Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Outsider Meddling — Skeptics Need Not Apply (or, Just Have Faith)

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Someone by the name of skeech is cluttering up UD with impervious sophistry and wasting a lot of our time.

His/her latest thesis is that “according to biologists…” there is a “credible possibility that small incremental changes could have developed massive increases in biological information in a short time — followed by stasis.”

So, skeech assures us that “biologists” are universally agreed upon this proposition?

How about this and this?

Darwinian evolutionary theory is a boiling, ever-changing, amorphous cloud that is impenetrable and completely immune to critical analytical scrutiny. It was designed that way, for obvious reasons.

It should be noted that the “scientific” consensus in the early 20th century was the steady-state universe theory (that is, the universe is eternal, and has no beginning and no end). Those subscribing to the consensus were wrong (including Albert Einstein), and they put up a big fight until the end, when the evidence became overwhelming.

Continental drift theory was also ridiculed.

Wegener was the first to use the phrase “continental drift” (1912, 1915)… During Wegener’s lifetime, his theory of continental drift was severely attacked by leading geologists, who viewed him as an outsider meddling in their field.

The criticism we always hear from Darwinists is: Outsiders are not permitted to question the dogma, because they don’t understand the subtleties and the “science.”

The essence of Darwinian philosophy, presented as “science,” takes about 15 minutes to learn and understand: Random variation and natural selection explain everything — never mind the details, we’ll make up stories later to explain away the anomalies, contradictions, and improbabilities.

In the meantime, just have faith, and don’t ask any annoying questions.

This is not science, it’s religious indoctrination.

