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Author Topic:   Does the Darwinian theory require modification or replacement?
bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2476 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 69 of 760 (609501)
03-20-2011 10:39 PM
Reply to: Message 66 by shadow71
03-20-2011 7:17 PM


Blind design and engineering.
shadow71 writes:
blind undirected selection....
In our language, nature can design, direct, guide, determine, select, choose, create, favour, engineer, abhor, and do many other things all of them blindly. Mutations modify individual organisms, and environments select them, as well as directing/guiding the evolutionary paths of groups of organisms. Together, they re-design groups, creating/engineering new species. None of the verbs imply teleology.
If an individual genome has the characteristic of reacting to stress in a way that appears to be well designed to increase the chances of a positive adaptive mutation, that advantageous characteristic would have been selected for in the past. Variation in the places, types and rates of mutation are themselves subject to selection, and that is why it is not surprising to see modern organisms that are well designed to adapt. They are the descendants of good adaptors in an ever changing world which has selected for evolvability and adaptability themselves.
To confuse things further on randomness, the fact that mutations happen in all species and are passed on is in itself not random. If a genome managed to repair all mutations, that would be the genome of a species headed for extinction as the world changes and it has no way of adapting. So, the tendency to mutate is itself determined by nature and has been favoured by her. Blindly.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 66 by shadow71, posted 03-20-2011 7:17 PM shadow71 has not replied

bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2476 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 83 of 760 (609588)
03-21-2011 2:55 PM
Reply to: Message 82 by jar
03-21-2011 2:19 PM


Eh?
jar writes:
There is more. Using a term like "sentient" to describe biological, chemical and physics processes is simply a perversion of the English language.
Are you sure? Not all English speakers are dualists.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 82 by jar, posted 03-21-2011 2:19 PM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 84 by jar, posted 03-21-2011 2:59 PM bluegenes has replied

bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2476 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 86 of 760 (609594)
03-21-2011 3:15 PM
Reply to: Message 84 by jar
03-21-2011 2:59 PM


Re: Eh?
jar writes:
Yup. At the molecular level there is no equipment to be sentient.
You said:
Using a term like "sentient" to describe biological, chemical and physics processes is simply a perversion of the English language.
I didn't see any specification of any level in that sentence.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 84 by jar, posted 03-21-2011 2:59 PM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 87 by Granny Magda, posted 03-21-2011 3:26 PM bluegenes has replied
 Message 88 by jar, posted 03-21-2011 3:34 PM bluegenes has replied

bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2476 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 89 of 760 (609598)
03-21-2011 3:44 PM
Reply to: Message 87 by Granny Magda
03-21-2011 3:26 PM


Re: Eh?
Granny Magda writes:
Hi bluegenes,
I see where you're coming from, but I still think that Shapiro's use of language is deeply misleading.
I agree. But so was jar's. And if we're going to make the point about Shapiro, it doesn't help if we exhibit the same level of sloppiness.
GM writes:
Dualist, materialist, whatever, it is just silly and misleading to use the same term for feedback mechanisms in the cell as we use for the activity of an entire brain. I certainly don't think that he is using the word in the way that most people would understand it.
I agree. He's misleading. I'm happy with the phrase natural engineering, because I'm happy with nature designing and selecting, which she does. Blindly. But not with sentient single cells!
GM writes:
Interestingly, this would seem to be a far bigger problem for shadow than for nay materialist. I always thought that Catholics regarded sentience as some sort of special quality, which needed the intervention of God. If we accept Shapiro's usage, then a mere assemblage of genetic regulatory systems are sentient. That seems to argue as much against the need for a divine origin for sentience as it argues for it.
Indeed. It would be far more in keeping with eastern religions and philosophies, like Jainism, in which cells would be sentient and eternally recycled, but there's no creator god. Maybe Shadow should consider conversion.

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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2476 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 91 of 760 (609602)
03-21-2011 3:52 PM
Reply to: Message 88 by jar
03-21-2011 3:34 PM


Re: Eh?
jar writes:
And we were discussing cellular and genetic changes. No brain there.
Yes, we were. And your sentence expanded the discussion to "biological, chemical and physics processes". Here it is again. It is wrong.
jar writes:
Using a term like "sentient" to describe biological, chemical and physics processes is simply a perversion of the English language.
Here's a correction:
Using a term like "sentient" to describe biological, chemical and physics processes is simply not a perversion of the English language.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 88 by jar, posted 03-21-2011 3:34 PM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 92 by jar, posted 03-21-2011 3:58 PM bluegenes has replied

bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2476 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 93 of 760 (609604)
03-21-2011 4:04 PM
Reply to: Message 92 by jar
03-21-2011 3:58 PM


Re: Eh?
jar writes:
Utter nonsense. Sorry but that is simply silly. Go play with Straggler.
Was that meant to be an adult argument in defense of this sentence?
jar writes:
Using a term like "sentient" to describe biological, chemical and physics processes is simply a perversion of the English language.
Do you know of a source of sentience other than "biological, chemical and physical processes"?

