Criticizing neo-Darwinism

RAZD has already posted an excellent detailed reply to your message, so I'll just respond to this: Based just upon the picture at http://www.amnh.org/.../Treasures/Evolution_of_Horses/horses.html?50, I don't think it's possible to tell if the original order was wrong, or if it was just incomplete. But the accompanying article clearly explains that the difference has nothing to do with order, it has to do with descent. First it says that the evolution of the horse was originally presented as a single line of progression: But we now know that horse evolution is much more complex, as the AMNH website goes on to explain: In other words, what was wrong with the original presentation wasn't the order. What was wrong was that the original progression was not actually a line of descent at all. The order was correct if you're simply going by age of first appearance in the fossil record, but the first pre-horse in the progression was not the ancestor of the second pre-horse in the progression. And the second pre-horse in the progression was not the ancestor of the third pre-horse in the progression, and so forth. Certainly they were all evolutionary cousins, but they did not represent a direct evolutionary line of descent.If someone were to present a direct line of descent for your family, it might consist of your great-great grandfather followed by your great grandfather followed by your grandfather followed by your father followed by you. But let's say your family historians had fallen down on the job, and so there were many blanks in your family history, and so they instead presented as a direct line of descent your great-great grandfather's cousin three times removed followed by your actual great grandfather followed by your grandfather's cousin four times removed followed by your uncle followed by you. That definitely is not a direct line of descent, and it is analogous to the original presentation - the order was correct, but it was not a direct line of descent.It can be difficult to describe why the implications on evolutionary theory of changes to reconstructions of evolutionary descent is virtually nil. The theory of evolution, by which I mean the theory itself which describes how life changes over time due to mutation and natural selection, is unaffected by such changes. If we uncover enough horse fossils to eventually ferret out some direct lines of evolutionary descent, then that is consistent with the theory of evolution. If we never identify any direct lines of descent, then that, too, is consistent with the theory of evolution. The theory itself says nothing about the availability of evidence or our ability to properly interpret it.The theory of evolution, like all theories, is an interpretational framework in which to view evidence. The theory was originally formulated from evidence pieced together by Darwin and Wallace, but once accepted it became the interpretational framework within which new evidence was viewed. Scientists attempt to fit new evidence into the framework of the theory of evolution, and so far this has been a relatively easy task. The revelations have come in the form of just what mutation and natural selection are capable of doing, not in any fundamental changes to evolutionary theory itself.Creationists usually challenge the theory of evolution by looking for evidence that doesn't fit within its framework. The fossil evidence of horses is not such evidence, since it fits easily within an evolutionary framework. If horse evolution provided any revelations, it was that as we uncovered more and more of the fossil evidence we found that horse evolution was far more complex than the original fossil collection hinted at.--Percy

Evolution proposes these niches were filled by the observed processes of descent with modification and natural selection. What processes do you believe filled these niches, what is the evidence for them, and have they ever been observed?You see, John Davison fails to convince anyone because he's unable to muster any evidence supporting his views. We don't accept an evolutionary framework because it's the one that appeals to us most. We accept it because it's the one best supported by the evidence. What evidence is it that causes you to believe that fully formed life can just pop into existence?It isn't evidence that persuades you, of course, but lack of evidence. Wherever the paleontological record is incomplete, ambiguous or blank, creationists step in and write whatever particular ideas they feel are most compatible with their religious beliefs. Unable to develop a rational answer, ancient man looked at lightning and said "God", and in the same way creationists now look at gaps in the paleontological record and puzzling microbiological processes and proclaim "God". This isn't science but surrender of the intellect to the unknown.In order to get their ideas into science classrooms, creationists usually make every effort to characterize their views as true science, and faux paus such as miracles and other "rabbit out of hat" solutions to scientific puzzles work against these efforts since they're an admission that the views aren't scientific at all. Resort to miracles is simply an admission that you have no scientific evidence, and therefore no scientific view. In fact, if you continue pursuing miraculous intervention as a solution, then you should be taking your arguments to the religious forums. The science forums are for discussion of views that have a scientific foundation, except for the [forum=-11] forum, where arguments can be advanced challenging ideas like naturalism and so forth.--Percy

