This is rather bizarre. Who here has said that “Natural Selection” creates novelty? This is not what Natural Selection does. Go ahead… I’ll wait, while you dig up the precise quote.
@glipsnort, do you have any idea what he’s talking about? Or is this some new “spin” on vocabularly I’ve never seen before?
George
Good to agree on something.
When physicists point to physics and say God is not here… I point to explanations of quantum physics in which consciousness is real… and explanations in which information/the mind pre exists matter… Physics strangely enough is friendlier to immaterial explanations than biology.
This is not the case with evolution.on a fundamental level it is wedded to materialism.This is part of the reason that people like Shapiro who are just following their ideas and not acting on any religious convictions face such flak.its the fundamental assumption of matter preceding consciousness that needs to be broken… and accepting evolution is the same as accepting a materialistic world view.
Based on fossil evidence, there wasn’t eons and sons of time… This is why people don’t believe baby steps help?.
As to Evo Devo… I would suspect most accidental changes would kill the baby.
We can wait for @glibsnort to confirm.
If he meant that it doesn’t create novelty… then I must have misunderstood.
In response to my statement that natural selection regulates novelty…
He said the following.
The no being in response to the claim that NS regulates novelty.
How did you turn @glipsnort’s sentence:
“…natural selection is supposed to be part of the processes by which novelty comes into being.”
into:
Glipsnort’s sentence certainly had nothing to do with the idea that “[this] actually creates novelty…” - - nor is it likely that there is much diversity amongst biologists on this point.
I can’t think of any biologists who think “Natural Selection” CREATES diversity.
Context. He responded To my statement that natural selection does not create novelty with this statement.
I clarified that it only regulates novelty…
He said no…that it’s part of the processes by which novelty comes into being.
Let him clarify exactly what he means.
I definitely love science and greatly enjoy it, but sometimes the psychology of ID/creationism is equally fascinating. As much as ID/creationists argue against materialism, scientism, and the like they also put tons of effort into making ID/creationism fit into materialism and scientism. This is why BioLogos is as refreshing as it is, because most people here are just fine with some beliefs being based on faith and some on science.
I am just fine with someone believing that God is somehow involved in nature in some way. It isn’t a belief I personally hold, but I also realize that no amount of evidence can disprove religious beliefs.
What I do reject is the claim that ID is supported by scientific evidence, because it isn’t.
The empirical evidence is consistent with evolution, and for that matter all natural processes, being unguided. Again, these are methodological statements, not ontological statements.
I deny it. A considerable part of evolutionary biology is genetics, and it doesn’t deal with any drawings. There are also very real fossils which aren’t drawings:
They are all putting forward a theory of evolution that you don’t accept, so why list them? All of their ideas involve unguided (scientifically speaking) natural processes producing change over time in biological species.
Shapiro’s natural genetic engineering is descent with modification. It is based on common descent.
Really? The network you pointed to had common ancestors for all genes. It just so happens that different genes had different common ancestors which is what produces the network. I don’t think you understand the science you are referencing.
Why? What do you think “natural genetic engineering” is? I have read through his papers, and what he describes as natural genetic engineering is what scientists have been calling random mutations for decades now.
And there you have it. With the number of organisms that are reproducing the chances of gaining a beneficial mutation are nearly guaranteed. That is why your probability claims make no sense.
No, you were talking about evolution. You consistently reject the idea of common descent and change through naturally occurring mechanisms.
Then why do you and your siblings and/or cousins share the same genes?
Look at the title of the thread. It says evolution, not abiogenesis. If you agree that the 2nd law of thermodynamics is not a problem for evolution, then we can move on to abiogenesis.
Example?
