Nuclear Evolution Debate
This page is for an as-yet-to-be-named person from Panda’s Thumb to present all the evidence, predictions, and repeatable tests that neoDarwinian theory has to support the hypothesis of random mutation + natural selection being the mechanism underlying the evolution of the eukaryote nucleus from a prokaryote ancestor. “Whoever” will then fisk the presentation in an attempt to show that NDE’s claim is entirely vacuous. I don’t expect there will be any volunteers from Panda’s Thumb and that’s okay too because it will show they can’t even begin to make a reasonable argument in support of a neoDarwinian mechanism for this crucial event in the evolution of life.
The challenge was made here.
I await.
Actually, I think this conversation started with something I said on PT in regard to scientific theories being evaluated according to their predictive power. I said that I couldn’t find a lot of predictive power in ID and asked if anyone had any examples. You responded with:
“ID predicts that no matter how many generations of bacteria you culture you’ll never get one with a nucleus. They will remain bacteria forever.”
You had me intrigued with that statement, but without explaining that or waiting for comment, your next sentence was this counter-challenge to neoDarwinism. I think both are interesting questions, but in the process I lost my chance at finding out how ID arrives at your conclusion.
I have read a lot of ID literature, but I don’t remember an argument that gets you from the notion of a Designer to a prohibition on bacteria appearing with a nucleus. I know its difficult to provide proof, so I am just asking for the logic that leads to that prediction.
Secondly, I would glad to spend some time here on your challenge regarding neoDarwinism’s ability to predict bacteria evolving a nucleus. Thanks for the opportunity.
Chiefley
Response was here. Prima facie evidence of why whoever wanted a change of venue. –moderator
I have already established beyond any reasonable doubt that NO ONE with ANY hypothesis for the MECHANISM of organic change was willing to present his version when I instituted the First Annual Tournament of Evolutionary Hypotheses (FATEH) on my blog – prescribedevolution.blogspot.com/
After 473 posts still NOBODY has surfaced, absolutely no one. There is only one formal conclusion that can be drawn from this experiment. I am the only living soul within the range of cybershot who is willing to stand by what he has published. There is not a living Darwinian who will admit to being a Darwinian. That includes their most famous living hero Sir Richard Dawkins who didn’t even have the common decency to acknowledge my personal invitation. Indeed it was only a pair of antiDarwinians that even bothered to respond, Michael Behe and Jonathan Wells, both of whom were too busy with more important matters to take the time to present a 500 word summary of their convictions, assuming of course that they even had any.
How can such a situation exist? I will now tell you exactly why. It is because I am the only poor misguided soul in the whole world who is convinced he is on the right track with his version of the mechanism of organic change. EVERYBODY else must realize that they either have no hypothesis at all or are so insecure about the one they do have that they refuse to expose themselves to the cold facts revealed by the fossil record and the experimental laboratory.
Now there is nothing new about this bizarre phenomenon. The Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis (PEH) is firmly based on the work of about a half dozen of some of the greatest minds of the past 150 years, not one of whom has been properly acknowledged by the ruling hegemony known as the Darwinian establishment. I, like all of them, simply do not exist. You will find none of us in the works of the Darwinian spokespersons or if you do it will be for some trivial contribution which had nothing to do with the central question which has always been the MECHANISM for organic change. A good example is Sir Richard Dawkins congratulating William Bateson for his work on homeosis or S.J. Gould, after recognizing Otto Schindewolf as the greatest paleontologist of his day following that with the snide comment that all of his evolutionary conclusions were “spectacularly flawed.” Both Bateson and Schindewolf had dismissed the Darwinian model as useless as did Grasse, Broom, Osborn, Petrunkevitch, Berg, Punnett, Goldschmidt and God only knows how many others both before and since. The destruction of the Darwinian fairy tale began with Mivart 12 years after the publication of Darwin’s opus minimus and has continued unabated right to the present. Failure to acknowledge this continuing mayhem has been a scandal unprecedented in the history of science dwarfing both the Phlogiston of Chemistry and the Ether of Experimental Physics.
There is a simple reason we several scientists (I am one no matter what you may hear to the contrary) have been deliberately and cynically ignored. It can be summarized in a single word – fear, fear that if we were allowed to exist that it would destroy the reputations of all those whose pride would not permit them to acknowledge that they had dedicated their entire professional lives to a myth. Don’t you ever question that they don’t know they are through because they do. They have always known it but, like the congenital intellectual cowards that they all are, they are unable to admit as William Bateson, one of the great minds of evolutionary science, was so willing to do:
“that it was a mistake to have committed his life to Mendelism, that it was a blind alley which would not throw any light on the differentiation of species nor on evolution in general.”
My contribution and unforgivable sin has simply been to integrate the conclusions of my predecessors into a coherent, rational form which could be presented as an alternative to both the Lamarckian and Darwinian mythologies. I have done so. Where are my published critics? I will answer that question too. They don’t exist either just as they never existed when confronted by those that made my work possible. It is a miracle. Darwinism exists because it has neither supporters nor critics. It is a law unto itself not to be either challenged nor accepted. Like gravity, it just is! I wish I could say I was kidding but I can’t.
Now I challenge the denizens of “Esley Welsberry’s Neighborhood Bar and Grill” to reprint this post in it verbatim entirety on its by far most popular thread, the “Uncommon Pissant” one, the one that has thousands of views, the one that most perfectly demonstrates the collective “groupthink” character of the membership of Panda’s Thumb, the last bastion of Darwinian mysticism. I’ll be looking for it and if it isn’t there I will be asking why.
I love it so!
Maybe you can convince the author of this Nature article into entertaining your challenge. It gives his email address on that link.
I would like to see this debate happen. Perhaps, the challenge needs to be reposted, but as a primary thread (if possible) at P’Thumb.
It would seem that the several appeals to endosymbiosis are evidence that neo-Darwinian evolution is not the only tool in the toolbox for explaining life’s origins. For the time between abiogenesis and LUCA, in this reading, there was no step-by-step series of point mutations that brought us on a trajectory from the first replicator through prokaryotes to eukaryotes.
We must respect Lynn Margulis for forcing gene transfer onto the attention of the scientific commuinity – straight ahead RM + NS might not be a great driver of increased complexity. Rather it might be that viri, parasites/symbionts and physical changes in the Earth (plate tectonics, Milankovitch cycles) that are the drivers.