I don't think this is what you really meant to say. Obviously there is evidence, you've been using the fossil record as evidence yourself. What you're talking about is the interpretation of the evidence.When geological scientists of the past looked at the fossil record, Louis Agassiz was a famous example, they saw a record of sudden extinction and sudden creation. They concluded that a number of creation events must have taken place. Your views sound very similar to theirs.However, two significant things occurred that rebutted such thinking, at least in scientific circles. First, as the fossil record became more and more complete it became clear that more and more gaps in the fossil record were being filled. More and more of what appeared at first to be sudden creation gradually fell into a framework of relatedness to pre-existing life.The other significant event was the discovery of genetics, which formed the basis of heredity and provided a mechanism for change in species over time, the very process that Darwin introduced in Origin of Species without even knowing the mechanism behind it.So today we understand the processes behind of evolutionary change, and projecting those mechanisms back onto an increasingly complete fossil record reveals a remarkable consistency with evolutionary theory. Novel fossils are discovered all the time, and never has anything been discovered that doesn't fit into an evolutionary framework.If God truly has been periodically popping creatures into existence fully formed, then he does so in a way fully compatible with evolution. Biological innovations never migrate between separate lineages, something God could certainly do. Why would God create an innovation for sharp eyesight for the hawk and not also give it to the lion? Evolution says this couldn't happen, of course, but God could make it happen. Yet somehow, things like this of innovations crossing lineage boundaries are never found.An even more severe problem for you is that there is no scientific evidence for the main actor in your scenario, God, and no evidence of what his powers actually are or how he actually operates.So that's why it's accurate for me to say that the evidence supports evolutionary theory and provides no support at all for a God-based approach. I'm not sure how to reply to this. Are you poking fun at evolution, or do you really not know that evolution believes fish are immensely distant evolutionary cousins of humans. The split between fish and land life took place some 300-400 million years ago. Combined with your previous paragraph, I'm beginning to wonder if we're having a serious conversation here. This forum exists because creationists want treatments of evolution reduced and treatments of creationist views added in public school science classrooms. In order to accomplish this goal, creationists have made significant efforts over a number of decades to convince the public that their views are scientific. To this end they removed God from creationism, called it creation science, and tried to pass laws requiring its inclusion in public school science curriculums. These efforts were struck down by the courts, and so creationists tried to distance themselves even further from Biblical accounts with Intelligent Design, which makes no claims about the intelligent agent and which makes no claims based upon the Bible.So this site exists to examine the claim that creationism is science. If you simply want to concede that it isn't science and that it is just Christian beliefs from the Bible, that's fine by me.--Percy