Comments
The quote from the 2004 essay reads to me like a simplistic cartoon version of Richard Lewontin. Lewontin (whose scientific achievements dwarf those of Denton) is of course a well-known supporter of evolution and one of the leading evolutionary geneticists in the world.David Kellogg
April 8, 2009
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Joseph,
Which views? Please be specific.
Compare these two statements, taken from this page: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/camp.html The first is from 1986, the second is what I quoted above from 1998:
"Each class at a molecular level is unique, isolated and unlinked by intermediates. Thus, molecules, like fossils, have failed to provide the elusive intermediates so long sought by evolutionary theory." (Denton 1986, p. 290)
"In the case of primate DNA, for example, all the sequences in the hemoglobin gene cluster in man, chimp, gorilla, gibbon, etc., can be interconverted via single base change steps to form a perfect evolutionary tree relating the higher primates together in a system that looks as natural as could be imagined. There is not the slightest indication of any discontinuity." (Denton 1998, p. 277)
And an evolutionary tree should NOT be conflated with a nested hierarchy.
An evolutionary tree is an explicit example of a nested hierarchy. Part of the evolutionary tree Denton refers to in that passage from Nature's Destiny can be represented as:
(gorilla+(human+(bonobo+chimp)))
which makes the nesting more clear.
Now what he would have to do in order for your argument to have any merit is to come right out and disown everything he said along with an explanation.
But he's already done that by publishing his updated views in book form. There's no need for me to go back and argue against A Theory in Crisis. Now regarding your quote from the 2004 essay, it's interesting, but I don't see the relevance to this topic.madsen
April 8, 2009
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madsen:
It’s well known that Denton changed his views between 1986 and 1998.
Which views? Please be specific.
Regardless of what he said in A Theory in Crisis, twelve years later he wrote that hemoglobin gene clusters can be used to determine primate phylogeny.
He wrote:
In the case of primate DNA, for example, all the sequences in the hemoglobin gene cluster in man, chimp, gorilla, gibbon, etc., can be interconverted via single base change steps to form a perfect evolutionary tree relating the higher primates together in a system that looks as natural as could be imagined. There is not the slightest indication of any discontinuity.
And an evolutionary tree should NOT be conflated with a nested hierarchy. Ya see the problem is that Denton laid down a thorough refutation of the premise in "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis". Now what he would have to do in order for your argument to have any merit is to come right out and disown everything he said along with an explanation. Short of that your inferences as to what he is saying is meaningless. The purpose of "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" was to expose the accepted evidence for universal common descent to be nonsense at best. Then twelve years later he came out with a more developed PoV. That does not mean he did a 180. In the book "Uncommon Dissent" he has an essay- 2004. Do you want to know what he says?
“Yet by the late 1980s it was becoming obvious to most genetic researchers, including myself, since my own main research interest in the ‘80s and ‘90s was human genetics, that the heroic effort to find the information specifying life’s order in the genes had failed. There was no longer the slightest justification for believing that there exists anything in the genome remotely resembling a program capable of specifying in detail all the complex order of the phenotype. The emerging picture made it increasingly difficult to see genes in Weismann’s “unambiguous bearers of information” or to view them as the sole source of the durability and stability of organic form. It is true that genes influence every aspect of development, but influencing something is not the same as determining it. Only a very small fraction of all known genes, such as developmental fate switching genes, can be imputed to have any sort of directing or controlling influence on form generation. From being “isolated directors” of a one-way game of life, genes are now considered to be interactive players in a dynamic two-way dance of almost unfathomable complexity, as described by Keller in The Century of The Gene.” Michael John Denton page 172 of Uncommon Dissent
If you want I can post more.Joseph
April 8, 2009
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Joseph,
Umm in “Evolution: A Theory in Crisis” Denton makes it clear that the alleged tree does not form a nested hierarchy.
It's well known that Denton changed his views between 1986 and 1998. Regardless of what he said in A Theory in Crisis, twelve years later he wrote that hemoglobin gene clusters can be used to determine primate phylogeny. In other words, the pattern of nested hierarchies in these gene clusters reflects the "perfect evolutionary tree" for primates.madsen
April 8, 2009
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And david: Another challenge to those who disagree with the premise that nested hierarchies require additive characteristics: Produce a nested hierarchy that doesn’t require additive characteristics. (cue "Final Jeopardy" music...)Joseph
April 8, 2009
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David Kellogg:
I think Denton’s views have developed since Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.
Could be but he hasn't said anything that would contradict what he said about nested hierarchies and evolution.
He seems to accept many evolutionary ideas in his recent work, including common descent.
He didn't deny common descent in "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis". Did you read the book?
If there’s a conflict between Nature’s Destiny (1998) and Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985), the more recent work is likely to represent current Denton.
