John A. (Salty) Davison - The Case For Instant Evolution

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Isn't it interesting that, excepting his own material and Engle, the most recent source dates back to 1973. And apparently he doesn;t even know that the time factor in evolution is needed for mutations to spread and accumulate - not for a single mutation to appear in a single individual.

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At the TalkOrigins board, he has written - and reiterated - that population genetics has nothing to do with evolution. Said it is a "smokescreen."

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Might a "hopeful monster" occasionly be able to happen, and to be able to reproduce? In other words, might a small genetic change result in a rather substantial change in body morphology? An instance of very quick "punk eek"?

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Sure. But the mere "birth" of a hopeful monster does not evolution make. As Paul mentions, it would first have to spread through/establish a population. Hopeful monsters are born not too rarely, but they seldom establish themselves. One needs the right circumstances.On another issue, chromosome polymorphisms do not necessarily result in speciation. I had posted some citations refuting Ilion's claims (which, of course, went ignored) in which it was observed that some species of horse can possess and pass on polymorphic n-number of chromosomes.

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But isn't that supposition of Darwinists about the time it takes for a mutation to spread, and the time it takes for a mutation to happen that contributes to reproduction, simply wrong?

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No.

Interesting discussion cropping up on the manifesto here. Interesting is the post by Charlie D....

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Many of the comments indicate that the senders are not familiar with my other papers. I recommend going to my home page Retired Service | The University of Vermont If this message gets through I will try to play catch-up with some of the comments. salty

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http://EvC Forum: Terry at the Talk Origins board -->EvC Forum: Terry at the Talk Origins boardSorry, salty, I don't think your TalkOrigin's tactics will work very well here. You see, here there are several professional scientists. There are no overconfident "darwin attackers" like Ilion or know-nothings like Terry to offer virtual back pats to you. We can handle actual, non-censored, non-filtered disussion here.[This message has been edited by SLPx, 03-19-2003]

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It is true that I have described population genetics as a "smokescreen". It is without foundation to assume populations are important in evolution. All genetic changes, evolutionary or not, result from changes of the genetic potential of individual organisms.

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Hi John,
I can understand why Judy van Houten would be uncomfortable with you after reading this. It is absurd on the face of it. Of course genetic changes take place in individuals. This is no revelation, and if you think it is, I suggest you become familiar with the writings of population geneticists. However, single 'mutant' individuals do not a new species make, whether we are talking gain, loss, or rearrangement of information. This should be fairly obvious. In order for there to be speciation, the 'mutant' must be able to reproduce and pass on its' traits. That is, its complement of unique alleles must get 'spread out' in a pre-existing population, or it must establish a new population of its own (hard to do, I would imagine). Thus, of course evolution and population genetics are intertwined. I am flabbergasted that you can, apparently with conviction, utterly deny so self-evident a fact.

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If a new life form can reproduce it will. It is as simple as that.

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That is right. And what do the individuals that result from this reproduction become part of? Why, a population.

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Most important, all macroevolution has apparently stopped, a conclusion reached by Robert Broom, Julian Huxley, Pierre Grasse and myself.

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Please define for us 'macroevolution.'

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We are faced then with trying to reconstruct how evolution did occur. That is the substance of the semi-meiotic hypothesis which I first proposed in 1984. I still adhere to it as the only apparent alternative to Darwinian gradualism. I also am both a Creationist and an Evolutionist. It is only from this dual perspective that one can possibly deal with Intelligent Design. I particularly recommend my 2000 paper "Ontogeny, Phylogeny and the Origin of Biological Information". Sorry I couldn't respond sooner but I had a problem with my password. salty

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Your essay was nearly devoid of convincing scientific discourse. It consists primarily of unsupported assertion.
The only times you mention 'biological information' is to claim that it already existed and that 'no new information' is added or needed.
For example, you ask the rhetorical question:"...What is the origin of the preexisting information?"But you do not even attempt to answer. Following this question, you launch into a spiel about how God might fit into the picture. You write in the conclusion to this essay:"I find it fascinating that it is the physicists who postulate God while biologists typically remain atheists or agnostics."after having cited Einstein's famous quip about God not playing dice. I suggest you lookinto Einstein's other writings to discover what he really meant. Einstein was certainly do theist.Your essay amounts to little more than the usual anti-Darwinist fare. Some wild extrapolation, attempted argument from (dubious) authority, and assertion.Not impressed.

