New Blog Post: Bad Objections to Evolution

[aarceng (Chris)]

“It takes a lot more faith to believe in evolution…”

I wish people wouldn’t use the word “faith” that way.

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Simply put, the biblical definition of faith is “trusting in something you cannot explicitly prove.” What is the definition of faith? | GotQuestions.org

In this sense faith covers the gap between the evidence and the belief. I think she’s right; the gap for the General Theory of Evolution is greater.

[aarceng (Chris)]

@mitchellmckain

This does not conflict with their theistic beliefs because they believe the laws of nature themselves had a supernatural origin in God.

So they believe that indirectly life had a supernatural origin. Just what I said.

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@jstump

It sounds like you’re claiming that DNA really is just an alphabet, and that different organisms can “mean” different things by that alphabet – the way English speakers mean one thing by the letter sequence p-a-i-n and French speakers mean something different. Is that the claim??

Can we get @glipsnort to evaluate this?

Correct, as @glipsnort says, “a different set of synthetases would translate a gene into a completely different string of amino acids.”. There is no fixed relationship between a codon and the amino acid it codes for.

However the genetic code is largely universal so rather than a different organisms having completely different codes they are largely similar with a few variations; more like different dialects than different languages.

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@Chris_Falter

To come up with some sort of analogy equivalent to the Gettysburg Address, you would apply a selection filter at each iteration, based on a search algorithm informed by a statistically-informed language model. If you did this, you could get to a Walt Whitman poem from the Gettysburg Address, although it might take millions of iterations.

Actually I think that would make it quite impossible; although it might work if you used a variation of Dawkin’s “Weasel” program which is a goal directed iterative process. You would at least have to have grammatically correct text at each mutation with no foresight allowed. However you’re welcome to try it and let me know if it succeeds.

@Chris_Falter

Today, neural networks can use search + language models to generate all sorts of interesting texts. Here is an interesting prompt supplied to the GPT2 neural network:

I regret to inform you, my friend Chris, that this is a completely irrelevant analogy.

BTW I checked the link and the output becomes more nonsensical in succeeding paragraphs, and the authors admit the examples were cherry picked. What it shows is that while it can generate reasonable sounding sentences it has no understanding of the meaning of what it is producing.

[jstump (Jim Stump)]

@aarceng

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Simply put, the biblical definition of faith is “trusting in something you cannot explicitly prove.” What is the definition of faith? | GotQuestions.org

In this sense faith covers the gap between the evidence and the belief. I think she’s right; the gap for the General Theory of Evolution is greater.

You are privileging one aspect of faith and ignoring others. The way it was used in the video (and you are endorsing), the goal seems to be to have as little faith as possible. That is nonsensical when considered in light of the biblical witness. We are justified through faith in Christ (Gal. 2:16); that doesn’t sound like “believe something without evidence.” The concept of faith is much richer, and it is a mockery of biblical faith to reduce it to slogans like “I don’t have enough faith to accept evolution.”

[aarceng (Chris)]

@Bill_II

You going to trot out that tired old Gould quote mine?

A little later he says

In fact, the operation of Darwinian processes should yield exactly what we see in the fossil record.

Not as far as I can see. Here and here

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our text- books have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. Yet Darwin was so wedded to gradualism that he wagered his entire theory on a denial of this literal record:

“The geological record is extremely imperfect and this fact will to a large extent explain why we do not find interminable varieties, connecting together all the extinct and existing forms of life by the finest graduated steps, He who rejects these views on the nature of the geological record, will rightly reject my whole theory.”

Darwin’s argument still persists as the favored escape of most paleontologists from the embarrassment of a record that seems to show so little of evolution. In exposing its cultural and methodological roots, I wish in no way to impugn the potential validity of gradualism (for all general views have similar roots). I wish only to point out that it was never -seen- in the rocks.

Paleontologists have paid an exorbitant price for Darwin’s argument. We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.
[Evolution’s Erratic Pace - “Natural History,” May, 1977]”

@Bill_II

Doesn’t look like he is really disagreeing with evolution.

No but he had to come up with Punctuated Evolution to explain away the lack of transitional forms.

@Lynn_Munter

Are you very familiar with, say, the RNA world hypothesis?

Yes. It was popular for a while but appears to have fallen out of favour. I doubt it will ever be entirely abandoned and will probably have brief resurgences.

Research on the RNA World Hypothesis is ongoing, although recent findings threaten to disprove the hypothesis. NASA apparently stated in a 1996 report that the “significant difficulties” that surround the RNA World concept include the chemical fragility of RNA and its narrow range of catalytic activities.

Biochemist Harold S Bernhardt shares the same concerns and in a 2012 biology paper, he referred to the concept as ‘the worst theory of the early evolution of life.’ His paper states that the complexity of the RNA molecule means it could not have arisen prebiotically; that RNA is unstable and that it possesses limited catalytic properties.
What is the RNA World Hypothesis?

Marcos Eberlin: Unguided Origin of Life “Sold to Us,” but Its Assumptions Are “Insane”

Origin of Life: Intelligence Required (Science Uprising 05)

[Bill_II]

@aarceng

Not as far as I can see.

The quote I provided came out of the same article as yours. Try reading the actual source sometimes.

@aarceng

No but he had to come up with Punctuated Evolution to explain away the lack of transitional forms.

The current version of the theory is not the same as Darwin’s. It doesn’t mean Darwin was wrong just his theory was incomplete. It is the nature of the scientific method. Theories are improved and expanded. At some point they can even be discarded, but despite your desire for this it hasn’t happened yet.

[Chris_Falter]

@aarceng

I regret to inform you, my friend Chris, that this is a completely irrelevant analogy.

Perhaps you would like to explain your thinking behind this assertion so we can have a discussion?

@aarceng

BTW I checked the link and the output becomes more nonsensical in succeeding paragraphs, and the authors admit the examples were cherry picked.

I would use the word whimsical rather than nonsensical; the topic is unicorns, after all.

The theory of evolution does not claim that every change is positive. Thus the fact that not every story produced by GPT2 is cogent literature does not undermine my claim.

Best,
Chris