Commenter Apparently Believes that Only Part of Darwinian Evolution is “blind/mindless/unguided.” Maybe, if We Ask Nice, He Will Enlighten Us Poor Benighted ID Slobs About Which Part is “Seeing, Mindful and Guided.”

_{Barry Arrington

January 7, 2014

Intelligent Design}

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In the comment section to a prior post commenters “Joe” and “AVS” are having a tussle over whether Darwinian evolution is blind, mindless and unguided. It is fascinating and instructive. Let’s see.

First, Joe asked: “How does one test anything wrt unguided evolution?”

To which AVS responded: “The fact that you call it “unguided evolution” tells me everything I need to know about you. One of those things is that trying to talk to you about science would be like trying to talk to a wall.”

This is an interesting response, because some of the leading Darwinists in the world have noted that evolution is a blind unguided process. One would have thought that the proposition that Darwinian evolution is unguided was uncontroversial, and Joe responded as by posting the following quotes:

Natural selection is the simple result of variation, differential reproduction, and heredity—it is mindless and mechanistic. UCBerkley

Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view. Dawkins in “The Blind Watchmaker”?

AVS responds with the inevitable “quote mining” accusation when Darwinists are quoted to support a proposition: “SO you mash two quotes up from two unrelated people and repeat them completely out of context?”

Joe asks: “How are the quotes out of context?”

AVS responds to my question about why he believes Joe took the quotes out of context:

I’m saying that evolution has both random, or blind/mindless/unguided processes as Joe here likes to call them, as well as having non-random processes. You need both parts,and it’s the second part that you and your friends here like to ignore apparently. Maybe you can explain to Joe why he’s so clueless.

In summary:

1. Joe says that Darwinian evolution is blind, mindless and unguided, and he quotes, among others, Dawkins, to back that up.

2. AVS says Joe does not know what he is talking about and that he mined the Dawkins quote.

3. When asked to demonstrate how the Dawkins quote has been taken out of context, AVS says that evolution is part random and part non-random.

Let’s evaluate AVS’s argument, such as it is:

He asserts that Darwinian evolution has a “random” component and a “non-random” component, and that is true enough. The random component is the random changes that occur in the genome through, for example, random genetic mutations. The non-random part is, of course, natural selection, which takes the random changes in the genome and “selects” for those that increase fitness.

Here’s where AVS falls overboard. He characterizes only the “random” component of Darwinian evolution as “blind, mindless and unguided.” Apparently, he believes that the non-random component (i.e., natural selection) is not “blind, mindless and unguided.”

But that is just Joe’s point. BOTH parts of the Darwinian evolution equation are blind, mindless and unguided. That is Dawkins’ point as well when he says that even natural selection (the non-random part AVS) is blind. By blind, mindless and unguided, Joe (and Dawkins) mean that Darwinian evolution does not have foresight. It cannot plan for distant goals. It has no purpose. They do not mean that it is entirely random.

To the extent that AVS denies that any part of Darwinian evolution is blind, mindless and unguided, he must mean that some part of it is seeing, mindful and guided. But that is obviously false. AVS has mistakenly equated “non-random” with “not blind, mindless and unguided.”

In summary, therefore, AVS owes Joe an apology on two counts: (1) for falsely accusing him of taking the quotes out of context; and (2) for ridiculing him when he himself is the one who is obviously wrong.

The irony, of course, is that even in his obvious error AVS plays the typical blustering Darwinist – serenely confident in his own intelligence and rectitude even when he is glaringly wrong. I will leave you with this: AVS compares his knowledge to Joe’s and says he, AVS, is the “person who has forgotten more biology” than Joe will ever know. Pathetic? Laughable? Both? I will let the readers decide.