Why do you assume that I am a "Darwinist"? Frankly, I do not even know what a "Darwinist" is. Maybe you can define it for us, Moose?

Admin,To salty, a radical anti-'Darwinist' (which we now see defined as anyone that does not agree with salty, for the most part) deserves to be insulted and therefore, insults are not really insults.I hope that clears things up.I was disappointed, however, that salty continues to claim that he wrote a "detailed" paper about biological information.
I read and critiqued some of it already.His "detailed" analysis of biological information was to claim that it was already there, as if by magic.Such is the science of the anti-"Darwian."[This message has been edited by SLPx, 03-20-2003]

I wonder - did Broom, Huxley, and Grasse also think that population genetics were irrelevant to evolution, like l;ike-minded anti-Darwinian salty insists?

..."armchair theoreticians like Sewell Wright, Sir Ronald Fisher, and J.B.S. Haldane"Am I the only one that is shaking my head in disgust and disbelief?Admonish away, Admin, but this is pure crankery at its finest....From an article by Gardner in SciAm:

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(2) "A second characteristic of the pseudo-scientist, which greatly strengthens his isolation, is a tendency toward paranoia," which manifests itself in several ways:

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(1) He considers himself a genius. (2) He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads.... (3) He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against. The recognized societies refuse to let him lecture. The journals reject his papers and either ignore his books or assign them to "enemies" for review. It is all part of a dastardly plot. It never occurs to the crank that this opposition may be due to error in his work.... (4) He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest scientists and the best-established theories. When Newton was the outstanding name in physics, eccentric works in that science were violently anti-Newton. Today, with Einstein the father-symbol of authority, a crank theory of physics is likely to attack Einstein.... (5) He often has a tendency to write in a complex jargon, in many cases making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined.

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I was referring to the time it takes for a particular genetic change (mutation) to take place.

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And of what relevance is that to whether or not 'Darwinism' has merit?

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I know this sounds crazy but "instant speciation" is precisely what the semi-meiotic hypothesis predicts.

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Yes, that does sound crazy. How do these mutations - which take a few seconds to physiucally occur in the germline - persist if not by spreading throughout a population?[This message has been edited by SLPx, 03-20-2003]

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I agree that the notion of information being present from the beginning of evolution does seem like magic. That does not mean that it is magic.

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And yet you have offered no explanation whatsoever about where this 'original' information came from. Do you have one?

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Is it any more magical than the obvious realtiy that all of the information necessary to produce a unique human being is contained in a single cell, the fertilized egg?

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That is not magic. That is simple biology. That 'information' comes form the two parents. That is hardly analogous to where the 'original' information came from. On this, you are empirically silent.

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I don't think so and Robert DeHaan and Phillip Engle agree with me.

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And the fact that you and two "Intelligent Design" advocates agree is supposed to mean what, exactly? This reminds me of Dembski boasting about all of the accolades on his books' dust jackets. Looking at them, they are all from Discovery Institute fellows (to which Dembski belongs).

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Also, if I have now earned the right to be insulted, lay on. I'm a tough old bird!!

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Marginalized because of your obvious dearth of knowledge of the field of evolutionary biology, yes, insulted, no. I'm afraid that is your area of expertise.

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I specifically indicated in my Ontogeny paper that the information for both ontogeny and phylogeny may have been present from near the beginning of each process. I also indicated that "something or someone must have put it there" or words to that effect. Information must have a source.

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Yes, and Kimura demonstrated in 1961 that information can be added to genomes by mutation and selection.Continuing to ignore the published literature is not the act of someone trying to fing the 'truth.'

I don't think anyone cares what DeHaan and pals thinks. They are not here to discuss YOUR assertions, YOU are, and, of course, they are are just other anti-'Darwinists.'You can stand by your claims all you want, the fact is, many of them have already been shown to be false or unwarranted extrapolations, if not somewhat bizarre.And again with the "yeah, but what aboiut the fertilized egg?" spiel. Yes, we all realize that 'all the information' for an adult resides in an egg, and yes, we all know where that information comes from. But you are making an erroneous analogy.Work on it.[This message has been edited by SLPx, 03-21-2003]

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Okay, I can see a good spamming coming from SLPx and others for defending PB

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Spamming? No - he needs all the help he can get. Professional help, I believe...