Says you … and a few other long discredited polemicists. If you would say instead that it was “stuck in materialism” or “limited to materialism” (like every other scientific theory), then we could talk. But I’m guessing in your context “wedded to” means “presumes”. And there, the theory simply will not go, no matter how much you huff and puff and try to force it to. Huxley may have presided over such a “wedding” back in his day. But the divorce to follow was a messy one and it was evolution that got the kids, while materialism was thrown out to fend for herself. But I realize news travels slowly in some quarters…
Hi Ashwin,
You did not respond to my argument, not in the least.
Since you did not seem to apprehend the argument, please indulge my restating it:
Your statements exhibit, in my opinion, a fundamental lack of self-awareness. Take these two sentences, for example:
You profess here a willingness to accept the theory of evolution, given sufficient scientific evidence. This exhibits a certain lack of self-awareness, in my opinion, because you have another strong, non-scientific objection to evolution. First, please allow me to number your two sentences for the purpose of clear discussion.
No matter what scientific evidence is presented, you are still going to reject the theory of evolution because you believe that evolution is in conflict with sentence #1. I could almost select an Ashwin post at random 
to find your belief that evolution and faith are fundamentally in conflict. In fact, after you professed in this thread your openness to discuss evolution on the basis of scientific evidence, you made this statement in another thread:
So, no, I don’t believe you are willing today to accept the theory of evolution, regardless of the question of scientific merit. You have the understanding (misunderstanding, in my opinion) that the theory of evolution’s lack of reference to God is equivalent to denial of God. Your understanding (or misunderstanding) causes you to portray evolution as opposed to the sovereignty of God.
What you have yet to grapple with is that every scientific model includes a randomness component due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle(*). In some scientific models, the component is small enough to be ignored; for example, you do not need to worry about Planck scale precision of the flight path of a cannonball. In other scientific models–for example, the standard model of particle physics, radioactivity, meteorology, and genetic mutations–the randomness component cannot be ignored.
Seeing something as random does not mean that science cannot say anything about; the distribution of outcomes over time can conform to a probability distribution, and that distribution can be inferred from sufficient observation. Shapiro asserts that the distribution of mutations is not uniform; it has a skew. For the purposes of this discussion, I do not dispute that. However, Shapiro’s view does not mean any one mutation event is not random; it simply means that the randomness can be described by a non-uniform probability distribution over time. This analysis is mathematically identical to the way that physicists view the emission of light particles and other random quantum events: they can be described by non-uniform probability distributions over time, but the outcome of any one event is still random.
Until you come to the realization, Ashwin, that the theory of evolution is theologically and philosophically identical to every other scientific theory (gravity, quantum mechanics, meteorology) that has emerged from Baconian methodological naturalism, any discussion of scientific merit is going to be a fruitless waste of time, both for you and for everyone else. You will never accept anything that you consider to be an affront to God’s sovereignty, nor would I want you to.
I only want you to realize two things:
Grace and peace,
Chris Falter
(*) Randomness is probably related to more than the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, but an in-depth discussion of the ontological nature of randomness is fodder for a different discussion thread.
the vast majority (93%) of leading physicists disagree with you. I guess they didn’t get your memo, to quote a friend.
It isn’t, and your repeating the assertion for the umpteenth time does not make the assertion true.
You did read the word “part,” did you not? Yet you ask @glipsnort whether natural selection is by itself a sufficient explanation for novelty.
Still praying for grace and peace,
Chris
Irrelevant to how we describe what has already happened.
Sure. I think it’s fine to restrict “common descent” to the organism from which you get your cell membrane and other cell machinery. HGT, then, is an evolutionary process that occurs in the context of common descent; it is the transfer of genetic material between organisms that are, in the strict sense, also related by common descent.
This a) false, and b) irrelevant to the claims you’ve been making the content of current evolutionary biology.
You’ve been talking about evolutionary novelties, which are new, generally complex traits. Complex traits in current evolutionary theory (whatever version you want to pick) do not normally arise in a single mutational step. Interplay between mutation and natural selection are needed for a novelty to evolve.
I can’t explain how it does it, since I don’t think it does.
