Home
» Intelligent Design » New Evidence Supports Natural Selection
New Evidence Supports Natural Selection
| February 28, 2006 | Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design |
The most tested theory in science – Natural Selection – has new and improved evidence to support it says Pim Van Meurs on Panda’s Thumb.
Excuse me, but haven’t the NeoDarwinian dogmatists been saying for years that Natural Selection is as well tested as the theory of gravity?
Do we hear headlines like New Evidence Supports Theory of Gravity or New Evidence Shows Things Don’t Fall Up? ROFL
Who are these clowns trying to fool? 
44 Responses to New Evidence Supports Natural Selection
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
In fact gravity remains an intense area of interest. We’ve seen a few examples but take a look at how much work is done in this regard. To see how intensily studied it is i tried to look up ‘gravit’ (so i can net gravity and gravitational etc) at Physical review letters and a few other journals just from the Americal Physical Society. It returned “Your search returned 4922 hits, only 300 have been displayed.” And in the last 10 years there are 66 papers just in these few journals (which very much do not specialize in gravity). Additionally, by searching the astro physics preprint server (http://xxx.lanl.gov/archive/astro-ph) i find about 250 articles in the last 10 years (of course these are not necessarily published).
Wether or not people spin it to the general populace as suddenly gravity is confirmed every year is a public relations and political point. Gravity reamins a very robust area of inquiry just like evolution. It is the political climate that is different.
johnny b,
“Any functional (as opposed to historical) approach to genetics is an ID research program.”
I don’t get it. If a geneticist shows that genotype A survives better in environment 1 and genotype B better in environment 2, then she is engaged in an ID research program?
“Any study of mind and its relationship to causation is ID.”
So now psychology is also an ID research program?
I read the abstract of the recent Davidson paper you refer to. Why is that paper evidence that micro- and macro-evolution (assuming they exist) are fundamentally different?
Please enlighten me.
BTW, did you really read the PNAS paper this thread is about? You say “they are talking about finally having experimental evidence…”, but the paper is nothing but a correlational analysis of previously published observational data. No experiments. Perhaps we have different definitions of experiment.
“If a geneticist shows that genotype A survives better in environment 1 and genotype B better in environment 2, then she is engaged in an ID research program?”
A functionalist approach is one that assumes function as a starting assumption of research. For example, see this paper on genome function. They criticize the “selfish gene” concept, and view biology from a systems perspective, and view the operation of the cell holistically as a system architecture. This is similar to the claims made by Jonathan Wells on centrioles generating a polar ejection force.
A lay version of this can be seen in an article by the author of the former paper: A Third Way.
“So now psychology is also an ID research program?”
If it views mind as distinct from (but subject to) physical causation, then yes. (note that not all psychology does this).
“Why is that paper evidence that micro- and macro-evolution (assuming they exist) are fundamentally different?”
The core systems of an architecture appear to be invariable. Therefore, the changes occurring today are not the same changes that brought about the core systems, since the core systems are not changing today, and have not changed for the supposed millions of years that they have been in place. Therefore, macro-level evolution is fundamentally different than what we observe today.
Another analysis of the same subject can be found in Malcom Gordon’s The Concept of Monophyly (I have a short summary and quote here if you don’t have access to the article).
Here’s a clip showing another experiment testing gravity. It hasn’t seen anything yet, but at the moment it is setting upper limits on some very fundamental aspects of gravity.
“With gravity you can toss a rock for basic evidence.” So that’s all there is to gravity?
“Let me know when Natural Selection is so well tested that the remainder of the testing of it is confined to testing its predictions beyond the 15th place to the right of the decimal point in the extremes of very small and very large. The theory of gravity can predict practical things with such certainly and precision that it’s simply ridiculous to compare it to natural selection which can’t predict anything at all about future evolution. All NS is good for is a mechanism to explain observations of one-time events that already happened and can’t be repeated. Does that sound anything like the theory of gravity to you? If NS was a theory of planetary motions it would still be epicycles and its predictions astrological forecasts. -ds”
Davescot
I wasn’t arguing here that Natural selection is as well-tested as gravity. You are missing my point if you think that I was.
I was pointing out that even very well-tested theories (taking your example of gravity—it was you who initiated the comparison, not me) continue to be tested further. Sometimes these new tests produce further evidence for the original theory, sometimes they tell you that the original theory is wrong and you need something new.
So my point was that new evidence for NS doesn’t a priori mean that NS *can’t* have been well-tested in the first place. This seemed to be what you meant by:
“Do we hear headlines like New Evidence Supports Theory of Gravity? ROFL”
Of course you may argue that NS is not at all well-tested as a means of producing CSI, and there isn’t enough evidence for it to be convincing. Of course, this is the main thrust of ID. But as I tried to point out above, that wasn’t what I was disputing in this thread (though I may do elsewhere). I hope that is clear now, it seems to be to most other contributors!
You’d think that with all these ID research programs there’d be at least one paper in a peer reviewed journal
There is and the editor that allowed, Richard Sternberg, it was persecuted for it by the defenders of the Darwinian faith. Is that how science works – when a peer reviewed article is published that goes against dogmatically held belief in NeoDarwinian evolution the editor who allowed the heresy to be published is blackballed? Speak right up and tell us if that’s how science works. -ds
Physicist: “even very well-tested theories continue to be tested further.” and “I hope that is clear now, it seems to be to most other contributors!”