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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2476 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 98 of 760 (609622)
03-21-2011 6:19 PM
Reply to: Message 96 by shadow71
03-21-2011 5:31 PM


Intelligently designed plasticity.
shadow71 writes:
After 2 years of reading everything I could I came to the opinion that random mutation and natural selection were not the cause or evolutionm as per the Darwinian theory.
There had to be some better explanation.
There are plenty of people who think that there's more to evolution "random mutation and natural selection" alone.
There's one thing that I'd like to ask. You seem to see ways that genomes themselves can react to environmental stimuli as in some way indicative of teleology. What I was wondering was whether you see the same thing in phenotypic plasticity, which you must have known about before you found out that genomes can be directly effected by environmental factors.
Do you see teleology behind phenotypic plasticity, or do you think that it can be produced by variation and natural selection?
I ask because you might see it as organisms engineering themselves.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 96 by shadow71, posted 03-21-2011 5:31 PM shadow71 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 102 by shadow71, posted 03-21-2011 7:51 PM bluegenes has replied

bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2476 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 105 of 760 (609635)
03-21-2011 8:13 PM
Reply to: Message 102 by shadow71
03-21-2011 7:51 PM


Re: Intelligently designed plasticity.
shadow71 writes:
I really can't answer that question. I am not a scientist. I read the papers of scientists, and draw conclusions from them. I have no idea what phenotypic plasticity is and would need cites to some papers so I could read them and then give you an answer.
Phenotypic plasticity is the ability of organisms to change their phenotypes (the physical way they are) without changes on the genome. For example, there are snails which, when attacked by crabs, will develop thicker shells due to the attack. There are aphids which, if the plant that they are on starts to get too crowded, will sprout wings in reaction to the situation so as to move to different plants.
Amongst plants it is common. The same plants with the same genomes will grow in different ways according to their environments. Our own most striking example is the ability to tan if exposed to the sun, which provides protection. Other animals will put on thick fur coats in reaction to the cold, and moult in the summer.
So, do you see what I'm getting at? These ways that organisms can adjust themselves to external stimuli could be seen as "self-engineering", just like what we've been discussing in relation to genotypes. That was why I was wondering why you wouldn't latch on to these as indications of teleology in biological systems.
What do you think?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 102 by shadow71, posted 03-21-2011 7:51 PM shadow71 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 128 by shadow71, posted 03-22-2011 7:22 PM bluegenes has not replied

bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2476 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 126 of 760 (609711)
03-22-2011 2:43 PM
Reply to: Message 102 by shadow71
03-21-2011 7:51 PM


Sentient Cells and the human being delusion.
shadow71 writes:
That there is decision making in the cells and that leads me to the conclusion that evolution is planned. It is carried out by natural means, but not directed by natural means.
Shapiro is talking about it being directed by natural means, and so is Wright. I think you may be getting a bit over excited by expressions like "natural engineering" which, like "natural selection", has nothing to do with teleology.
But particularly, I think you may have been carried away by Shapiro's description of cells as sentient.
Apart from eastern philosophers, the people most likely to describe single cells as "sentient" are ultra-reductionist - materialists. They are not seeing any magic here at all.
Here's a paper from another biologist putting forward the hypothesis of single cell sentience (and consciousness) in neurones.
Jonathan Edwards on single cell sentience.
And here's a little piece from him that might illustrate for you what I mean by "ultra-reductionists", and will show you where he's coming from.
The human being delusion
quote:
Almost all scientists, apparently including Dawkins, believe in something that could be called a 'sentient human being', despite the fact that William James pointed out 100 years ago that such a suggestion is incompatible with science, or even with rational thought. The reasons are given on the linked webpages [see above]. Very briefly, human beings are colonies of cells and everything we know about these cells is that they have separate inputs of information about the world. They cannot have combined sentience for information that is only available to one or other of them. They could only be sentient separately. And there is no published reason why this should not be the case (to my knowledge) however surprising this might at first appear. I would suggest that to get a full perspective on the God Delusion it may be handy to see the full absurdity of the Human Being Delusion; they may be closely linked.
Dr. Jonathan Edwards, University College, London.
Be wary about basing your religious ideas about life on the language of biologists. It's not only that they might not believe in your God, they might not even believe in you.

