There are lots of gradually evolving phyla. The Cambrian faunas have many intermediates between different phyla. Characteristics of phyla gradually accumulate. The idea that the Cambrian is a problem for evolution is a myth. Keith Miller has written some summaries available on the BioLogos website.
We recognize phyla based on very deep divergence with other members of a kingdom. But that means that ancestral forms without the key features will be rather generic and not easy to recognize. Despite that, many early fossils place between current phyla.
The burden of proof should be on one making a claim. Have ID advocates done an adequate job of proving that something is truly irreducibly complex? Can one prove that nothing irreducibly complex exists? Those put the burden of proof in different directions. Claimed examples of irreducible complexity are not good. That does not prove that better examples or better arguments might not be found. But it does indicate that the ID movement tends to claim too much.
it is a concept. The concept can be proven within modern frameworks but applying it to historic evolution is not provable or demonstrable. If scientists wish to decide it didnât exist there is no way on this earth to prove otherwise.
No, donât agree. Itâs arguable, as we are doing here.
Big E Evolution attempts to tie together the data with a set of plausible stories. ID does the same. Neither is testable at the level needed for clear confirmation. You cannot demonstrate that microevolution is adequate to produce all macroevolution.
Your story asserts that a long series of tiny changes can produce all the changes we see over time. To me itâs like suggesting that Fun with Dick and Jane can morph into every book ever written one word change at a time, and always be coherent. I donât share your faith in that story at that level.
Then âEvolutionâ evolves when a âpredictionâ proves false, the story changes. No experiments needed. So itâs not falsifiable.
IMO Evolution needed help. Quite honestly, I donât care one way or another, but thatâs what it looks like to me.
The pre-fossilization epoch of life is far longer than the fossilized period. For the couple of billion or so years leading up to the Cambrian, life on Earth essentially of microscopic squishies that would leave no structural fossilization, and we have little idea of the specializations and diversity over that expanse of time. Given that, as multicellularity and preservable structures developed in the Cambrian, what would you expect the diversity of life to look like?
That is always the question I bulk at. Why do I /we need to expect anything other than what we see? We are not changing the data or adding new data. We question the reasoning and assumption (Hypothesis!) Evolutionary theory relies on everything being able to be made piece by piece and develop slowly over time. it is inbuilt. ID or IC does not allow for that means of construction. it is as simple as that. Why should there be any evidence other than what we have? How can we prove something that happened millions of years ago, It happened.
No need at all. ID could just not assert there is too much diversity to be explained by evolution.
If the claim is that there is more diversity than would be expected by evolution, then the question is what other is expected. If there is no other expectation, why does ID make the claim to begin with?
Id does not claim anything about Diversity, nor does IC. All it claims is that there need to be some sort of mechanism to construct complex systems, either self contained or interactive, because small steps won;t cut it. We are reluctant to suggest what those mechanisms aught to be, and are not ruling out natural ones.
However, the current evolutionary model struggles with how new organs and structures can just appear, fully functional and with the ability to use them.
If it was a computer you would claim âplug and playâ but that would seem to be a little far fetched in nature.(without intelligent oversight or assistance)
The point being that we are not claiming answers. We are only claiming that science does not have all of them yet.
No. In the case of true stalemate, then ID should not claim that irreducible complexity is proven and others should not claim that it is disproven. ID makes a lot of claims to have demonstrated things scientifically, but the âproofsâ are often rather problematic. There is also the semantic question of whether âscience does not explain thisâ is exactly scientific proof.
But the arguments to demonstrate irreducible complexity do not hold up well. As already noted, many complex structures in society developed gradually over time but now depend on many specific parts. Specific multistep biochemical systems can be observed evolving step by step in the lab.
