), mainly has the effect of maintaining equilibrium and stability. It eliminates all those that dare depart from the type—the eccentrics and the adventurers and the marginal sort. It is ever adjusting populations, but it does so in each case by bringing them back to the norm. We read in the textbooks that, when environmental conditions change, the selection process may produce a shift in a population’s mean values, by a process known as adaptation. If the climate turns very cold, the cold-adapted beings are favored relative to others.; if it becomes windy, the wind blows away those that are most exposed; if an illness breaks out, those in questionable health will be lost. But all these artful guiles serve their purpose only until the clouds blow away. The species, in fact, is an organic entity, a typical form, which may deviate only to return to the furrow of its destiny; it may wander from the band only to find its proper place by returning to the gang.

Also I don’t care what any explanation leads to. All I am interested in is the reality behind our existence. There is only one…

you said

“If you do not understand that a result is not a process then we can just agree to disagree.”

What makes you think I don’t know the difference.

And by the way it is possible that a result could be a process. You could have initial processes, intermediate processes and final processes and anything after the first could be a result or the whole thing could be just one big process. Take your pick as to the best semantic explanation.

Now if you want to argue that natural selection does not exist (not just improperly defined) then we can agree to disagree. To me it is a no brainer even though there has been much misunderstanding about what it is exactly. All I know is that population allele frequencies change over time and they often do so as a result of environment changes and the outcomes are not random in the sense that any frequency is just as likely as another.

And the modern view would substitute genomic elements for alleles but nothing has really changed. Somehow one has to explain the millions of species/variants that exist in the world and resort to some design event for each will get ID nowhere except confirmation that ID is really creationism in disguise, just not necessarily the 7 day variety.

If you do not understand that a result is not a process then we can just agree to disagree.

To StephenB,

Can NS be a cause if it is a result?

From “The Deniable Darwin” by David Berlinski:

CHANCE ALONE,” the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Jacques Monod once wrote, “is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, is at the very root of the stupendous edifice of creation.”

The sentiment expressed by these words has come to vex evolutionary biologists. “This belief,” Richard Dawkins writes, “that Darwinian evolution is ‘random,’ is not merely false. It is the exact opposite of the truth.” But Monod is right and Dawkins wrong. Chance lies at the beating heart of evolutionary theory, just as it lies at the beating heart of thermodynamics.

It is the second law of thermodynamics that holds dominion over the temporal organization of the universe, and what the law has to say we find verified by ordinary experience at every turn. Things fall apart. Energy, like talent, tends to squander itself. Liquids go from hot to lukewarm. And so does love. Disorder and despair overwhelm the human enterprise, filling our rooms and our lives with clutter. Decay is unyielding. Things go from bad to worse. And overall, they go only from bad to worse.

These grim certainties the second law abbreviates in the solemn and awful declaration that the entropy of the universe is tending toward a maximum. The final state in which entropy is maximized is simply more likely than any other state. The disintegration of my face reflects nothing more compelling than the odds. Sheer dumb luck.

But if things fall apart, they also come together. Life appears to offer at least a temporary rebuke to the second law of thermodynamics. Although biologists are unanimous in arguing that evolution has no goal, fixed from the first, it remains true nonetheless that living creatures have organized themselves into ever more elaborate and flexible structures. If their complexity is increasing, the entropy that surrounds them is decreasing. Whatever the universe-as-a-whole may be doing–time fusing incomprehensibly with space, the great stars exploding indignantly–biologically things have gone from bad to better, the show organized, or so it would seem, as a counterexample to the prevailing winds of fate.

How so? The question has historically been the pivot on which the assumption of religious belief has turned. How so? “God said: ‘Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.”‘ That is how so. And who on the basis of experience would be inclined to disagree? The structures of life are complex, and complex structures get made in this, the purely human world, only by a process of deliberate design. An act of intelligence is required to bring even a thimble into being; why should the artifacts of life be different?

Darwin’s theory of evolution rejects this counsel of experience and intuition. Instead, the theory forges, at least in spirit, a perverse connection with the second law itself, arguing that precisely the same force that explains one turn of the cosmic wheel explains another: sheer dumb luck.

If the universe is for reasons of sheer dumb luck committed ultimately to a state of cosmic listlessness, it is also by sheer dumb luck that life first emerged on earth, the chemicals in the pre-biotic seas or soup illuminated and then invigorated by a fateful flash of lightning. It is again by sheer dumb luck that the first self-reproducing systems were created. The dense and ropy chains of RNA–they were created by sheer dumb luck, and sheer dumb luck drove the primitive chemicals of life to form a living cell. It is sheer dumb luck that alters the genetic message so that, from infernal nonsense, meaning for a moment emerges; and sheer dumb luck again that endows life with its opportunities, the space of possibilities over which natural selection plays, sheer dumb luck creating the mammalian eye and the marsupial pouch, sheer dumb luck again endowing the elephant’s sensitive nose with nerves and the orchid’s translucent petal with blush.

Amazing. Sheer dumb luck.

And again I am talking about the evolutionary scenario.