We know. I very much doubt that DS or any other ID proponent was attempting to argue this point. I’m not sure why you and all the other ID critics seized on this point. That’s why I said this earlier:
“Now that you guys have had your fun with the strawman can you focus on the real issue at hand?”
And that real issue is this:
“NS is not at all well-tested as a means of producing CSI, and there isn’t enough evidence for it to be convincing”
Kural: ““With gravity you can toss a rock for basic evidence.†So that’s all there is to gravity?”
Of course not. The point is that BASIC evidence can be readily found in one case and not in the other. It’s a contrast. And if you can provide evidence of NS producing CSI go ahead.
All: Speaking of testing theories, I would not be surprised if ID theory has some flaws or that it’s possible more methods can be added to the toolset. As such, I was fairly disappointed when my Devil’s Advocate thread received no response since the only way to find flaws is to critically analyze ID.
Actually my point is that you can toss a rock and the theory of gravity will tell you where it will be at any point in time with exquisitely high reliability and precision. If NeoDarwinian evolution is proceeding, which is debatable but that’s a different debate, then humans are like a projectile along an evolutionary path. Where does NDE predict human evolution will be at any point in time in the future? [sound of crickets chirping] NDE describes an unpredictable, unrepeatable process that happened in the past and, because its grand claims of creating novel cell types, tissue types, organs, and body plans happen so slowly as to be unobservable in non-geological timespans, we can’t confirm that it is even happening today. Gravity is predictable and the predictions have been tested zillions of times to a very high degree of precision. Comparing NDE theory and gravity is simply ludicrous and causes one to seriously question the critical thinking ability of anyone that tries to make an equitable comparison. -ds
“You’d think that with all these ID research programs there’d be at least one paper in a peer reviewed journal”
There are many. They just don’t use the _term_ Intelligent Design. I have a small list of some of them that I have read on my website. There are several others.
Well, Dave, perhaps you should make your points more clear in the future so we don’t waste more time arguing over a non-issue like whether or not “even very well-tested theories continue to be tested further.”
I have two comments. The first is that equating “natural selection” with “gravity” is erroneous. The theories to be equated are “evolution” and “gravity”. That said, “natural selection” is a mechanism by which evolution operates. It continues to be tested. So the question now is, what is the proposed mechanism by which gravity operates and is it more or less understood than mechanisms evolution? No matter how much we test gravity, things still fall up; and no matter how much we test evolution, organisms are still modified over time.
The second comment is about the predictive power of gravity vs. evolution. Gravity is a simple, mathematical and physical theory whereas evolution is a complex, biological and historical one. Their predicitive powers cannot be compared and contrasted on the same quantitative scale; to attempt to do so is nothing but a set-up. At the same time, the theory of gravity doesn’t accurately predict anything if you don’t know all the other conditions surrounding the system; that is, if something as simple as friction weren’t taken into account, the theory of gravity would not accurately predict where the rock will be. Nor does it account for wind, etc. Conversely if you know every single factor contributing to evolution precisely and accurate, you would be able to predict the evolution of the next species.
To the first point – pretty much everything is modified over time. That isn’t the issue. The issue is in the case of living things whether random modifications can by any unintelligent means cause the creation of new cell types, tissue types, organs, and body plans. Organisms really don’t appear to be modified much over time either. The fossil record shows new forms appearing rather quickly and staying pretty much the same before becoming extinct. The modification is abrupt and extensive – genuine evolution appears to proceed through saltation.
The second point is just wrong. The theory of gravity predicts the behavior of objects (in the absence of other forces) with a high degree of precision. The NeoDarwinian theory of evolution can’t predict the path of evolution with any precision at all. It is a just-so narrative that describes an unpredictable, unrepeatable history of evolution. And it doesn’t even match up well with the fossil record. -ds
Hi Patrick
“Now that you guys have had your fun with the strawman can you focus on the real issue at hand?â€Â
Of course, the `real issue’ is what we discuss on the majority of threads. I think it’s fair for me to criticise a slightly different point made in this posting—it looked to me like DS genuinely thought there was no testing left for gravity. Hence his `ROFL’ at the idea of it. And not every thread has to be about the same thing
“Well, Dave, perhaps you should make your points more clear in the future”
Agreed!
“Comparing NDE theory and gravity is simply ludicrous and causes one to seriously question the critical thinking ability of anyone that tries to make an equitable comparison”
I don’t think anyone in this thread said or implied they were equally well-tested. (As an aside, gravity is probably not even the best example as e.g. QED is tested to much higher precision, but that’s another story. I wouldn’t describe our knowledge of Newton’s constant as `exquisitely precise’!)
Yeah, reading Dave’s posts again I suppose I can see how you could perceive Dave was saying that. I just assumed Dave couldn’t actually be saying something that dumb.
johnnyb said
“There are many. They just don’t use the term Intelligent Design. I have a small list of some of them that I have read on my website. There are several others.”
Just had a quick look at the first abstract listed (im terminally short on time) the title asks the question
“Chance and necessity do not explain the origin of life”
As a challenge to natural selection this is an invalid argument, because it is abiogenesis that concerns itslef with where life comes from not Evolution/natural selection.
Many who know of Evolution have no problem with the fact that god came down on a magic cloud and created the first life then guided its rise (or fall) to mankind and the diversity around us. (I think thats the pope’s official view?)
But the brutal fact remains that you cant prove this as it involves supernatural cause. What we can say is that this environmental factor X is likely why this organism evolved to do Y.