Comments

Alan Fox sez (about my comment 155):
Great to see he is learning new facts. I wonder where he got this snippet?
So what I learned 50 years ago = I am learning new facts? Is Alan really that much of a bloviating arse? BTW I got the snippet from my memory...Joe_{January 14, 2014
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NetResearchGuy: Excellent points, and well said. ----- We might add that it is also the case that the GA's and trial-and-error design approaches are often carefully designed to lead toward a specific goal, with rather tight constraints set on possible outcomes. In the antenna example, in particular, that was very much the case.Eric Anderson_{January 12, 2014
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seventrees @162: That is an excellent question. And one that, despite protests to the contrary by true believers in the evolutionary storyline, has not been properly answered. The answer that will be offered is that organisms evolve to fill available niches, or some such proposition. However, a moment's reflection for the individual of even average intelligence will be sufficient to realize that there are many available niches that have not been filled. Why are some filled and others not? No answer is forthcoming. Furthermore, as you note, it is very difficult to argue with a straight face that, say, humans, are more fit than bacteria. If the lauded goals of evolution, fitness and reproduction, are the 'be-all-and-end-all' -- if the laughable idea of "selfish genes" is really the sum of life, then why would life move in a relatively constant march toward more complexity, toward less fitness in many cases, or toward expenditure of precious resources on everything from sexual reproduction, to brains that can write the words of Shakespeare, to fingers that can reproduce the works of Mozart? The uncomfortable answer is that evolution has no cogent answer. Some stuff worked; other stuff didn't. Some things happened in some lineages; and not in others. Some creatures filled some niches; other niches remained unfilled. Stuff Happens. The theory really is no more substantive than that.Eric Anderson_{January 12, 2014
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Box @161:
If I understand you correctly you are saying that from these observations we cannot extrapolate the concept that for every property of an organism there is an environmental cause.
Well, I'm not sure that was my main point, but OK. :) I do think we have to be a bit careful with how we use the word "environment" in any particular discussion. We've been using it in our exchange rather broadly and also because we were talking about things like temperature, lack of oxygen, etc. I'm sure evolutionists would object to the idea that everything is caused by the "environment." After all, there are things that might not be quite so easy to pin on the "environment" -- internal things like copying errors, point mutations, and the like. Arguably, however, even those things are caused by the environment, if we're willing to think of matter and energy interacting at the molecular and even sub-atomic level. So to the extent that we can consider the "environment" to be the matter and energy interacting in a particular space and time, then, yes, everything is caused by the environment, so says the materialist creation myth. Because that is all there is -- matter and energy interacting; there is no other cause available, certainly no intelligent agency involved.Eric Anderson_{January 12, 2014
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Box: You're a good sport to hang in here that long and thanks for the thoughtful questions! For those interested in the concept of natural selection, may I recommend a couple of readings: The first two are mine from a decade ago and, if I may, are still worth the 10 minutes required to read them. They focus more on the tautology aspect than what we have been discussing on this thread, but still relevant. My initial short essay: https://app.box.com/s/remni9q88iqjo0nb0xny . . . and a slightly longer and more detailed reply to several critics: https://app.box.com/s/cfgwvri2wo0ekeklrsi4 Finally, anyone interested in natural selection -- indeed anyone interested in evolution at all -- owes it to themselves to read David Berlinski's wonderful tongue-in-cheek, but ever so insightful essay, The Deniable Darwin, available in various locations, including here: http://www.discovery.org/a/130Eric Anderson_{January 12, 2014
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Box #161: If I understand you correctly you are saying that from these observations we cannot extrapolate the concept that for every property of an organism there is an environmental cause. That is simply a hypothesis based on a certain dubious metaphysical belief. It's not a metaphysical belief that explains why random environmental factors can't create CSI, it's the Law of Conservation of Information. Read this paper to see why: http://evoinfo.org/papers/ConsInfo_NoN.pdf The upshot is that in order for a fitness landscape to generate CSI, that CSI had to have been explicitly encoded in the fitness function. And explaining how the CSI got into the fitness function is always more difficult than explaining how CSI got into the artifact itself. For example, assume I see a pattern of text impressed in the sand on a beach. But I believe a natural force caused it so I hypothesize that a boulder rolled down the beach and created the marks. But that hypothesis doesn't simplify the problem of where the CSI came from in any way, it only makes it worse, because now you have to explain how the pattern got into the boulder, in addition to how the boulder got there, how it started rolling, etc. You've moved the source of the information somewhere else and now you require additional information to fully explain the final state of the system. Adding a random noise source (such as environmental variation) only makes the problem worse because the noise is just as likely to mess up CSI as it is to create it. In the context of life, let's say a baby tadpole receives a mutation that would generate a super frog. Over 99% of tadpoles die before reaching adulthood due to random environmental factors, so odds are that super frog will die before his mutation can be selected. The point is that to the extent the environment could preserve positive changes, it is even more likely to destroy them. In the context of OOL, the environment clearly favors