Actually, the reality is just as I've described it. Evolution is a gradual process of accumulated change. We observe it all the time. Every time a cell divides a small number of errors are created. It is the accumulated errors over long time periods combined by their pruning by natural selection that is evolution. Projecting this process backwards in time is consistent with the fossil record. Understanding this is fundamental to understanding evolution. If you don't believe that almost every reproductive events contains errors, if you don't believe that evolution as we understand it from the evidence in our possession does not allow sudden leaps, if you don't believe natural selection eliminates unfavorable changes, then you just don't understand evolution, and in that case it's no wonder that you continue to criticize evolution for things it doesn't say.Notice I didn’t say that evolution explains the episodic and incomplete nature of the fossil record, which has nothing to do with evolution. It is due to the unpredictable nature of fossilization. Almost all deceased animals very quickly end up as food for other life, even their bones, and anything left quickly succumbs to weathering and decay. Very few deceased creatures are the victims of a lucky accident (for paleontologists) that buries them quickly and preserves their bones, and sometimes but very rarely even some soft tissue, for millions of years. This is why a walk in the forest doesn’t find you climbing over huge piles of bones everywhere from decades, centuries and millennia ago.Fossilization is also a process confined primarily to lowland regions, and to lake, sea and ocean floors, because these are areas of net deposition of sediments. These are the regions where the products of erosion from upland regions are deposited. Fossilization almost never happens in upland regions, and for this reason the fossil record of life of upland creatures is almost entirely absent. You can no more conclude from the fossil record that upland creatures didn’t exist until a few thousand years ago than you can conclude that the sudden appearance of a creature in the fossil record means that the creature was suddenly created.Reconstructing evolutionary history from the fossil record is like trying to reconstruct a film of a parade from a bunch of randomly collected still photographs taken by onlookers. To conclude that the giant Snoopy balloon just popped into existence simply because in one picture he’s not there and in the next he is would not be a mistake anyone would make, and in the same way one can not assume that the sudden appearance of a creature in the fossil record is anything more than the record of a chance event that preserved a creature of this particular species for the first time. Sudden creation is a false conclusion that can only be reached if you falsely believe the fossil record is complete. This isn't true, either. Fossils of previously unknown species are being discovered all the time. While there is the occasional find of something uniquely new such as a species on a previously unknown twig or branch, for the most part most new fossil species fall into an area intermediate between already known species. And if you were anywhere near correct then Eldredge and Gould would agree with you, but they don't, so let me briefly explain why. There's a lot of details you're missing about the theory of punctuated equilibria, but the pertinent one here is that Eldredge and Gould did not conclude that the evidence supported sudden creation. Punctuated equilibria posits that species can experience long periods of relative stasis given a stable environment, such as was the case with triceratops for millions and millions of years in the western United States, but that environmental change combined with small population size could cause relatively rapid speciation in just some 10's of thousands of years, perhaps even less in some cases. 10,000 years is a very, very long time, but on geological time scales it is but an instant. The likelihood of individuals of a small species population in a narrow geographic region being preserved in such a short time period is small, and even smaller is the likelihood that any such fossils would happen to be discovered by paleontologists.So the view that Eldredge and Gould viewed the fossil record as evidence of sudden creation is incorrect. They only viewed it as evidence that relative stasis punctuated with occasional rapid change was more common than believed at the time. No, this would again be incorrect. For example, many creatures from mythology, if fossils of them were found, would disprove evolution, not support it. Winged horses, minotaurs, centaurs, griffins, the discovery of the fossils of any of these would be very strong evidence against evolution. That's why it is such strong evidence for evolution that no fossil has ever been discovered that did not fit into an evolutionary framework. Monotremes like the platypus are strong supporting evidence for evolution because they are intermediate between the reptilian ancestors of mammals and marsupial mammals. The very name monotreme refers to an anatomical peculiarity found in reptiles that the monotremes share.Now if we found an intermediate between mammals and birds living on some faraway island, that would not fit into an evolutionary framework and would be strong evidence against evolution. But we've never found such a thing. You've missed the whole point, which had nothing to do with different innovations in different creatures. The point was that God could provide a particular new innovation to any creatures that could make use of it, but for some reason he never did so. When complex eyes first appeared (eyes with focal ability and light intensity control), God could have given them to all creatures immediately, but he didn't. Unrelated lineages had to develop their own version of complex eyes gradually over millions of years. The appearance of complex eyes in any lineage only occurred after a long period of evolution, instead of suddenly appearing in all lineages everywhere simultaneously. Yes, of course, but what you originally said was, "At least I have never heard about an experiment showing how ancient fish transformed by natural selection into homo sapiens." Do you really believe that knowledge derives solely from designed experiments? Observation, data gathering, reconstruction, analysis, correlative studies, etc., all these play a major role in science, particularly sciences like cosmology and evolution. Yes, I know what your point is. And the problem with your point is that you have no evidence supporting you. In order to make your point you must show how the processes we understand so well today of replication with change combined with selection forces cannot produce the change observed in the fossil record. What makes evolution a science is that it is a theory consistent with the evidence, thsu giving it great explanatory and predictive power. If God were truly the creative force then we could expect to find literally anything in the fossil record, but we never do. Everything we find is consistent with evolution. You could just as ridiculously claim that it is a bald assumption that a glass falling by changing its position incrementally every microsecond will continue all the way to the floor. Once a finch species' beak has changed in size to become larger, what is to prevent evolutionary forces from causing a change to become larger yet again? Creationists denial of change but inability to present any mechanism preventing change is why their views never become accepted within scientific circles. And that's why creationists take their case not to scientists but to the lay public, which already believes in past lives, Bigfoot, UFOs, talking to the dead and Scientology, and so has no trouble believing anything creationists care to tell them.--Percy

