Sex, the Queen of Problems in Evolutionary Biology

_{Jonathan McLatchie

July 13, 2011

Intelligent Design}

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The origin of sexually reproducing organisms from asexually reproducing ancestors is a profound mystery which has baffled many an evolutionary biologist. Read More>>>

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Excellent quotes, thanks Joseph.Chris Doyle_{July 16, 2011
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Chapter IV of prominent geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti's book Why is a Fly Not a Horse? is titled "Wobbling Stability". In that chapter he discusses what I have been talking about in other threads- that populations oscillate. The following is what he has to say which is based on thorough scientific investigation:
Sexuality has brought joy to the world, to the world of the wild beasts, and to the world of flowers, but it has brought an end to evolution. In the lineages of living beings, whenever absent-minded Venus has taken the upper hand, forms have forgotten to make progress. It is only the husbandman that has improved strains, and he has done so by bullying, enslaving, and segregating. All these methods, of course, have made for sad, alienated animals, but they have not resulted in new species. Left to themselves, domesticated breeds would either die out or revert to the wild state—scarcely a commendable model for nature’s progress.
(snip a few paragraphs on peppered moths)
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.

Everything that disassembles, upsets proportions or becomes distorted in any way is sooner or later brought back to the type. There has been a tendency to confuse fleeting adjustments with grand destinies, minor shrewdness with signs of the times.

It is true that species may lose something on the way—the mole its eyes, say, and the succulent plant its leaves, never to recover them again. But here we are dealing with unhappy, mutilated species, at the margins of their area of distribution—the extreme and the specialized. These are species with no future; they are not pioneers, but prisoners in nature’s penitentiary.
The point being, that IF it were left to direct scientific observations, evolutionism fails miserably and all that is left is wishful thinking supported by speculation.Joseph_{July 16, 2011
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Regarding Nick Matzke's comment, I thought I had explained quite clearly in my article what the advantage of sex was -- it generates a remarkable amount of diversity. I also explained in my article why that doesn't offer much help to explaining its origin in the first place. Why did God create sex? While this is an interesting theological question, you're asking the wrong question. ID looks at complex features and asks whether they require a goal-directed origin. Sex is the epitome of a feature that requires multiple fitting parts to work. So it definitely requires a goal-directed origin.Jonathan M_{July 16, 2011
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Barb - it's possible to reproduce without sex (ask any bacterium). So why do some species use sex to reproduce - and indeed why do many of them only reproduce sexually? That's the question here. Nick's asking what the ID explanation is.Heinrich_{July 15, 2011
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Barb @ 8 Pleasure for pleasures sake? What a concept! I once heard on NPR that the organ a woman has that supplies that pleasure has no other known function.es58_{July 14, 2011
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"The advantage of sex"? Besides bringing pleasure to the people/animals/microbes doing it? Procreation, for the most part. You know, the whole 'be fruitful and become many' part.Barb_{July 13, 2011
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So, what’s the advantage of sex according to ID? According to ID, the advantage of sex is that it provides amusement to ID theorists as evolutionists develop contradictory theories to explain it. Nick, does it not ever give you pause that you defend and attempt to propagate a theory that is capable of providing contradictory explanations for the same phenomenon? Doesn't that tell you there just might be something wrong with the theory? No? I thought not.Mung_{July 13, 2011
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Sex - it boosts the immune system and self-confidence. It produces precious new little children. It even refutes Darwinism. What CAN'T it do?Brentinator_{July 13, 2011
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OT llion, as to: 'in front of God and all the angels,' ,,,I just heard this song for the first time today,,, Trust in Jesus - Third Day http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6koz1p2Q6Bwbornagain77_{July 13, 2011
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"So, what’s the advantage of sex according to ID? [blah, blah, blah]" Translation: if you can't answer my pointless questions -- and I get to decide whether you have -- then Darwinism is true! Don't you guys ever get embarrassed to constantly demonstrate, in front of God and all the angels, your strained relationship with rational argumentation?Ilion_{July 13, 2011
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So, what's the advantage of sex according to ID? The IDer must have put it there for a reason, right? And put it into plants and microbes etc. long, long before humans were there to enjoy it. Note: you don't get to say "to increase disease resistance" or whatever, you just bashed biologists for making those functional explanations.NickMatzke_UD_{July 13, 2011
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And then there is the added problem of male and female complementarity -- a seemingly remarkable incidence of co-evolution.
Can you explain what you mean by this?Heinrich_{July 13, 2011
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"Time and time again, Darwinists fill the gaps in knowledge with their theoretical models, but sooner or later, the next generation of scholars will realise that Darwinists have constructed a virtual world that does not match the real world revealed by research."
Mung_{July 13, 2011
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