diffusion and destruction of the components that form life over gathering and assembling. To believe that environmental variation created the variety we see in life, you'd need a fantastically complex fitness landscape. You need an infinite regression of just-so stories where the environment changed in ridiculously precise ways, like the just-so stories that flight evolved from animals running downhill flapping, implying there was a specific environment with lots of hills where that was enough of a selective advantage to matter in a life or death sense. It's comical to think about, almost like a Dr Seuss cartoon, but that's what evolutionists have to believe. On a molecular level, you must believe without evidence that functional proteins are dense in sequence space, and the smallest of incremental protein changes are selectable above the noise level. The antenna example is not a good one because that fitness landscape is dense in functionality, with no gaps to cross, and the fitness function can be evaluated with mathematical precision. The argument ID makes is that the fitness landscape of the natural environment doesn't in any way resemble the fitness landscape of any genetic algorithm. In fact, the natural environment opposes creation of information at every turn. --NetResearchMan/GuyNetResearchGuy_{January 11, 2014
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Eric at 160
As a related thought, however, there has to be an unbroken chain of parent-child relationships from me all the way back to LUCA, right?
My question regarding your comment will seem ignorant. But the question is this: Considering that passing on quality genes is the metric of survivability, why do lineages from the LUCA differ? What advantages do new body structures, internal organs, and even sexual reproduction confer to our lineage (and other lineages which have these features) to the various environments when it has been noticed that at least certain bacteria species can survive in various environments? Where we are, various bacteria species are. Where we are not, the probability of finding certain bacteria species are higher than finding other organisms. This was asked before, and it is better I ask again. It is more reason why I share your thoughts on the unbroken lineage of the LUCA.seventrees_{January 10, 2014
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Eric Anderson #156,
EA #156: 1. People should stop talking about natural selection as though it is something in addition to all these random environmental factors — as though it were some additional, independent force. It isn’t. (…) Evolutionists (…) argue that there is some force, some property of natural selection, that minimizes or takes away or selects out of the randomness. There isn’t. It is randomness all the way down.
I agree, there is nothing outside random environmental factors what can be called natural selection.
EA #156: 2. I want to pin people down who try to foist natural selection off on us as though it were an actual scientific explanation for the results. Again, it is not. It is just a label; one that is invariably applied after the fact. If we don’t know what caused x, then let’s admit so. If we do know, then let’s identify it directly, without obscuring it with another unnecessary label.
There are arguably cases in which we know which environmental factor(s) caused the extinction of a certain phenotype. If I understand you correctly you are saying that from these observations we cannot extrapolate the concept that for every property of an organism there is an environmental cause. That is simply a hypothesis based on a certain dubious metaphysical belief. Eric, thank you very much for explaining your profound view. That was most helpful.Box_{January 10, 2014
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seventrees: Thanks, you are correct, of course. I'm not suggesting that a single organism lived the entire time. I thought of wording it similarly to what you expressed, but decided to just leave it simple for the illustration. As a related thought, however, there has to be an unbroken chain of parent-child relationships from me all the way back to LUCA, right? Evolutionists love the wiggle room of saying that there just needed to be a change sometime, somewhere in nature. Actually every single change had to have been in my specific lineage (whether it originated there or was incorporated at some specific point in some generation or through the oft-cited gene-swapping, HGT, and the like). So although we often use the whole of nature as the playground for the variations and to boost up the probabilities, the fact is that for any given organism alive today, their specific lineage had to have experienced either a direct change or an incorporated change at a real moment in time in the past for every single characteristic they possess. Not that we need any more piling on to the materialist creation myth, but it is important to remember we are dealing with a finite set of ancestors when we think about the probabilities. Anyway, a bit OT, but your comment reminded me of that point. Thanks,Eric Anderson_{January 10, 2014
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Greetings, Eric, I think below is more precise: (a) There was a self-reproducing single-celled organism. Over time, some lineages of the organism were subjected to the random environmental factors in its environment. As a result of that process, eventually a particular lineage of its descendants turned into a human. (b) There was a self-reproducing single-celled organism. Over time natural selection carefully ‘scrutinized and rejected all that was bad and preserved and added up all that was good’ in some lineages of the organism. As a result of that process, a particular lineage of its descendants eventually turned into a human. But I see very well what you are saying on the natural selection aspect.seventrees_{January 10, 2014
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EA: Do I dare say the magic word . . . REIFICATION . . . ? KFkairosfocus_{January 10, 2014