Hi Martin,You're citing an opinion piece, not a scientific article, and it has nothing to do with evolution anyway. You might want to try introducing this in one of the [forum=-11] threads.--Percy

Neo-Darwinist leopard struggling for existence: --Percy

We should already have the data to confirm/disconfirm his proposal. Does comparative DNA research show that it is not uncommon for junk DNA in one species to be active DNA in a related species?--Percy

Okay, so it's a known phenomena that genes can become pseudogenes and vice-versa. If I understand Nwr's proposal, it's that some genes have evolved as pseudogenes in junk mode and then are moved to active status, in which case here you're saying that we couldn't tell by inspection whether a gene had evolved as a pseudogene or not.But doesn't Nwr's proposal lack a selection mechanism for pseudogenes? That's what I think you're saying when you talk about OR genes and pseudogenes, but I'm not certain.The inability of selection to operate on pseudogenes would mean the likelihood of preservation of useful mutations is tiny, wouldn't it? Like way tiny? Like tornado through a junkyard tiny? --Percy

I was responding to Nwr's proposal in the context of the familiar principles of evolution, which is natural selection operating on variation. His unexpressed pseudogenes have no means of preserving existing function, or of recognizing favorable changes. The problems that he sees with the traditional mechanisms of evolution are multiplied in his proposed scenario.--Percy

So, just to be sure I understand, you see the existence of simple organisms with complex genomes as a problem for evolution? If so, how is this a problem?--Percy

I asked this question: You replied with a question, so it sounds like the answer to my question about whether I understood you properly is, "No."Here's that section from the message in question, your Message 242, this time with the previous paragraph included: You refer to "evo theory" in the first paragraph, so I assumed you were still referring to "evo theory" in the second paragraph.It seemed to me that you were saying that the existence of simple organisms with complex genomes is a problem for, to use your preferred term, "evo theory." Do I have that right? If so, how is this a problem?--Percy

I didn't use the word evolution. I used your term, "evo theory". You'll have to tell me what you mean by "evo theory" if it is important for understanding you.So once again, it seemed to me that you were saying that the existence of simple organisms with complex genomes is a problem for "evo theory." Do I have that right? If so, how is this a problem?However you define "evo theory", use that definition in your answer. Using any other definition than the one you had in mind when you made your claim would make no sense.--Percy

It doesn't look like this is leading toward a clarification of what you meant, so I guess we may as well just drop it. Perhaps it will come up again during the discussion.--Percy

Responding to the last paragraph first: I'm a theist, which for this thread, a science thread, is just as irrelevant as that you're an agnostic or that someone else is an atheist. The topic is neo-Darwinism, not theology. All this proves is that *you* personally don't understand how mutation and natural selection work. Ignoring the errors (for example, "random accidents in their genomes" turn into "biological features" all the time, a famous example being Down Syndrome), to make a scientific claim you need an observable mechanism by which your intelligence operates.--Percy

Yes, they're defects. Sickle cell is a defect of ancient origin now permanently part of the human genome in those from a certain region of Africa and is heritable. Down syndrome is almost always the result of a new defect, often occurring during gamete (sperm/egg) production. They're both defects that turn into biological features, and since you said, "Random accidents in their genomes are defects...but none turn into biological features," you're wrong. It's a strawman because you're arguing against it as if it were a claim of evolution when it isn't. The expression of mutations as "biological features" is not caused by natural selection. Mutations and allele remixing are the source of novelty in evolution. Natural selection is the pruning mechanism.What you're doing is akin to someone completely ignorant of Christianity criticizing it for believing that Jesus delivers eggs on Easter in a bunny suit. You have to know at least a little bit about something before your criticisms can make any sense.But I was attempting to ignore your errors and just point out that your claims about ID need an observable mechanism by which your intelligence operates. However, I seem to have failed to notice that ID is not the topic of this thread. Perhaps you should propose an ID topic over at [forum=-25].--PercyEdited by Percy, : Spelling.