I think why lies behind his comments (and I think misunderstanding) is recent criticism of the way natural selection has been treated in traditional Neo-Darwinism. There was an assumption that adaptive evolution occurs when natural selection sculpts changes out of constant, tiny changes to phenotype that occur in essentially every direction for every trait. In this model, there is just an ever-present fuzziness in every trait in the population, and natural selection is the dominant creative force, and the only thing that really guides evolution.
A more contemporary understanding of adaptive evolution challenges this view in two ways. First, traits cannot vary in any and every way. Existing systems, including existing developmental pathways for multicellular organisms, make some kinds of phenotypic change likely and preclude other kinds of change. Second, not all phenotypic change occurs via incremental steps along a continuum, especially when it comes to real evolutionary novelties. A transposon insertion (or set of insertions), for example, may rewire a regulatory network and cause a discontinuous change in phenotype.
Neither of these new views eliminate the need for natural selection in adaptive evolution, but they do challenge its supremacy as the creative evolutionary force. They change how we think about adaptation, and have major implications for the mechanism, speed, and direction of evolutionary change.
I thing a misunderstanding may occur within you scheme Chris - the outlook commences with “God created …” and from this we see a purpose in the creation. Science for Christians falls under the category of studying the creation.
I would be very surprised if a Christian were to reverse this with “does science reveal purpose and or God?” From this we would conclude that both ID and EC/TE views are working under a wrong category - be that saying science can, or cannot describe the telos. We commence with the statement “Christ is the telos …”, and not with that as a question.
That’s your opinion. Would you willing to do a survey among evolutionary biologists?
The divorce probably didn’t take.
Evolution is not opposed to the sovereignty of God. It is opposed to the interference of God in the process of evolution.By definition,it’s an unguided process.
I am open to a process of change guided by God. Like I have said before, i wouldnt call it evolution unless science restated the theory as a possibly guided process.
I would call my belief creationism, or intelligent design.
I have repeated this again and again. You don’t seem to get it.
Sure… and a lot of it is just so stories…
Actually if you read Shapiro, he is categorical that science does not go there yet… In fact its one of the most trenchant criticisms against his idea. That he refuses to speculate on what sets the forces of “natural genetic engineering” into motion. And i admire that.Perhaps there are natural causes for what he defines as “natural genetic engineering”, perhaps not, however i respect that he refuses to rely on speculative just so stories.
Depends on what exactly you mean by common descent.Theobold defined it as below -
"the theory of UCA posits that all extant terrestrial organisms share a common genetic heritage, each being the genealogical descendant of a single species from the distant past
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09014
If the above definition is true, then what Shapiro/Third way people are describing is not common descent in some cases.
For example- endosymbiosis - New traits such as photoysnthesis in plants are hypothesised to have been acquired from cyanobacteria by plants. If speciation happens by these processess, its not a new species arising from an existing one through inherited modifications. Its new species emerging through the combination of two or more existing species. i.e a falsification of common ancestry.
If we drew such a relationship on a graph, we would get a network as opposed to a heirachy.
We know this happens in the history of life. For example. Eukaryotes are understood to have emerged from the hybridisation of eubacteria and archaebacteria.
HGTs in prokaryotes also point to speciation events being caused by the interaction and merging of genetic materials of 2 or more species. Again, this is not common descent.
This would require a redefinition of common descent.Can you give a formal statement of what this refined version of common descent is? Would the below statement be acceptable?
“The genes in every organism have an antecedent in another organism which might or might not be genaologically related to said organism.”
Can such a theory be tested or falsified? And what exactly does it explain?
@glipsnort
Sure, if you define any change in the genome as a mutation… then what exactly does a mutation signify or mean?
Natural genetic engineering is the name for a class of processes. Categorising them under the head “mutations” should not change their significance or make Shapiro’s arguments invalid.
Lotteries are designed so that someone will win. Is that what you are claiming?