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Box, incidentally, I was thinking about your sheep example last night. What actually caused the wooly sheep to survive the cold temperatures? Well, (at a high level) there is specific coding in the sheep's DNA, which is expressed at a certain time, which is expressed in a certain amount, which is shepherded to the right location, the result of which is integrated into the correct molecular machines, which is then integrated into a larger structure, and so on. That is the real cause. What caused the non-wooly sheep to perish? There could be any number of reasons. A breakdown or missing portion of any part of the above chain, for example. To say that natural selection had some influence or exerted some force in the outcome is to simply ignore the underlying causes. Furthermore, if we step back from biology for a moment, the point becomes more stark. What caused the first successful flight of the Space Shuttle? Natural Selection? No, it was the several million integrated and functional parts and their careful coordination that made the flight successful. In contract, what caused the Challenger disaster? It was the failure of one of those parts. The same exact situation exists with living organisms, and it makes about as much sense to say that natural selection "preserved and selected" the wooly sheep and "rejected" the non-wooly sheep, as it does to say natural selection "preserved and selected" STS-1 and "rejected" Challenger.Eric Anderson_{January 10, 2014
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Box @154:
When we say “intelligent design” aren’t we saying “whatever happened happened by an intelligent designer”?
In a sense, yes. But there is an important nuance here. Design is its own independent cause. Identifiable, observable. We can examine an artifact and see whether it contains the characteristics of design, and if so, our inference of design has independent meaning. Natural selection has no independent meaning, it has no independent characteristics we can examine, it just means whatever happened in the environment happened. The equivalent to your above sentence would be "whatever happened by natural selection happened by natural selection." Natural selection, however -- by your own definition, now that we've dug deeply enough -- simply means "the natural environmental influence on an organism." I'm fine with that as a working definition of natural selection. So let's now examine what the implications are. Natural environmental influences (by nearly everyone's admission) are essentially random. There is no way to predict or calculate or anticipate what will happen. Furthermore, we don't know how strongly the various factors will affect things in any given situation. Finally, there are so many factors that it is virtually impossible to say with any degree of certainty what did happen or what will happen. I think we are on the same page up to this point. So, given that, my points are very simple: 1. People should stop talking about natural selection as though it is something in addition to all these random environmental factors -- as though it were some additional, independent force. It isn't. It is just a label applied to the random environmental outcome. So natural selection doesn't take away the randomness inherent in the theory. Evolutionists regularly acknowledge that variation and the environment are essentially random, but then try to argue that there is some force, some property of natural selection, that minimizes or takes away or selects out of the randomness. There isn't. It is randomness all the way down. 2. Natural selection is often put forward as an 'explanation' for something, when so often it just masks our ignorance of what really happened. I say, let's stop doing that. When we say that natural selection did something, all we are saying is that a bunch of random unnamed environmental factors occurred. I want to pin people down who try to foist natural selection off on us as though it were an actual scientific explanation for the results. Again, it is not. It is just a label; one that is invariably applied after the fact. If we don't know what caused x, then let's admit so. If we do know, then let's identify it directly, without obscuring it with another unnecessary label. 3. Now that we have arrived at your definition (the natural environmental influence on an organism), we can put forward two possible summaries of evolutionary theory: (a) There was a self-reproducing single-celled organism. Over time it was subject to the random environmental factors in its environment. As a result of that process, eventually it turned into a human. (b) There was a self-reproducing single-celled organism. Over time natural selection carefully 'scrutinized and rejected all that was bad and preserved and added up all that was good.' As a result of that process, it eventually turned into a human. Which is more believable? The second of course. And why? Because natural selection is personified as an extra force, an extra influence, a careful selector and preserver of "all that is good." I'm just trying to make sure we don't fall for this rhetorical imagery that is so often used to try and sneak an extra force into nature, to try and posit some kind of designer substitute.Eric Anderson_{January 10, 2014
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Hey Box- FYI, the polar bear fur is transparent. It just looks white due to the way the light bounces off the space between the fur/ hairJoe_{January 10, 2014
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Eric Anderson #150,
EA #150: Indeed, there are many characteristics that would exert their influence in any given situation, not just temperature, but precipitation, sunlight, predation, humidity, disease, weather changes throughout the year and so on. And saying that the result of all these factors is “natural selection” is no more meaningful than saying “whatever happened happened.”
Whatever happened happened by (a cacophony of ) unintelligent forces of nature. That in itself is meaningful when you are arguing against theistic explanations for animal form. Did God gave polar bears white thick fur? No, says Charles D., it happened by “natural selection” – unintelligent forces of nature. Isn’t “natural selection” – designed by nature - about as meaningful, imprecise and diffuse as “intelligent design”? When we say “intelligent design” aren’t we saying “whatever happened happened by an intelligent designer”?
EA #150: And when we do know what caused the situation we can fully explain it, in great detail, without ever invoking natural selection.
We know that Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, so we don’t have to invoke “intelligent design”?
Box #147: Natural selection does exert equal pressure on phenotype B, by means of low temperature, however the wooly phenotype B can take it.