I agree. However there isn't any conflict between his past ideas on nested hierarchy and evolution and his current PoV. At least there isn't any such conflict found in his writings.Joseph
April 8, 2009
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I think Denton's views have developed since Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. He seems to accept many evolutionary ideas in his recent work, including common descent. If there's a conflict between Nature's Destiny (1998) and Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985), the more recent work is likely to represent current Denton.David Kellogg
April 8, 2009
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madsen, Umm in "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" Denton makes it clear that the alleged tree does not form a nested hierarchy. Ya see with a tree every point on the trunk, every branch and stem, is a transitional species.
Whenever classification schemes are drawn up for phenomena which fall into a continuous or obviously sequential pattern—such as climatic zones from the artic to the tropics, subspecies in a circumpolar overlap, the properties of atoms in the periodic table, series of fossil horses, or wind strengths from breeze to hurricane—class boundaries are bound to be relatively arbitrary and indistinct. Most of the classes defined in such schemes are inevitably partially inclusive of other classes, or, in other words, fundamentally intermediate in character with respect to adjacent classes in the scheme. Consequently, when such schemes are depicted in terms of Venn diagrams, most of the classes overlap and the schemes overall have a disorderly appearance. A quite different type of classification system is termed hierarchic. In which there are no overlapping or partially inclusive classes, but only classes inclusive or exclusive of other classes. Such schemes exhibit, therefore, an orderly “groups within groups” arrangement in which class boundaries are distinct and the divisions in the system increase in a systematic manner as the hierarchy is ascended. The absence of any overlapping classes implies the absence of any sort of natural sequential relationships among the objects grouped by such a scheme.
“While hierarchic schemes correspond beautifully with the typological model of nature, the relationship between evolution and hierarchical systems is curiously ambiguous. Ever since 1859 it has been traditional for evolutionary biologists to claim that the hierarchic pattern of nature provides support for the idea of organics evolution. Yet, direct evidence for evolution only resides in the existence of unambiguous sequential arrangements, and these are never present in ordered hierarchic schemes.” “Of course evolutionary biologists do not look for the direct evidence in the hierarchy itself but rather argue, as Darwin did, that the hierarchic pattern is readily explained in terms of an evolutionary tree.”
Only if diagnostic character traits remain essentially immutable in all members of the group they define is it possible to conceive of a hierarchic pattern emerging as the result of an evolutionary process.
Joseph
April 8, 2009
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Joseph, Denton in Nature's Destiny:
In fact, the differences between the DNA of man and chimp can be accounted for by simple well-known mutational processes which are occurring all the time in nature at present. In the case of primate DNA, for example, all the sequences in the hemoglobin gene cluster in man, chimp, gorilla, gibbon, etc., can be interconverted via single base change steps to form a perfect evolutionary tree relating the higher primates together in a system that looks as natural as could be imagined. There is not the slightest indication of any discontinuity.
Here he's talking about recovering an evolutionary tree for higher primates by using genetic data to determine relatedness. I take it that this means, for example, that by comparing these gene clusters, we can determine that humans and chimps are more closely related to each other than either are to gorillas. I'm not a biologist, but how would this method make sense if common descent didn't lead to nested hierarchies? If that were true, then it seems to me that the observed nested hierarchy patterns in the gene clusters would not imply anything about evolutionary history.madsen
April 8, 2009
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2- Nested Hierarchy requires a direction- one of additive characteristics. That is what I wrote. Additive characteristics is a direction qualifier. And this is because: "nested hierarchies involve levels which consist of, and contain, lower levels."
That implies somewhere it is being directed towards as opposed to a reaction to events which could go anyway depending on circumstances.
What? Nested hierarhies are a REPRESENTATION of what is observed. It is directed by defintions which lock each level and set into a unique position. Then you can take an organism and using those definitions, place it into the correct category. The animal kingdom has a set of characteristics. the phylum chordata includes all the definitions included in the animal kingdom PLUS other criteria. IOW to go from kingdom to phyla is an addition of characteristics that further refine the specification.Joseph
April 8, 2009
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Re #214 "I never said they had to be specified in advance. All I said was that NH requires additive characteristics." Period- end of story. Read what you wrote. You said that NH has a direction. That implies somewhere it is being directed towards as opposed to a reaction to events which could go anyway depending on circumstances. Strange.Mark Frank
April 8, 2009
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Another challenge to those who disagree with the premise that nested hierarchies require additive characteristics: Produce a nested hierarchy that doesn't require additive characteristics. Good luck...Joseph
April 8, 2009
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Umm, moderators? Comment 204 is highly inappropriate. There are children around and they shouldn't be exposed to such profanity.crater
April 8, 2009
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madsen:
I’ve already shown that IDers are not agreed on whether common descent implies nested hierarchies, which was my original point.
You did? Which IDists think that common descent implies NH? In "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" Denton refutes the premise. He has a whole chapter dedicated to doing just that. So please name the IDist and the reasoning. Thanks.Joseph
April 8, 2009
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summary of principles for hierarchy theory:
nested hierarchies involve levels which consist of, and contain, lower levels.
The only way that can happen is via additive characteristics. Because once you start taking away defining characteristics the containment is lost.Joseph
April 8, 2009
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Joseph,
So your response is not to respond?
I've already shown that IDers are not agreed on whether common descent implies nested hierarchies, which was my original point.madsen
April 8, 2009
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Alan Fox:
If fossils were (genuinely) found that did not fit with the nested hierarchy that is posited, the ToE would at the very least require modifying.
Umm transitional fossils would fit that bill just by their very nature. If land animals evolved from fish then would there be a mix of characteristics found in some fossils in that lineage? Unless said evolution happened in one step we would expect transitional forms to be found. And if a rabbit is found in the Cambrian, if it had the same characteristics as today's rabbits, it would be placed in the same set structure as today's rabbits.Joseph
April 8, 2009
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” Nested Hierarchy requires a direction- one of additive characteristics.”
I am not sure I agree with that. The current species suite on the planet could mostly be due to devolution with some exceptions.
It could be but the current nested hierarchy is NOT based on descent. It is based on characteristics. For example in the nested hierarchy of living organisms we have the animal kingdom. To be placed in the animal kingdom an organism must have all of the criteria of an animal. For example:
All members of the Animalia are multicellular (eukaryotes), and all are heterotrophs (that is, they rely directly or indirectly on other organisms for their nourishment). Most ingest food and digest it in an internal cavity. Animal cells lack the rigid cell walls that characterize plant cells. The bodies of most animals (all except sponges) are made up of cells organized into tissues, each tissue specialized to some degree to perform specific functions.
The next level (after kingdom) is the phyla. Phyla have all the characteristics of the kingdom PLUS other criteria. For example one phylum under the Kingdom Animalia, is Chordata. Chordates have all the characteristics of the Kingdom PLUS the following:
Chordates are defined as organisms that possess a structure called a notochord, at least during some part of their development. The notochord is a rod that extends most of the length of the body when it is fully developed. Lying dorsal to the gut but ventral to the central nervous system, it stiffens the body and acts as support during locomotion. Other characteristics shared by chordates include the following (from Hickman and Roberts, 1994): bilateral symmetry segmented body, including segmented muscles three germ layers and a well-developed coelom. single, dorsal, hollow nerve cord, usually with an enlarged anterior end (brain) tail projecting beyond (posterior to) the anus at some stage of development pharyngeal pouches present at some stage of development ventral heart, with dorsal and ventral blood vessels and a closed blood system complete digestive system bony or cartilaginous endoskeleton usually present.
The next level is the class. All classes have the criteria of the kingdom, plus all the criteria of its phylum PLUS the criteria of its class. This is important because it shows there is a direction- one of additive characteristics. The point being is if you don't have additive characteristics you don't get a nested hierarchy. If defining characteristics can be lost then you have lost containment and nested hierarchy falls apart.Joseph
April 8, 2009
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I would love to hear the reasoning behind the premise that common descent predicts a nested hierarchy given that nested hierarchies are determined by defined characteristics which do NOT include “who’s your daddy/ mommy?”.
You’ll have to take that up with Denton (the 1998 version).-madsen
So your response is not to respond?Joseph
April 8, 2009
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2- Nested Hierarchy requires a direction- one of additive characteristics. Agree or disagree?
I disagree. A nested heirarchy adds characteristics but they do not have to be specified or targeted in advance.
I never said they had to be specified in advance. All I said was that NH requires additive characteristics. Period- end of story. You disagree with what I said and then confirmed what I said. Strange.Joseph
April 8, 2009
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Thank you alan and david. You have just demonstrated that you do not understand nested hierarchy.Joseph
April 8, 2009
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Paul Giem said: In other words, is your theory truly falsifiable… Alan Fox said: Yes. If fossils were (genuinely) found that did not fit with the nested hierarchy that is posited, the ToE would at the very least require modifying. Modification of a theory does not count as falsification. Falsification is at least throwing it back to hypothesis status where it can from that point on be retested against other hypothesis such as the PEH (prescribed evolutionary hypothesis).ab
April 8, 2009
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Joseph, I disagree. DavidDavid Kellogg
April 8, 2009
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Hi Paul @197 I'm not Alan Fox, but I'd like to try and give you an answer.
I’m trying to understand this statement. First, are you saying that the lack of ancestors would be a problem, or that the going from complex to simple would be a problem, or something else? What precisely is the problem that a Cambrian rabbit poses to the ToE?