Evolution did not start with a large no: of organisms reproducing. It started with one organism reproducing. And nature doesnt care if that thing lived or died… it had to survive by luck… reproduce by luck… etc etc…
I was referring to how this thread started.
Me and my siblings are not an example of common descent. we have two parents. You are confusing issues here.
I didnt fix the title. @pevaquark did… He has a preference for sarcastic titles that distort my claims.
There is a list of published papers in the Evolution news site.
Yes i read the word “part”… i even tried to define it… i asked if natural selection regulates novelty by selection…
he said No. i am curious to know what he means exactly.
There are a lot of evolutionary biologists that give credit to the design in nature to natural selection.
Same to you brother.
That would be an interesting survey (just for its own sake), and here is the question I would want answered: “Does the theory of evolution in any way depend on or presume the nonexistence of an active deity?”
And while I agree that it would be interesting to see how biologists at large would answer that today, I am yet more interested in what actual truth is. So for those who would give an affirmative answer (and I don’t dispute many still may --why does Biologos exist, after all!), I would like to hear them explain how or why the theory of evolution does this any more than any other scientific theory. At that point any affirmative answers are revealed to be the result of erroneous theological caricature [or fallacious generalization of one narrow theology as a sole representative of all theology]. So even if you could still find a majority of choir members to sing that song, I am still more impressed by whichever answer is the most coherent one. You have yet to answer it yourself (the “how is it any more necessarily godless than gravity?” question). Those are the rocks on which you have been consistently unable to avoid shipwreck.
Those two sentences do not even make sense together.
You simply ignored everything I said about quantum mechanics and other branches of science, and how they have included randomness in their theories. Why should I or anyone else on this forum take you seriously?
You seem to be a fan of quantum mechanics. Like the theory of evolution, quantum mechanics explicitly includes randomness. Kindly explain how it is that the randomness-advocating theory of quantum mechanics does not "oppose the interference of God "
While you are doing so, please address the fact that 93% of leading physicists are atheists.
Please address the fact that leading physicists have used the theories of physics as an apologetic for atheism. Most recently, these physicists include:
These are all prominent, modern physicists who subscribe to the consensus on the theory of relativity, the Big Bang, and quantum mechanics.
Thank you. Have a great day.
Chris
My answer is practical.You seem to think the theory of evolution exists in some void without people.
Its a fact that majority of evolutionary biologists believe evolution is not guided.
Evolutionary biologists have actively claimed this over the last several decades to the public (from Huxley to Dawkins and beyond). Organisations such as PNAS routinely publish articles that clearly state this. Here are some reasons why they might think evolution has nothing to do with a christian God.
Blockquote
However, that’s not the argument here. Imperfections and sub-optimal properties are an outcome of evolutionary theory; this is a positive argument that observations of the world best fit a model positing a history of accidents and refinements constrained along lines of descent. If the creationists want to complain, they first have to propose a set of predictions that would discriminate between accident and design, and starting from a god who can do anything at any whim is not a fruitful source of hypotheses.
Irrespective of the quality of the argument. the fact remains that this line of argumentation is a part of evolutionary logic/science.
2) The elevation of natural processes such as natural selection as the Designer - i can show n number of papers that posit that natural selection is the creative process by which design occurs and denies that design for organisms originated in any mind.
3) The fruit of evolution: over the years we see the following fruit of “evolutionary thinking”-
A consistent antagonism and contempt for religion/religious among its proponents. Promotion of ideas such as eugenics, survival of the fittest etc which are opposite to the ideas of grace,mercy,equality etc.
These are all valid reasons from how the theory of evolution has been developed and taught over the last 150 years to conclude that it does not describe a process guided by a benevolent or intelligent God.
You might have a caricature of the theory bereft of history and ignoring how it has been and continues to be presented that allows you to believe it allows for God to guide it.I just don’t see how that is possible… and neither do the majority of the scientists involved (whether christain Id/creationists or more orthodox scientist).