EA #150: No it doesn’t. The environment does. Natural selection is meaningless until the final outcome, after all the work is done.
My definition, in the context of this discussion, of the diffuse force of natural selection is “the natural environmental influence on an organism”. This influence is extremely complex and variable, but real nonetheless. Unfortunately I’m not able to grasp your concept of natural selection. Please give me your definition, so I can reread what you have written.Box_{January 10, 2014
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One more funny thing about genetic algorithms- evos really think they have something to do with genetics because they are called genetic algorithjms. And when I tell them that there isn't any genetics involved because genetics refers to biological organisms, they get all huffy and puffy and start spewing stuff and pointing to the name genetic algorithm. And they think that just because GAs were invented with someone's misconception wrt natural selection, that they mimic natural selection- well most evos seem to think that natural selection actually selects, well, because of its name!Joe_{January 10, 2014
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Cassie, Organsisms survive and reproduce in the absence of NS- think genetic drift. NS is responsible for less than 1% of the variation within a population (Larry Moran). My biology knowledge? High school and college biology- along with reading hundreds of peer-reviewed papers and many more popular books on the subject- about 40+ years looking into biology.Joe_{January 10, 2014
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Cassie @141:
An even more potent question is, ” When the processes involved in gene ‘expression’ are taken into account, how likely is it getting the desired proteins for life to be expressed? The mere existence of a sequence does not mean it will be expressed.
Excellent point. There is a naive tendency among supporters of traditional evolutionary theory to talk as though if some potentially useful sequence happens to arise in DNA it will automatically (i) get expressed, (ii) be expressed in a way that is helpful to the organism, (iii) the product of the expression will be integrated into the right molecular machine, (iv) the product of the expression will be integrated at the right time, and on and on. A sequence coding for a protein, important thought may be, is about as relevant to the organism as that long-forgotten program on my hard drive that I never open and have forgotten how to use is relevant to may daily work routine. There is so much more involved than just mere storage of a new sequence on the hard drive of DNA.Eric Anderson_{January 9, 2014
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Box, thanks for sticking with me to see if we can flesh this out a bit.
Natural selection’s relevant force is low temperature.
So natural selection causes low temperature? And here I thought it had to do with solar insolation, the tilt of the Earth's axis, altitude, local topography, air pressure differences and the like. :) I'm kidding with you a bit, I know, but bear with me. Natural selection isn't characterized by anything particular. In your example we have low temperature. In another example we might have high temperature. We could have lots of moisture or an arid climate and so forth. And all of those things are the way they are due to some underlying actual physical phenomenon, not because of "natural selection." Now if we take a label, such as the two words "natural selection," and say that whatever characteristic we happen to focus on (in this case, low temperature) is a "force" of natural selection, all we are doing is applying a label. And the label is no more substantive than saying "whatever the temperature is, it is." Indeed, there are many characteristics that would exert their influence in any given situation, not just temperature, but precipitation, sunlight, predation, humidity, disease, weather changes throughout the year and so on. And saying that the result of all these factors is "natural selection" is no more meaningful than saying "whatever happened happened."
Natural selection’ does exert equal pressure on phenotype B, by means of low temperature, however the wooly phenotype B can take it.
No it doesn't. The environment does. Natural selection is meaningless until the final outcome, after all the work is done. Consider a situation in which, in addition to low temperature, we have predation, but the predators love to eat wooly sheep. So we don't know beforehand whether temperature will be the deciding factor in which phenotype survives. Indeed, we never know until after the fact. And when we do know what caused the situation we can fully explain it, in great detail, without ever invoking natural selection. In stark contrast, we can't explain it without invoking temperature or the predators, as the case may be, because they are the actual cause. Natural selection isn't anything but an after-the-fact label that says "Whatever the environment was, it was; whatever the real causes were, they were; and whatever forces they brought to bear; they did." Sorry, but I'm not too impressed with that as a concept for enlightenment.
It seems to me that both phenotypes were subjected to low temperature. Phenotype A became its victim. Why can we not say that low temperature selects sheep with a lot of wool; i.e. phenotype B?