First of all, the original quip by Haldane referred to a Pre-Cambrian rabbit. What makes a Pre-Cambrian rabbit so problematical is that it predates not only the accepted timne period for the emergence of mammals, it also predates vertebrates and even the origin of the basic Phylum for vertebrates, the Chordata. Since evolutionary theory predicts a nested heirarchy, such a discovery, would push the origin of vertebrates far earlier than the PreCambrian, and we currently have no evidence for that in the fossil record. Since one of the important lines of evidence for evolution is the fact the fossil record generally reflects a nested hierarchy, the only way the theory could be reconciled with the data would be to conclude that almost the entire fossil record as we know it today is completely unreliable. The chances of that are pretty slim, so the theory itself would probably have to be so drastically revised as to become unrecognizable. In my opinion, a theory requiring that kind of revision should be adandoned as untenable.
Second, I’ve heard the Cambrian rabbit quoted widely. Would a Pennsylvanian rabbit do as well? How about a Jurassic rabbit? How about Triassic shore birds? Would Precambrian plants qualify? Can you expand upon your “Precambrian rabbit” a little?
From my previous discussin, it should be obvious that the later the rabbit is found, the less problems with the fossil record reflecting an overall nested hierarchy there are. For example, finding a Jurassic rabbit would postdate the emergence of Chordates and Vertebrates, which throws only a smaller part of the fossil record in doubt, and could well be an issue not with the theory of evolution in general, but in the history of a particular group.
Finally, if someone claimed to find a Cambrian rabbit, would you immediately give up the ToE? Or would you spend a great deal of time trying to prove that A. it was not a rabbit, B. It was not Precambrian, or C. The ToE can handle it very nicely after all, thank you? In other words, is your theory truly falsifiable, or did you just throw something out that you think and hope you’ll never see to keep critics of the ToE off of your back?
Paul, if the theory is valid, and the lines of evidence we currently use to support it are reliable, we should NEVER see a PreCambrian rabbit, so it is a valid criterion for falsification. There can be, indeed should be, many others. The reason the Precambrian rabbit is used so often is because it is such a good example to counter the silly assertion that the theory of evolution is unfalsifiable in principle. Haldane's quip makes short work of that.Dave Wisker
April 8, 2009
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@ Joe If yopu insist on a one-word-answer, Disagree.Alan Fox
April 8, 2009
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Joseph,
I would love to hear the reasoning behind the premise that common descent predicts a nested hierarchy given that nested hierarchies are determined by defined characteristics which do NOT include “who’s your daddy/ mommy?”.
You'll have to take that up with Denton (the 1998 version).madsen
April 8, 2009
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faded_glory, If you want to know what I think, I am not shy about stating it. Here are a couple of long posts I have had about what I believe https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/november-apologetics-conference-we-need-more-than-good-arguments/#comment-296129 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/faq2-is-open-for-comment/#comment-304029 Also if you have all day there is a thread from about a month ago that has all the issues in it about what I think ID research is about. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/a-word-about-our-moderation-policy/ You can search for my name and you will find about 100 matches and if you follow them you will learn what I believe and you will see the conflict that goes on here. But I don't expect anyone to do so and at the moment I do not have the time to summarize everything. But just to make things short. I believe that most of life unfolded naturally but was seeded at one or more times because natural processes can not explain how complex functional information arose. You will see that many ID people will disagree with some of my ideas so it is anything like an echo chamber here.jerry
April 8, 2009
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Paul Giem
In other words, is your theory truly falsifiable...
Yes. If fossils were (genuinely) found that did not fit with the nested hierarchy that is posited, the ToE would at the very least require modifying.Alan Fox
April 8, 2009
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" Nested Hierarchy requires a direction- one of additive characteristics." I am not sure I agree with that. The current species suite on the planet could mostly be due to devolution with some exceptions. Therefore this would lead to a nested hierarchy pointing downward with more limited gene pools at each level and less characteristics. This is what natural selection predicts and what we see out there generally agrees with it. We can see what happens in the artificial selection of dogs. Nothing in the dog breeds was not there before (with a few trivial exceptions), but we can say that the various breeds have distinct characteristics. Each breed represents a much more limited gene pool than the original from which they came. The suite of species in the world are not so dramatically different as dog breeds but represent the same process played out over time. What is at odds with the empirical evidence is that any new complex capabilities arose from these processes. We get a red fox and a white wolf and a dingo, but do we get super canine. NO!jerry
April 8, 2009
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#203 2- Nested Hierarchy requires a direction- one of additive characteristics. Agree or disagree? I disagree. A nested heirarchy adds characteristics but they do not have to be specified or targeted in advance. They can emerge according to the demands of the environment at the time.Mark Frank
April 8, 2009
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