However, in the world we live in it is formulated, researched and taught as an unsupervised mindless process which cannot have a designer.
Edit: This leads me to the conclusion that any need for God to guide evolution would destroy the theory… And thats what is happening now. The theory cannot stand on its own and is being constantly refined… Every decade, Evolution is new wine under the old label…
Mere weeks ago, I would have been totally with you on this (equating ‘unguided’ with ‘denial of God’). In fact I wrote about that in another thread which I’ll share with you here … and the responses to it that enlightened me to the multiple uses of that word. I’m quoting myself below from that other thread, and then pasting in the pertinent responses to it that I accepted, causing me to alter my views accordingly.
I had written:
“Unguided” raises my hackles for the exact reasons that you nail in your paragraph above [paragraph in another thread]. Unguided by what? Until those same authors are willing to stick “unguided” in front of everything that doesn’t have a conscious agent pushing it around [the unguided wind, … that unguided gravity, the unguided temperature increase there …] it is obvious that “unguided” has and always ever had precisely one target in mind: God. Was there ever anything or anybody else that was a viable candidate?
After my little rant above, I was corrected by one @glipsnort (a biologist) when he replied with the following:
I am not a historian of science [he requested Ted Davis’ input here], but I believe the answer to your last question is “yes”. My impression is that the emphasis on the unguidedness of Darwinian evolution is to distinguish it from various ideas of orthogenetic evolution, in which there is some guiding principle or force, often internal to the organism, that controlls variation and the direction of evolution. (One of the complaints of proponents of an extended evolutionary synthesis is that the Modern Synthesis is so Darwinian that it downplays the extent to which existing developmental pathways determine the possible direction of future evolution.)
…and Ted Davis chimed in per Steve’s request. Here is what Ted wrote:
Yes, Steve, before the modern synthesis (ca. 1930) various types of directed evolution were advocated by some of the leading naturalists. The guidance was usually seen as immanent, not transcendently given by a genuine Creator. But, evolution was not “random” and undirected.
They simply couldn’t accept the idea that an undirected process could produce all living things in their complexity and subtlety.
I am with them on this, incidentally. IMO evolution is “random” only in a formal mathematical sense, not metaphysically.
Later on Steve adds that this concessionary word:
I dare say “unguided” does double duty; Darwinian evolution can be seen as replacing metaphysical notions of teleology with mechanistic explanations.
…which I took to mean that my sentiment was not entirely misplaced … but only became problematic when I insisted that “unguided” could only mean one thing. (I trust you’ll correct me if I misrepresent you here, Steve.)
My own conclusion from all this now? I now allow that the word “unguided” can have valid scientific/mathematical meaning apart from how it can also be applied metaphysically. So I won’t rail against it like I used to … or at least not without clarifying which sense of it I am using.
You (like I recently was) are still painting it all with one broad brush, that the only thing any biologists can mean by the word ‘unguided’ is that this must be a presumptive denial of existence of any active God. Even if you were right that a majority of biologists are happy to use this same broad brush (which I’m happy to provisionally grant, but do not share your certainty of it – it makes no difference to my argument) it does not change the fact that very many Christian biologists do not paint with such a broad brush, happily accepting robust evolutionary theory whilst simultaneously embracing robust Christian faith. Their mere existence renders your uncompromising “wedding” of the two concepts [evolution and materialism] to be simply and irretrievably …wrong.
How about you let me know what your claims are- in various threads your main points have been:
If I missed anything, please let me know. Or if you have better thread titles you’re certainly welcome to either PM me what you would prefer or just post here what you’d like. I don’t think I’m quite sure what your particular model is or how you imagined life came to exist in the way that it did. I would be curious to see how your model performs compared to like let’s say one of natural selection/common descent – that has had many actual predictions that have been confirmed. Mini times, what I see with critics of the theory of evolution is that they love to kind of hit and run. So they take a jab here take a jab there never present any model or anything of substance of their own but just simply say ha ha this doesn’t seem to explain everything the way you think it is. And of course it doesn’t! We don’t have everything figured out; what do you think the tens of thousands of researchers in these areas are actively doing. But to point those out and ignore the questions that we’ve already answered is what a lot of post by anti-evolutionary websites and posts seem to do.