Sure all creatures in an environment are subject to the conditions of the environment. And some creatures won't survive in that environment, not because of some vague concept of natural selection, but due to very concrete physical, physiological, molecular factors. The problem with focusing on the survivors (phenotype B) is two-fold. 1. What if there are no sheep with a lot of wool and the entire population dies out. In that case, what did natural selection "preserve" or "select"? Nothing. And yet something happened with the population, right? How to explain that? Well, we could say that low temperatures killed them. Exactly. We can provide an explanation, based on actual physical factors, without ever once invoking natural selection as a "selecting" force. 2. Natural selection cannot create anything; it cannot see the future; to the extent it does anything (destroying the unfit), it is a destroyer of information, a destroyer of variety. I think it is important to keep the focus on this point. Again, Darwin's great rhetorical trick was to paint natural selection as though it were operating on the positive side of the equation, carefully preserving and selecting and adding up "all that is good." To the extent that we buy into this personification of natural selection, we drop our guard and allow ourselves to be lulled into thinking that natural selection is a productive force, a creative force, a builder of information, a design substitute. It is not. It simply waits around to see what the real forces in nature do and then proclaims that the result is "due to natural selection." Again, I don't begrudge someone carefully using the two words "natural selection" as a shorthand way to refer to the stochastic result of a change in a population. But it needs to be done carefully and the limitations and assumptions need to be acknowledged front and center. Unfortunately, all too often natural selection is invoked as a catch-all 'explanation' for this or that result, masking the lack of understanding of the real physical phenomena involved and leading the gullible to think that an actual scientific explanation has been offered. Worse, when the siren song of natural selection's great powers becomes strong enough, many imagine that natural selection is capable of producing, building, creating, designing. That was Darwin's great rhetorical move, and one that is still claiming many intellectual victims today.Eric Anderson_{January 9, 2014
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big typo errors, i know *Can I just ask what level of knowledge do you have regarding biology. I'm not trying to be rude, i would just like to know.Cassie_{January 9, 2014
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Joe - //That happens in the absence of natural selection.// What are talking about? That is how NS works. That is the point of my example. //And passing on genes that promote survival in one environment won’t necessarily promote survival if that environment changes. simple. It definitely ain’t a designer mimic mechanism.// I'm not saying it is! Can I just ask what's level of knowledge do you have regarding biology. I not trying to be rude, i would just like to know.Cassie_{January 9, 2014
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Eric Andersen #146,
EA #146: More fundamentally, however, we can examine whether natural selection even is a force at all. Let’s take the classic example of a population with two phenotypes. For purposes of discussion, let’s assume that phenotype A is going to eventually die out and phenotype B is going to survive. Now at the beginning of our observation of the population we have both phenotypes present, A and B. Now we can ask: “What kind of force or influence is exerted by natural selection on phenotype B to cause it to survive?” and “How is that force exerted on B? Where is it applied, how strong is it, and in what direction does it exert the force?”
I regret to say that I don’t get your point. Please bear with me and allow me to return to Meyer’s sheep example. Phenotype A has little wool and phenotype B has lots of wool. It seems to me that in this case one can answer your questions: Natural selection’s relevant force is low temperature. This is exerted on both phenotypes. We can also answer the question where it is applied and how much degrees Fahrenheit. The direction may be toward even more wooliness.
EA #146: Natural selection doesn’t exert any kind of force or influence over phenotype B. Indeed, natural selection doesn’t do anything.
Natural selection’ does exert equal pressure on phenotype B, by means of low temperature, however the wooly phenotype B can take it.
EA #146: Furthermore, if we are looking at the population for signs of what happened to cause the change in phenotype ratios, our observations will quickly lead us to phenotype A, not B.
Why is this an important observation?
EA #146: In phenotype A we can, if we know enough, identify some flaw or failure or breakdown or stroke of bad luck that resulted in A dying off.
Yes, too little wool to withstand the drop in temperature.
EA #146: Thus, to the extent there is any action or outside influence applied to the population is it A that is the object of that force, not B.
It seems to me that both phenotypes were subjected to low temperature. Phenotype A became its victim.
EA #146: The whole mental image of natural selection “selecting” B is, at best, completely backwards.
Why can we not say that low temperature selects sheep with a lot of wool; i.e. phenotype B?Box_{January 9, 2014
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Box @120:
If I understand you correctly your main argument is that since there is no coherency between those environmental factors there is no warrant for bundling them in the concept of “natural selection”.
1. The lack of direction and coherency should certainly raise a red flag as we consider what kind of "force" we are dealing with. For example, evolutionists love to compare their theory to gravity, so let's oblige them for a moment. With gravity, we can calculate very clearly how strong the force is, how it will be applied, how it varies with distance and so on. And it won't help the evolutionist's argument to complain, "But we don't know what really causes gravity." That is true enough, but we know it exists and is real. Every single person on the planet observes literally millions of confirmations of gravity every single day, 24/7, and we can calculate gravity with great precision, out to more than 10 decimal places. We have nothing at all like that with natural selection. We have no idea what "force" is being applied. We can't say with any certainty what impact it will have in any given situation. So at the very least we should be very suspicious about this strange kind of force -- one that sometimes is applied one direction and at other times in a completely opposite direction; sometimes with a particular strength and at other times with a very different strength. A strange force indeed. This on its own might not yet lead us to entirely abandon the concept, but to the thoughtful observer the nagging doubts should begin to grow. 2. More fundamentally, however, we can examine whether natural selection even is a force at all. Let's take the classic example of a population with two phenotypes. For purposes of discussion, let's