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Simmons vs. Myers Debate Link
| February 4, 2008 | Posted by Dave S. under Intelligent Design |
I’ve been informed that the peanut gallery (Panda’s Thumb) is accusing me of covering something up for deleting my very brief post about the Simmons/Myers debate. I made the posting a few hours before the debate and included a hotlink so people could listen to it live. I’d intended at the time of writing to remove it after the debate was over as the live link would no longer be working. UD author Doctor David A. Cook had a more in depth article that included the same live link. No coverup. Here’s the link to the archived debate. A link to the archive is also in DA Cook’s orginal post.
37 Responses to Simmons vs. Myers Debate Link
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Those eyes must be big then.
What? Are you claiming that puppets evolve by RM+NS?
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
Bob
To me, in a way, it doesn’t really matter much how good Simmons was. I listened only to the first few minutes of Myers. What a bunch of rude, small, arrogant, blustering spittle.
Fair-minded, undecided listeners would certainly be left wondering why this guy feels the need to resort to such antics.
Hi Jerry, thank you for your comments
Random variation or random mutation adds to the deck or gene pool and as such there will be new variants in the population with these changes.
But I am not talking about the gene pool here. I am talking about the “probabilistic solution space” -I.E., “The set of survivable varients.” Your “new varients” (being alive) are already members of this set (and are subsequently not new in design-space terms)
A slot machine’s jackpots are not “new” for they are already built (by design) into “the set of possible varients.” The “set of survivable varients” therefore already takes into account random variations, random mutations etc. The limit of this set is determined by the pertubation tolerance of the designs in question.
Dogs can only be varied so far before these designs begin to fail. If there is a limit to how far any given design can be distorted, then there is a limit to its evolution.
The natural selective destruction (NSd) of failed designs does nothing whatsoever to overcome this limit — “the edge of evolution.” Natural Selection merely enforces this edge by destroying all “hopeful monsters.”
Darwin’s theory of filtered accidents lacks a design function. Random shuffling and selective filtration just won’t do the job.
William Brookfield,
I haven’t a clue what you are talking about.
William Brookfield,
The definition of a gene pool is according to wikipedia
“In population genetics, a gene pool is the complete set of unique alleles in a species or population. A large gene pool indicates extensive genetic diversity, which is associated with robust populations that can survive bouts of intense selection. Meanwhile, low genetic diversity (see inbreeding and population bottlenecks) can cause reduced biological fitness and an increased chance of extinction.”
Various mutation events to gametes can add to the set. This is the variation side of the modern evolutionary theory. The genetic side can cull the the set through various processes. It can also produce new combinations of the potential genes/alleles/other genetic elements through sexual reproduction. Some of these combinations may not have been present in a population before or only present in a very small number of the population. But sexual reproduction and environmental pressures can increase them in number. Nothing new has been added to the gene pool but the specific members of the population now have a combination of the various genetic elements that was not there before and this combination may help the organism survive better.
In their book, Dembski and Wells present an example of the English Sparrow that was brought to the US from Britain and was failing but eventually some adapted and then became a thriving species in the US that was somewhat different from the English version and there are variations of this bird from one geography to another apparently due to climate.
Did the gene pool expand. No, just a reshuffling of the possible genetic combinations made some combinations a more viable organism in the US than those originally introduced.
Is there a limit to this reshuffling? Yes, it depends on the viable combinations in the original gene pool and the minor additions added to the gene pool by mutation events. Not all combinations will produce a viable organism but some new combinations may emerge that are better suited to an environment.
As I said this is great design to have such a flexible process that allows a population to adapt to new environmental pressures and survive and produce a richness of life. If I was the designer this is one of the elements that I would ensure was part of the basic design of life and apparently the original designer created a basic design that allows this flexibility. But the designer also created limitations to how much an organism can adapt as Behe has pointed out in the Edge of Evolution.
Many people here are reflexively anti Darwinism that they fail to see that elements of the modern evolutionary theory represents great design. One any intelligent entity would be proud of. Behe, Dembski and Wells see it as the explanation for much of biological life but they also point out its limitations. And these limitations are what the debate is all about.
Hi Jerry,
Thanks for your information. Perhaps I am not communicating very well.
Darwin and neo Darwinists have offered us various mechanisms. They claim that these mechnanisms fully explain the evolution of life – from the first reproducing organism to all of life’s diversity (past and present). While they have, in my opinion, explained minor “microevolutionary” changes any belief in “macro-evolution” still requires *faith.*
The mechanisms given are lack the necessary biologically co-ordinated (nonrandom) creative power to produce biological structures of this nature IMO.
I agree with much of what you say, except that you seem (from my point of view) to have blurred the NS function into the random variation functions of the theory. Perhaps when you say NS you are refering to a combination of these functions. Surely you would agree that the unfit are weeded (filtered) out and that those fit to survive in any give environment do indeed survive? When I say “NS” I am talking about this filtration process. I am also asking “is a filter creative or is it just a filter?” Along with this I am asking is randomness creative?
Filtration and reproduction can certainly explain “micro-evolution” but can it explain “macroevolution?” It seems tome that all of the mechanism given (by Darwinists) are random wrt the design (configurational/informational) needs of new species (new biological configurations).
Hope this helps
Just in case anyone is still perusing this thread, Simmons comments on his debate with PZ Myers here.