A general tactic of yours seems to selectively quotes parts of various papers to try and demonstrate that particular aspects of this whole theory are not quite what people think they are. Now, part of this can be a healthy exercise where everyone gets to learn something new! But what is not good is to ignore the main conclusions and findings of many of these papers and only select the quotes they have that you agree with. This is a quote mine and a tactic I’d like to see you stop using. I appreciate that your quote mines are at least new ones that I haven’t seen - as some posters who have come here literally copy a list of quite mines they got from somewhere else on the Internet as I noted in one particular occasion.
Accusations need evidence to back them.
For example, how is the nested hierarchy a just so story? How is the divergence of exons and introns within a gene a just so story?
We already know the mechanisms of transposon mutagenesis, so I don’t know what Shapiro is trying to say if that is what he is saying. I have read Shapiro’s work, and it is random mutation. He tries to talk about how complicated these mechanisms of mutagenesis are, but it still boils down to the fact that these mechanisms can not differentiate between mutations that help the organisms, don’t help the organism, or harm the organism. Shapiro tries to focus just on the beneficial mutations in his experiments, but what he glosses over are all of the other mutations that happen through those same mechanisms that are not beneficial. It’s a bit like claiming the lottery is guided because a specific person won while ignoring the hundreds of millions of people who didn’t win.
If memory serves . . .
In one of Shapiro’s experiments there is a mobile genetic element in the bacteria he is studying that inserts itself into the genome of the bacteria resulting an a positive adaptation. The mobile element was there at the start of the experiment, and the mutation was inherited vertically by the descendants of the founding bacteria. That looks like common ancestry to me. It certainly doesn’t look like ID/creationism.
The eukaryote had the genes it did because of common ancestry and vertical inheritance. The cyanobacteria that was engulfed got its genome from common descent and vertical inheritance, and probably also horizontal genetic transfer. All of these are natural processes. How does this support ID/creationism?
It explains where the genes came from. Vertical inheritance through biological reproduction as well as horizontal genetic transfer are the mechanisms that result in the genomes we see today.
The way to falsify these theories is to show that the mutations that separate species are not consistent with the observed mechanisms. Massive divergences from the expected nested hierarchy of eukaryotes would be another potential falsification. A good example is lab strains of mice that carry exact copy of genes from distantly related organisms like humans and jellyfish that are not found in other rodent species. This is the result of intelligent design, and it stands in stark contrast to how evolution works.
The theory of evolution states that there is no meaningful connection between what an organism needs and the genetic changes that occur. This is easily falsifiable. All you would need to show is that a specific mutation only happens when it is needed, or that a specific mechanism only produces beneficial mutations when they are needed.
Your genomes are nearly identical because you inherited those genes from a common ancestor.
I was hoping for a discussion.
You have just said evolution is unguided in two ways-
2)[quote=“Mervin_Bitikofer, post:118, topic:38906”]
I dare say “unguided” does double duty; Darwinian evolution can be seen as replacing metaphysical notions of teleology with mechanistic explanations.
[/quote]
So evolution guided by God as described by many here would fall under category 2… and wouldn’t be “Darwinian”.
I personally wouldn’t insist on a scientific theory accepting point 2. However, since it directly rejects it, why call any creationist idea theistic evolution? That’s an oxymoron… esp considering most people at biologos advocate for Darwinian processes.
I also think that any natural process would have to be directed as in the first meaning… and hence reject Darwinism.
When it comes to Darwinian evolution (including neo Darwinism),which is what everyone means when they speak about evolution,a guided process is a strict no no.
Did you get that part?
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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