assume that phenotype A is going to eventually die out and phenotype B is going to survive. Now at the beginning of our observation of the population we have both phenotypes present, A and B. Now we can ask: "What kind of force or influence is exerted by natural selection on phenotype B to cause it to survive?" and "How is that force exerted on B? Where is it applied, how strong is it, and in what direction does it exert the force?" As soon as we utter these simple questions -- questions that would be perfectly reasonable to ask about any other force in nature -- we quickly find ourselves squirming uncomfortably in our chair and muttering, "Wait a minute. That's not what we mean by natural selection; that's not how it works." But why not? Pondering that for a moment can be instructive. Natural selection doesn't exert any kind of force or influence over phenotype B. Indeed, natural selection doesn't do anything. It sits there like a mute and dumb observer, waiting to see what will happen with the population, and then when phenotype A dies off natural selection jumps in and raises its hand, surreptitiously taking credit for having "selected and preserved" phenotype B. Rather like the annoying co-worker who doesn't lift a finger to do any actual work, but when the time for work has passed and management starts handing out accolades quickly raises his hand and takes credit for the project. Furthermore, if we are looking at the population for signs of what happened to cause the change in phenotype ratios, our observations will quickly lead us to phenotype A, not B. In phenotype A we can, if we know enough, identify some flaw or failure or breakdown or stroke of bad luck that resulted in A dying off. Thus, to the extent there is any action or outside influence applied to the population is it A that is the object of that force, not B. The whole mental image of natural selection "selecting" B is, at best, completely backwards. Additionally, if we know what caused A's demise, we can explain it perfectly well without ever invoking natural selection, because our explanation essentially amounts to the wholly valid, but rather pedestrian, observation that if a creature is not well suited for its environment it may not long survive in that environment. We don't need to invoke any special force nor do we need to unnecessarily multiply entities to explain that. So, no, natural selection isn't a force. It doesn't do anything. It is simply a rhetorical label attached after the fact, after all the real work has been done. A label that neither explains nor enlightens nor instructs. 3. Darwin’s stroke of genius (rhetorically, not intellectually or scientifically) was to personify natural selection as a benevolent agent “daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world . . . rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good.” He subsequently toned down the personification and reminded readers that this was but a metaphor. Yet, the image of natural selection as some kind of ever-present beneficent force remains. As a result, to this day much of the disconnect between skeptics and true believers in Darwinism is that the latter hold an unjustified and almost magical opinion of natural selection, viewing it as some kind of wand that can be waved over the random chaos of nature to produce wonderful and intricate functional designs. It is not and it does not. It is just a label. And a label that teaches us essentially nothing beyond the idea that . . . Stuff Happens.Eric Anderson_{January 9, 2014
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Cassie:
In my example of the twins, are you honestly going to tell me that what was ‘fit’ in that example was relative? No. The combination of genes that promoted survival was passed on. simple.
That happens in the absence of natural selection. And passing on genes that promote survival in one environment won't necessarily promote survival if that environment changes. simple. It definitely ain't a designer mimic mechanism.Joe_{January 9, 2014
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kairosfocu - Its a shame, I don't think what you showed me actually addresses my questions from an angle of mathematical probability. It just seems to put out quite general ( not all untrue) ideas that don't take into account some discoveries regarding RNA. I think the paper below sheds some less light on the current status of the RNA world hypothesis in more academic circles. http://www.biologydirect.com/content/pdf/1745-6150-7-23.pdfCassie_{January 9, 2014
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Joe - //Cassie- what is “fit” is relative. Sickle-celled anemia allows a person to live in malaria infected areas and not get the disease. However SSA people are far from healthy.// Come on. This is not a good example. In my example of the twins, are you honestly going to tell me that what was 'fit' in that example was relative? No. The combination of genes that promoted survival was passed on. simple.Cassie_{January 9, 2014
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kairosfocus last comment not to you,but joe. Reading yours now.Cassie_{January 9, 2014
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In my opinion, to much attention is given to NS, as this process doesn't refute or support ID or the origin of life from unconscious processes( Darwinism). The crux of the matter - as i think some others here are trying to address - is the 'likelihood' of life sustaining genetic sequences ( that work with others) arising by chance over time. An even more potent question is, " When the processes involved in gene 'expression' are taken into account, how likely is it getting the desired proteins for life to be expressed? The mere existence of a sequence does not mean it will be expressed.Cassie_{January 9, 2014
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Cassie: Hi, here's some of what they are not telling you about OOL speculations -- an exchange between leading researchers, proponents of genes first and metabolism first:
[[Shapiro:] RNA's building blocks, nucleotides contain a sugar, a phosphate and one of four nitrogen-containing bases as sub-subunits. Thus, each RNA nucleotide contains 9 or 10 carbon atoms, numerous nitrogen and oxygen atoms and the phosphate group, all connected in a precise three-dimensional pattern . . . . [[S]ome writers have presumed that all of life's building could be formed with ease in Miller-type experiments and were present in meteorites and other extraterrestrial bodies. This is not the case. A careful examination of the results of the analysis of several meteorites led the scientists who conducted the work to a different conclusion: inanimate nature has a bias toward the formation of molecules made of fewer rather than greater numbers of carbon atoms, and thus shows no partiality in favor of creating the building blocks of our kind of life . . . . To rescue the RNA-first concept from this otherwise lethal defect, its advocates have created a discipline called prebiotic synthesis. They have attempted to show that RNA and its components can be prepared in their laboratories in a sequence of carefully controlled reactions, normally carried out in water at temperatures observed on Earth . . . . Unfortunately, neither chemists nor laboratories were present on the early Earth to produce RNA . . . [[Orgel:] If complex cycles analogous to metabolic cycles could have operated on the primitive Earth, before the appearance of enzymes or other informational polymers, many of the obstacles to the construction of a plausible scenario for the origin of life would disappear . . . . It must be recognized that assessment of the feasibility of any particular proposed prebiotic cycle must depend on arguments about chemical plausibility, rather than on a decision about logical possibility . . . few would believe that any assembly of minerals on the primitive Earth is likely to have promoted these syntheses in significant yield . . . . Why should one believe that an ensemble of minerals that are capable of catalyzing each of the many steps of [[for instance] the reverse citric acid cycle was present anywhere on the primitive Earth [[8], or that the cycle mysteriously organized itself topographically on a metal sulfide surface [[6]? . . . Theories of the origin of life based on metabolic cycles cannot be justified by the inadequacy of competing theories: they must stand on their own . . . . The prebiotic syntheses that have been investigated experimentally almost always lead to the formation of complex mixtures. Proposed polymer replication schemes are unlikely to succeed except with reasonably pure input monomers. No solution of the origin-of-life problem will be possible until the gap between the two kinds of chemistry is closed. Simplification of product mixtures through the self-organization of organic reaction sequences, whether cyclic or not, would help enormously, as would the discovery of very simple replicating polymers. However, solutions offered by supporters of geneticist or metabolist scenarios that are dependent on “if pigs could fly” hypothetical chemistry are unlikely to help.
Alonso Ricardo and Jack Szostak weigh in, c. 2009:
Every living cell, even the simplest bacterium, teems with molecular contraptions that would be the envy of any nanotechnologist. As they incessantly shake or spin or crawl around the cell, these machines cut, paste and copy genetic molecules, shuttle nutrients around or turn them into energy, build and repair cellular membranes, relay mechanical, chemical or electrical messages—the list goes on and on, and new discoveries add to it all the time. It is virtually impossible to imagine how a cell’s machines, which are mostly protein-based catalysts called enzymes, could have formed spontaneously as life first arose from nonliving matter around 3.7 billion years ago. To be sure, under the right conditions some building blocks of proteins, the amino acids, form easily from simpler chemicals, as Stanley L. Miller and Harold C. Urey of the University of Chicago discovered in pioneering experiments in the 1950s. But going from there to proteins and enzymes is a different matter . . .
Berlinsky, also:
At the conclusion of a long essay, it is customary to summarize what has been learned. In the present case, I suspect it would be more prudent to recall how much has been assumed: First, that the pre-biotic atmosphere was chemically reductive; second, that nature found a way to synthesize cytosine; third, that nature also found a way to synthesize ribose; fourth, that nature found the means to assemble nucleotides into polynucleotides; fifth, that nature discovered a self-replicating molecule; and sixth, that having done all that, nature promoted a self-replicating molecule into a full system of coded chemistry. These assumptions are not only vexing but progressively so, ending in a serious impediment to thought. That, indeed, may be why a number of biologists have lately reported a weakening of their commitment to the RNA world altogether, and a desire to look elsewhere for an explanation of the emergence of life on earth. "It's part of a quiet paradigm revolution going on in biology," the biophysicist Harold Morowitz put it in an interview in New Scientist, "in which the radical randomness of Darwinism is being replaced by a much more scientific law-regulated emergence of life." Morowitz is not a man inclined to wait for the details to accumulate before reorganizing the vista of modern biology. In a series of articles, he has argued for a global vision based on the biochemistry of living systems rather than on their molecular biology or on Darwinian adaptations. His vision treats the living system as more fundamental than its particular species, claiming to represent the "universal and deterministic features of any system of chemical interactions based on a water-covered but rocky planet such as ours." This view of things - metabolism first, as it is often called - is not only intriguing in itself but is enhanced by a firm commitment to chemistry and to "the model for what science should be." It has been argued with great vigor by Morowitz and others. It represents an alternative to the RNA world. It is a work in progress, and it may well be right. Nonetheless, it suffers from one outstanding defect. There is as yet no evidence that it is true . . .
KF PS: You may want to listen to the lecture here.kairosfocus_{January 9, 2014
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Cassie- what is "fit" is relative. Sickle-celled anemia allows a person to live in malaria infected areas and not get the disease. However SSA people are far from healthy.Joe_{January 9, 2014
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