Many of the Cambrian âpriapulidâ worms prove, on closer examination, to be intermediate, ancestral forms relative to the modern phyla Priapulida, Loricifera, and Kinorhyncha. Armored lobopods are intermediate between Onychophora and Arthropoda. Resources - BioLogos has a few articles relating to this, including The Cambrian âExplosionâ, Transitional Forms, and the Tree of Life - Article - BioLogos The picture of the Cambrian diversification given in popular ID and young-earth sources is not accurate. There are varied Precambrian fossil animals; the Cambrian does not come out of nowhere. The Cambrian representatives of modern phyla are significantly different from and more primitive than later representatives, in addition to the many intermediate forms present. There are further myths that Walcott tried to hide the purported problems for evolution by tucking the fossils away in museum drawers. In reality, the fossils were reported not just in many technical publications but also National Geographic. The purported problems for evolution are that they appear relatively rapidly and that there are so many different kinds of organisms. But Walcott did not have any idea how long the Cambrian was, nor any good data on what was older. He did not recognize that the fossils did not all fit into previously known categories; the key techniques revealing details were developed beginning in the 1970âs.
The Cambrian diversification and Precambrian fossils have received extensive research over the past few decades, yet none of this work gets cited or acknowledged in claims about problems for evolution.
A more fundamental problem with the claims about irreducible complexity, specified complexity, etc. is that ID is painting a target around the arrow after it already hit the side of the barn. What is the probability of inventing an automobile? 100%. It happened. Given a planet with similar natural resources to Earth and a culture of organisms similar to Neolithic humans, what is the probability of an automobile being invented? Although it is quite unlikely that Thag would look at a lump of iron ore and a tar pit and think âI could build a â56 DeSoto!â, the chance of eventually building some sort of self-propelled wheeled transport is much higher. Similarly, the claim that a particular biochemical system is improbable neglects the question of how many possible biochemical systems could achieve a similar effect, or whether there are alternative systems that avoid the need for that particular effect.
The similarities between some of the tRNA genes suggests that the present system of protein assembly is built from simpler antecedents. Of course, there remains a sizeable gap between a simpler version of protein synthesis with fewer amino acids and less strict precision and abiogenesis. But the very fuzzy edges of that gap make it seem imprudent to claim that it could not possibly be spanned by further studies and discoveries.
The very choice of complexity as a focus is problematic. For information systems, the most complex things are random. The shape of a tree is much more complex than that of a lamppost. Simplicity is a better indicator of intelligent design than complexity when it comes to bureaucracy, paperwork, etc. ID seems to have looked for possible similarities between biochemical systems and human-made systems, rather than investigating what distinguishes designed and undesigned systems.
Of course, it is not possible to prove every single detail of what happened in the past. But the ID claims that evolution has gaps have not been of good quality. Nor is the theology good. God is at work in all that happens. Looking for random gaps in evolution is not good evidence for Christianity, or even proof of theism - the Raelian connections to ID highlight that. Expecting gaps in evolution also is in tension with the idea that God created all the natural laws so that the universe would work properly. Why didnât He figure out evolution?
Youâre right that the mostly absent evidence pre-Cambrian leaves us with âlittle ideaâŚâ. However your use of the word âdevelopedâ tips your hand. What we know is they âappearedâ in the Cambrian. How they all got there without leaving a record is a matter of opinion.
What Iâd expect? Given that there are Ediacaran soft bodied fossils in what was soft ground at the time, if the Cambrian phyla âEvolvedâ via gradualism, there should be evidence of some kind of precursors leading to the Cambrian fauna phyla. Wouldnât you also expect that?
I have said it before, and will repeat it now, this has nothing to do with âgapsâ in the manner your post suggests. God of the gaps was all about transitional fossils. ID and IC have little to do with that. How can we deny that a wing or a limb came into existence? That is not the point. The point is that to get winged flight you need not just wings, but feathers, sternum, honeycomb bones and so on. The existence of any one on its own does not prove that a bird was created slowly. This whole idea of a winged creature casually climbing trees and jumping down is a wonderful narrative but not exactly science and can never be demonstrated except by computer simulation. Even this wonderful paper flapping model has little or nothing to do with the mechanics of avian flight. That model had a wheel powering it.
I am not gong to repeat all the ridiculous uses for feathers that prove they could have evolved without the intent of flight.
The fact is that scientists here are so defensive and sensitive that they will not accept any slight criticism or adjustment to their precious theory. It is taken as an insult to their integrity and methodology.