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 Message 102 by shadow71, posted 03-21-2011 7:51 PM shadow71 has replied

Replies to this message:
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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2476 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 169 of 760 (609988)
03-25-2011 10:27 AM
Reply to: Message 166 by NoNukes
03-25-2011 7:42 AM


Re: Dr. Wright's conclusion
I can't be the only one on this thread getting a deja vu impression from the Wright paper. Message 25
Yes, she concludes that the mechanism would have faced positive selection.

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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2476 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


(1)
Message 203 of 760 (610248)
03-28-2011 5:47 PM
Reply to: Message 202 by Wounded King
03-28-2011 5:07 PM


Re: The modern synthesis is not modern
Wounded King writes:
I tend to use modern evolutionary theory,....
Me too, but, as you say:
WK writes:
......but that is very easily confused with the modern synthesis.
So, we could use "current evolutionary theory". That way, we can never go wrong, whenever we're speaking. It's eternal.

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Replies to this message:
 Message 206 by New Cat's Eye, posted 03-28-2011 8:20 PM bluegenes has replied

bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2476 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 209 of 760 (610266)
03-28-2011 9:24 PM
Reply to: Message 206 by New Cat's Eye
03-28-2011 8:20 PM


Re: The modern synthesis is not modern
Catholic Scientist writes:
Until enough time passes and then they start referring to "Current Evolutionary Theory" as that of the 2010's....
We (or future generations) just tell them to bugger off and look up "current" in their dictionaries.
CS writes:
The creationists could still be saying that evolution needs to be replaced just like the OP.
Its inexcapable.
If they say "evolution needs to be replaced" they would be asking for a fact to be replaced, not a theory. But I know what you mean.
The full technical title of the Current Theory is "The Evolving and Ever Current Theory of Biological Evolution". It is self-replacing.

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 Message 206 by New Cat's Eye, posted 03-28-2011 8:20 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 218 by New Cat's Eye, posted 03-29-2011 10:18 AM bluegenes has replied
 Message 233 by shadow71, posted 04-02-2011 1:10 PM bluegenes has replied

bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2476 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 212 of 760 (610320)
03-29-2011 4:21 AM
Reply to: Message 211 by Dr Adequate
03-29-2011 12:00 AM


Long and short scales.
Dr Adequate writes:
NB: We don't. I've never seen any British person use the supposedly British system.
The Long Scale is commonly used on the continent. It was official here in my childhood, although I vaguely remember being taught about both. Then our politicians really showed their class. They joined us to the E.E.C. in 1973, and in 1974 switched from the scale best understood by the other Europeans to the Short Scale!*
*I know it's off topic, Moose, but I kept it brief.

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Replies to this message:
 Message 213 by Wounded King, posted 03-29-2011 4:49 AM bluegenes has replied

bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2476 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 217 of 760 (610334)
03-29-2011 7:11 AM
Reply to: Message 213 by Wounded King
03-29-2011 4:49 AM


Re: God save our gracious Queen ...(kick donkey,).
That's what we call a kick-donkey comment, mate. Tell colonial traitor Ken Ham:
Milliards of years*
Actually, we can blame the French for all the confusion. And the short scale use in America was started by Brits (early eighteenth century) long before Uncle Sam was born.
chelle longue / chelle courte
*A search for "millions of years" gives over 5,000 results on AiG. Talk about obsession!

This message is a reply to:
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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2476 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 219 of 760 (610409)
03-29-2011 4:58 PM
Reply to: Message 218 by New Cat's Eye
03-29-2011 10:18 AM


Intelligently designed to evolve.
Catholic Scientist writes:
Some of them just think its "incomplete"...
And I think this is what the OP is getting at. That there's some, uh... "freaky" mechanism in this natural genetic engineering that the current, heh, or modern, evolutionary theory is not accounting for.
Oh, and that's where God probably is...
Well, exactly. We've had several threads like this with different I.D. types getting excited about possible reactions in the genome to the environment. The irony is that what's being described is actually a natural facilitator of adaption and evolution. Increasingly, we're getting people who are "detecting" designed evolution.
Further up the thread, I asked the O.P. why he didn't see phenotypic plasticity as a sign of his God. They take that for granted, because it's so common and easily observed, but they could just as well see magic in those reactions to external stimuli.
Why aren't our cells being intelligent when they tan to protect their DNA? It's "clever" and advantageous, therefore God.
Actually later, he did bring up "root brains", which is plant plasticity.

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