Does the Darwinian theory require modification or replacement?

Wikipedia says he's chair of the Philosophy Department at one of the City University of New York campuses. He has a doctorate in genetics, another in botany, and another in philosophy. He's a fellow of the AAAS, no small feat.You've managed to include a rather large number of creationist PRATTs in your post. To begin addressing them would take this thread way off topic, so I'll just ask if you have any specific suggestions for how evolution should be modified or replaced in order to be better aligned with the available evidence.--Percy

You made arguments for evolution that creationists have rebutted a thousand times? Where? And more importantly, why? Split personality?What you did was make a large number of familiar creationist arguments against evolution that have been rebutted thousands of times, and that are not the topic of this thread. That's why instead of addressing them I asked if you have any specific suggestions for how evolution should be modified or replaced in order to be better aligned with the available evidence. You can still use your PRATTs, but it would be nice to narrow it down to just one or two. At a time, anyway.--Percy

Molbiogirl wasn't arguing against epigenetics. She was arguing against directed evolution.--Percy

Hi Mazzy,You presented a lot of familiar creationist arguments, tesponding to your first item: You mean "elaborated upon and joined by other evolutionary processes." You might want to check out Tempo and Mode in Evolution by George Gaylord Simpson, published way back in 1944.In order to make a case for modifying or replacing the theory of evolution it would seem incumbent upon you to advance arguments that are actually true.--Percy

Since "the major biologists" did not believe that all evolution is "random and accidental," this can't possibly be true."The major biologists" believed that at its core evolution is a combination of random mutation (which is random, of course) and natural selection (which is not random, of course), and they didn't think it had anything to do with whether there is a Supreme Being or not.Whether evolution requires modification or replacement is not a function of whether there is a Supreme Being.--Percy

Hi Shadow,Let me ask you a couple questions.Biology is the study of life. If we were to discover a new form of life, would it still be part of the field of biology? I assume your answer is "Yes."The modern synthesis is the combination of evolution and genetics. As we discover new genetic processes, why do you think they shouldn't be part of the modern synthesis?Naturally Shapiro should be asked the same question.--Percy

I suppose one could read that passage from Pigliucci and conclude that he's just beating around the bush with all the qualifiers and that he really *is* saying that microevolution does not lead to macroevolution.But he never comes out and actually says that. He says that microevolutionary changes will not always account for macroevolutionary change on long timescales, which obviously means that some microevolutionary changes do account for macroevolutionary change. This would seem to rule out your interpretation of unequivocally disconnecting the two.He also says that projecting microevolutionary changes forward is a poor predictor of macroevolutionary changes, which does not say one does not lead to the other. And he references Gould and Eldredge. Molbiogirl provided relevant excerpts from Gould and Eldredge, and these would seem to indicate that your interpretation is clearly wrong.You're going to have to do more than just provide this Pigliucci quote, which you've now done several times. We can read it and sort of see how you're interpreting it to reach your conclusions, but we've provided a great deal of additional context and explanation that indicates you're wrong and that you're ignoring by simply repeating this quote.--Percy

Hi Shadow,Most of Jar's post was on-topic. You seem to be focused on a portion that if pursued would draw the thread seriously off-topic. We'd really rather see your responses to the recent messages about your interpretation of Pigliucci, but that being said I'll answer one of your questions since the answer is short. No, of course not. He is saying that most Christians reject creationism (which is just bad science), not God. Most Christians have no problem with the modern findings of science.So do the explanations of what Pigliucci was saying make sense to you?--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

There are few who would disagree with this, certainly no one in this thread unless they want to be picky about how this is phrased. And about this Shapiro quote: Few would disagree with this, either, but most people here believe this "basic fact of life" has already been incorporated into our ideas. You've been saying this over and over and over again in this thread, and the answer is always the same. We know that that's his opinion, and we congratulate Dr. Shapiro for finding a way to garner a lot of attention, but he's just one guy and he doesn't seem to be convincing many of his fellow biologists. That includes Pigliucci.In the end the labels we put on ideas are unimportant. It is the ideas themselves that count, and it appears to most people that Shapiro is trying to give a new label to ideas that have been around a while.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

So do I. Probably most non-atheists/non-agnostics believe God created the universe. Me too. We have differences, but in the broad brush we believe pretty much the same thing in this regard. Of course.Very generally, a creationist lets his religious beliefs guide his thinking in areas having nothing to do with faith. In science this means which theories he chooses to accept is guided by faith and revelation instead of evidence.If the modern synthesis is replaced it will be because the evidence indicates it is no longer an accurate model. Semantic arguments can perhaps fuel long bulletin board discussions, but they're far too insubstantial to invalidate theory. The modern synthesis combines genetics with evolution, and none of the discoveries you've mentioned fall outside either genetics or evolution. We've learned a great deal about both in the past century or so, but nothing that isn't either genetics or evolution. Even if we discover that DNA is capable of planning and forethought and carefully designs each and every mutation, it's still genetics.--Percy

Back in the 1920's the modern synthesis combined evolution and genetics. Is there anything Shapiro is proposing to add that isn't either evolution or genetics?--Percy

Hi Shadow71,I think you're misdefining the modern synthesis when you say this: The modern synthesis does not stipulate inclusion of "random mutation for fitness and natural selection." The modern synthesis combines what were formerly two independent fields: genetics and evolution. Genetics includes random mutation, but it is not limited to random mutation. Anything else we find out about genetics, such as epigenetic mechanisms that affect gene expression, is still genetics and therefore part of the modern synthesis.In the same way, evolution includes natural selection, and anything additional we find out about evolution, such as drift, is still evolution and therefore part of the modern synthesis.The modern synthesis does not itself say anything specific about genetics or evolution. It is merely a recognition that the changes we see expressed in organisms over time are intimately tied to genetic mechanisms within the cell. The modern synthesis never had all the answers. Probably no theory has all the answers. You don't want to make "doesn't have all the answers" your criteria for discarding a theory because then you'd have no theories left. Again: modifications to evolution and/or genetics would not have any impact on the modern synthesis. The modern synthesis combines the two fields and evolution and genetics, and so it automatically includes all new developments in those fields.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Fix bad grammar.

And this affects the modern synthesis how? Yes, of course it would have to be modified. What has that to do with the modern synthesis?I think you've got a definitional problem. Many times in your posts when you actually mean the "modern synthesis" you're instead saying "evolution" or "theory of evolution" or "TOE". They are not synonyms. The modern synthesis encompasses all of evolutionary theory, including all new developments and findings. It also encompasses all genetics, including new developments and findings.The definition of the modern synthesis is a simple combining of two fields that were discovered to be closely interdependent. Only the discovery that we were seriously mistaken, that in reality there is no intimate link between genetics and evolution, could cause the modern synthesis to be discarded or replaced.--Percy

I've been staying out of the discussion about information because there is so little agreement in this thread about the nature of information, and some are even confusing it with knowledge. For discussion of information to be productive it needs to be placed in a formal context. This is the first mention of information theory in this thread, and I think moving the discussion in that direction would be a good idea. Information theory has a formal definition of information where it can actually be quantified.--Percy

Your Message 643 quotes an abstract. There is nothing in the abstract about "dedicated, nonrandom, beneficial change." Going to the paper at The CRISPR system: small RNA-guided defense in bacteria and archaea, the words "beneficial" and "nonrandom" do not appear in the article. And a quick perusal doesn't seem to reveal any mention of such possibilities.Could you read the article and quote those portions you think are describing "dedicated, nonrandom, beneficial change"?--Percy