TOE and the Reasons for Doubt

John Sanford's qualifications place him in the former category. (!)Edited by Kaichos Man, : No reason given.

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

I'm amazed you like anything about it. After all, it commits the cardinal sin of having a target: METHINKS IT IS A WEASEL. You pointed out to me very forcefully that evolution cannot have a target. Remember? When I was silly enough to suggest the target of my theoretical model was the creation of a gene related to the antenna of a fruitfly?Evolution has no target! Absolutely. And at least Dawkins was honest enough to admit that it didn't model biological evolution. As you said, a toy.

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

...plays a very minor role in molecular evolution, as empirically demonstrated by Motoo Kimura. Far more important is genetic drift, ensuring "survival of the luckiest" (Kimura's words).

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

Dawkins was trying to illustrate that what might be impossible by random mutation alone becomes possible when you apply the principle of natural selection.To do this he had to use a TARGET which was "METHINKS IT IS A WEASEL" and the fact that evolution cannot have a TARGET is the little hidey-hole you bolted down in order to evade the impossibility of evolving a gene. Evolution is random, remember? It isn't trying to build anything. It can't have a TARGET.Unless you are Richard Dawkins, of course.The only difference between Dawkins programme and my example is that one came from an evolutionist, one from a Creationist. Ergo, it is a matter of faith and doctrine for an atheist that you support the former and condemn the latter. Edited by Kaichos Man, : No reason given.Edited by Kaichos Man, : No reason given.

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

I have no doubt that you've read it. But you obviously didn't understand it:"The Neutral theory asserts that the great majority of evolutionary changes at the molecular level, as revealed by comparative studies of Protein and DNA sequences, are caused not by Darwinian selection but by random drift of selectively neutral or nearly neutral mutants."Motoo Kimura, The Neutral Theory of Evolution

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

I feel very, very dubious about this answer, Percey. If you can say "the principle of successive selection is best illustrated with a single specific target", why can't I say "the problem of specificity from randomness is best illustrated with a single specific target"?Would my example have been valid had I used letters and a target phrase, rather than theoretical mutations and a theoretical gene sequence?I appreciate that my example was designed to more closely approximate biological evolution than that of Dawkins. But I don't agree -particularly if we are calculating the probability of a past event- that it is invalid to use a target. The fruitfly got his antenna. The gene does exist. There is a calculable probability to that. It remains unaffected by the idea that the fruitfly may have got something else.

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

The fact remains that Kimura showed from observed data that natural selection plays only a minor role in molecular evolution.Edited by Kaichos Man, : No reason given.

Exactly. Whereas my example was designed to prove that you can't get from here to there. But when I put it forward, everyone shouts: "you're not allowed to have a "there!"As I said to Percy, perhaps the trick is to reconstruct the example using letters and a target phrase.

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

"The Neutral theory asserts that the great majority of evolutionary changes at the molecular level, as revealed by comparative studies of Protein and DNA sequences, are caused not by Darwinian selection but by random drift of selectively neutral or nearly neutral mutants." Motoo KimuraIf, according to Kimura, the great majority of evolutionary changes at the molecular level are caused by drift, what kind of role does that leave Darwinian selection?Minor, perhaps?

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin