I think it is important to describe the borders that science is working in. The scientific description of unguided evolutionary mechanisms is focused on observations, not metaphysics. IOW, scientists are saying that evolution doesn’t LOOK like it is guided, or that there isn’t any positive evidence for guidance. Science doesn’t go as far as saying guided evolution is false in a metaphysical sense. Scientists aren’t trying to falsify every single explanation out there. They are more interested in testing one idea and seeing if observations are consistent with that idea.
The type of positive evidence scientists would accept for guided evolution is the same DNA sequence or the same adaptation appearing in distantly related organisms and the lack of the same adaptation in more closely related species. IOW, they would be looking for clear examples where the predicted nested hierarchy is violated. Perhaps there are other types of scientific evidence that could support guided evolution in a scientific sense, but that is the first example that popped into my head.
As to Shapiro’s “natural genetic engineering”, that is unguided evolution. Shapiro tries to put fancy labels on biological mechanisms to make them look like they are guided when in fact they aren’t. For example, the types of mutations that Shapiro points to are still random with respect to fitness.
Almost all of biology is more interesting than what YEC’s typically think.
On a more serious note, you are absolutely correct. Jumping transposons, phage insertion, homologous recombination . . . these are all very complex mechanisms that are very, very interesting. Some of the ES crowd (the Third Way, or Extended Synthesis) take advantage of the fact that some do have a simple view of biology to act as if biologists have been hiding something when they have been doing nothing of the sort. They talk about all of these complex DNA interactions, but miss the most basic question: Are the mechanisms producing these mutations guided by fitness in any meaningful way? In all of the examples I have seen, there is no evidence that they are guided by fitness. A new transposon insertion is just as likely to be detrimental or neutral as it is beneficial, as one example.
I don’t get any of the arguments from the DI or RTB on whale evolution. Both argue that there wasn’t enough time for it to occur, with the DI citing the random fitness landscape paper that doesn’t even apply to real species. I’ve personally asked some them, “what would not enough time mean? Is a million years too short? Five million years?” Maybe this is my ignorance, but I see papers like this one: http://phylodiversity.net/azanne/csfar/images/e/ed/Shubinetal2009NatureEvolInnov.pdf
and my conclusion is that we don’t need to re-invent the wheel here with each new feature in a species. So to go from land back to the sea doesn’t even require a very large series of steps genetically speaking as a lot of the aquatic origins of animals is still contained in the genome of a species like Pakicetus for example.
Plus the two independent series on whale evolution thus far on this site (as whale as your detailed post on your forums) also provide a nice summary for an outsider to see the scientific process in action. It’s clear that there is interest on this topic from non-specialists like myself and I am open to correction in anything that I write but consider me convinced already!
Thanks, I had forgotten about this particular ID argument. My very first blog post was an attempt to refute whale evolution. Thankfully, I now accept evolution and have long since deleted it with its many flaws … Though it is nice to see this worked out even after all this time.
