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Author | Topic: Criticizing neo-Darwinism | |||||||||||||||||||
PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote: I can't find any reference to Goldschmidt in Eldredge & Gould's 1972 paper. They do refer to one saltationist - de Vries - but state that his ideas "collapsed" when neo-Darwinism took over. Eldredge and Gould firmly state that their beliefs are based on Mayr's theory of allopatric speciation in the original paper.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote: Which definition of IC ? Behe's original version, Dembski's modified version of that or Behe's later definition (which s almost completely different and never adequately quantified). And if the assessment of the probabilities is not yours, then whose is it ?e
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
OK, so your claim does not directly follow from the definition.
So, I must repeat the second question. If the probability assessment is not yours where did it come from ? From my own work in developing software (which could be considered a form of "descent with modification") I find that a sequence of simple changes, if continued, tends to produce complexity all too easily. Part of the discipline is attempting to forsee likely changes and preparing for them - and trying to avoid unnecessary complexity when changes are made. It can be hard work, as programs get extended and expanded. On older programs it is too often the case that an apparently reasonable change will have unforseen side-effects as a result. It seems to me that your claim about the probability reflects Behe's error of thinking about how designers work instead of thinking about about how evolution works. If a designer intended to achieve a particular result then they work directly towards it. But evolution is not working towards a particular goal and it does not care about taking a direct route. Thus, instead of looking at the direct route and arguing that since it is problematic evolution must have great difficulty producing this result - instead you must look at all the possible routes form your starting point and sum their probabilities. Worse still for your argument, even if that probability still comes out low, it wuld have to be a virtual impossiiblity for it to matter. There are many possible tracks for evolution. Some involve this species evolving diffeent mechanisms - which may well be irreducibly complex. Or the species might go extinct and a different species from a different lineage evolves to occupy the niche - and that, too, might include the development of irreducibly complex features. Looking at a single example is like looking at the result of 100 consecutive tosses of a coin - and arguing that since the sequence is improbable (p < 10^-30) it cannot be the case that it was produced by tossing coins.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
Th "assessment of pprobabilities" referred to is the one that you claimed was the result of the definition of IC in Message 52. You claim that is isn't yours but so far I have seen no source for it and this is the second time you have refused to give one.
And while you may consider my point "hilarious" that is because you are missigg the point that the complexity is an unwanted byproduvt of modifying the system - that it is produced in spite of the best efforts of the writer's intelligence. not as a dire ct result of them. If you accept that evolution can modify systems to work in different ways then why should it not produce complexity in an analagous way ? And if you can't remember the context of the discussion you could always follow the links back t o see what you wrote. I shouldn't have to remind you of the content of your own posts. And the IC argument is not based on neo-Darwinism for the reasons I gave. It implicitly relies on the fallacious assumption that evolution is goal-directed, an assumption that is directly contrary to neo-Darwinian theory.. As for your own view on the matter I remind you of Message 11 This message has been edited by PaulK, 03-25-2006 10:03 AM
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
Your arguments are becoming increasingly bizarre.
quote: Neo-Darwinism doesn't assume that the second case doesn't or cannot happen. If it is ignored it is ignored because it does not result in evolutionary change and is irrelevant to the actual study in question.
quote: But not a conscious decision to select for a trait. Rather a sexual preference appears in a population and spreads (without intention) and that this results in more selection (which can be no more intentional than the existence of the sexual preference). Only if you assume that the sexula preference itself is intentional - and indeed intended to produce a selective effect - could your objection make sense. But I see no reason to assume that peahens deliberately bred their species to foster showy tails in peacocks, because I see no reason to assume that they are mentally capable of making such a decision. But that is what your objection - if it were taken seriosuly - would entail.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
Whether the deer move noeth or not is outside of the theory. On he behavioural side it mgight fall within the theory given sufficient information about the past - but whether it is geograpically possible for the deer to move north or not is clearyl outside of evolutionary theory.
quote: Of course the theory does, but it simply isn't interested in that case, because so far as the theory is concerned it is the environment that is important, not the geographical location of that environment. This is not a "fudge factor" as you call it - it is a simple recognition that what you decribe is a null case so far as the theory is concerned.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
I followed your link. I read your comments. You deserved to be banned.
OFF TOPIC - Please Do Not Respond to this message or continue in this vein. Take comments to the Moderation Thread. AdminPD Edited by AdminPD, : Warning
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
No, it's against the rules to be an abusive twit. And that is exactly what you were doing.
It's not your opinions it's your behaviour.
OFF TOPIC - Please Do Not Respond to this message or continue in this vein. Take comments to the Moderation Thread. AdminPD Edited by AdminPD, : Warning
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
quote: You have missed - again - the nature of taxonomy. The origins of the orders are only a part of the story. We also need a significant degree of diversification for these groups to reach the level of orders. And you haven't dealt with that at all. Indeed - as Quetzal points out - evolution did NOT end there - the paper shows that evolution continued. So we clearly see who is relying on fancies.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
Looks to me as if the idea has similarities to transposons and "duplication and divergence".
The biggest issue to me is that the gene would have to be reactivated before it was hopelessly corrupted - and offer some benefit. I'd guess that the odds of that happening in any individual case are low so we would need a lot of pseudogenes for this to be a major contributor to evolutionary change. My initial assessment is that it is something that might happen on rare occasions but it isn't of any great significance.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
The other part is also a bit dodgy. It seems to argue that species will tend to generalise. But as far as I can see there is no such tendency. Specialisation is common - as would be expected given conventional theory.
(As I understand it, specialists can be very successful in the short term - relatively speaking - but are more vulnerable to disasters or environmental change. So that there is, if anything, a tendency to specialise balanced by more frequent extinction of specialised species).
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