ID and IC do not fit into evolution so they will be fought tooth and nail. That includes ridiculing the people talking about it, denying the existence of any such system, and refusing to accept that anything cannot be made in small steps.
If in doubt, claim either misunderstanding, ignorance or incredulity.
I accept that if we go by Beheâs initial description of IC (Version I), then yes, IC systems exist in life and are not uncommon. The claim (IC Version-I) is that IC systems do not evolve. The issue is demonstrating non-evolvability and validating the claim.
The claims - IC Version-I
IC systems exist.
IC systems cannot evolve.
Therefore: If System-A is IC, it could not evolve.
IC in this version is simply a description. The details may be a bit messy but yes, some systems found in life fit these details.**
Claim 2 is the problem. Behe would like to claim this is demonstrated but honestly, there are cases where this has been refuted (note something I mentioned way above), and there are cases where one can reasonably suggest there are insufficient technical capabilities or insufficient remaining signals, e.g. cross-organism surveys and knowledge of ancestral states, to assess the cases either way.
If you review the comment about IC in the talk.origins archive, youâll find a number of good discussions about trying to nail down the âsquishyâ edges of the IC definition like, âhow complexâ, âhow many interactionsâ and âwhat criteria of impairmentâ should qualify. Keith Robison had particularly good comments.
That is not fully true. You forget bats - they have mammalian morphology but can fly. I do not know about Pterosaurs but apparently all/most/many(?) of them did not depend on feathers for being able to fly.
Morphological changes can happen step by step but the current majority view is that it takes looong time periods, no matter whether the change is gradual or punctuated (long periods of little change followed by an appearance and spread of somewhat novel forms in a subpopulation). If the earth is not very old, that kind of evolutionary development could not explain the current diversity of life. That is why the critical parts of YEC-type ideas are the age of Earth and life.
Young earth or young life = all life could not evolve from a common ancestor or primitive cells.
Old life = there was enough of time for the evolutionary changes to happen, at least theoretically.
If we are talking about how the evolutionary changes add diversity on Earth, we can never exclude the possibility that the Creator has occasionally interfered and pushed the process towards a path that leads towards wanted changes. That kind of âpushesâ could happen through mechanisms that include factors that we might classify as statistically random or chaotic. We cannot prove that such interference has not happened but we also cannot prove that it has happened. As the scientific research cannot answer such questions, it should be accepted that the resarch only tells what can be shown to be possible or unlikely.
God has chosen to hide much of what He does. For that reason, it is wise that scientific researchers respect the borders set by the methods used and do not speculate much about the possibility that an external intelligence (Creator) may have played a role in the process.
Bats are irrelevant. No one is saying that you can only use feathers to fly.
The point is not whether feathers are essential for flight it is whether feathers are designed for flight.
Avains cannot fly without feathers, specifically flight feathers. It is a known fact that if you remove flight feathers from a wing the bird is grounded. That is how many captive birds are kept captive
And do not go on about flightless birds. That is also irrelevant.
The fact that there are downy feathers is also of no consequence. Evolution adapts. Secondary uses of feathers can easily be adaptions, they do not have to be pre-cursers. Likewise colours for display.
The fact is that the structure of a feather is unique, and each element is utilised for flying, down to the little barbs on the fronds. Feathers are flexed (fanned) to assist landing. They adjust to air currents in gliding. They work independently. They have curviture for aerodynamics.. They are light and strong.
Only a fool would claim that a feather is not designed for flight.(Or someone trying to argue evolution, apparently)
How can they?
How can anyone describe an event that they claim cannot happen? The whole point of ID is that it contradicts evolution. There is nothing in ID theory that describes how it does happen. The systems exist. That happened. But⌠Not by evolutionary theory!
ID and IC are claiming gap in understanding, not a gap that must be filled by God. Find a way to construct an IC and we will capitulate, but you are just claiming it isnât necessary! You do not seem to understand the limitations of evolutionary change. In fact, you are claiming that there is no limitation to evolutionary change.
(And you refuse to define evolutionary change other than âSmall changesâ)
How long is a piece of string? Or rather, how small is a small change
(and donât say a nickel, although that might be deemed a joke)
