I am afraid you are mistaken. The coat color of the mice is determined by the environment. Where the color of the sand is black, the color of the mouse is more likely to be black. Where the color of the sand is tan, the color of the mouse is more likely to be tan. Predation is a constant, the color of the sand is the variable, so the color of the sand causes the color of the mouse to change.
“The close match between the color of the mice and the color of the substrate on which they live is thought to be an adaptation against predation” PNAS -29 Apr 03
The quote from the article confirms that the the issue is adaption, NOT conflict or survival of the fittest.
The reason that some bacteria thrived and squeezed out the others is because a particular change enabled them to digest citrate as I said. This is not the result of competition. This is the result of adaption.
I was wrong about winners and losers, because I was thinking that this was sexual reproduction that commonly spreads adaptions through the species, instead of asexual reproduction where this cannot happen.
I admitted that I made a mistake concerning winning and losing in this case. Please admit you were wrong about competition /survival of the fittest.
First, and most important I have never claimed that natural selection is wrong. Again you are making a completely unfounded claim and I would be more polite in my response, but I warned you before about this kind of thing. You need to listen and learn.
On the contrary I have always said, and you can check this out very easily by reviewing the archives at BioLogos, that natural selection is very important, but the Darwinian mechanism for natural selection, survival of the fittest is badly flawed, and is not supported by scientific evidence.
Blockquote
“The point being that the e. coli evolved not by chance, but in a manner consistent with adaption to the environment and there was no competition.”
This is an argument against survival of the fittest and not against natural selection.
I can read, and I suggest you do more reading. What does writing do except reveal to others what you are thinking. Are you suggesting that Dawkins doesn’t believe what he writes?
It is either that I don’t understand evolution so I am making all these wild claims, which I am not, or I do understand what evolution is all about so you and your allies need to make all these ad hominem arguments to “prove” that I cannot know what I am talking about.
You have made the discussion personal, which means you take my scientific understanding as an attack on yourself and those practice science, which it is not. Live your faith that science is an objective activity.
God is not disproved by Dawkins et al because they are mistaken, bot does that mean that if there really was no God that humans could not know this?. My faith is not based on the nature of natural selection, but my faith is also not held in a vacuum. If faith is not tested and passes the test, then it is useless. Just so science must be tested and if it fails the test, it is wrong. It is my observation that Survival of the fittest has not passed the test of science so it is wrong.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
122
“either that I don’t understand evolution so I am making all these wild claims, which I am not, or I do understand what evolution is all about so you and your allies need to make all these ad hominem arguments to “prove” that I cannot know what I am talking about.”
It looks like the former, that you don’t understand natural science and indeed are making wild, unsubstantiated, “merely philosophical” claims.
Do you consider the possibility that your lack of scientific training holds you back in any way from understanding this topic, Roger? If you simply think you know better than scientists who DO have training, and continually won’t listen to their patient corrections of your views, sooner or later, people get tired with people who refuse to listen. You can refuse the “ad hominems” by stating your training in ecology and natural science; otherwise people have every right to refuse to believe what you are saying about “evolution”, and most likely should.
So, what are your “ecology” qualifications, Roger? If you don’t have ANY, it doesn’t look good. If you have merely a thin veneer of training in biology or ecology, done online or only through books without experience doing science, again, it doesn’t look good. But you can make it “look better”, indeed, if your training is actually better than it appears from what you write about “ecology” here.
Is it other peoples’ fault that you keep pretending to have found a brilliant “scientific” solution, as a non-scientist, yet which other people have already long explored and elaborated better and more clearly than you are doing now? The Dawkins fetish doesn’t wear well, as if you would entertain shadows instead of turning towards the Sun.
Look Roger, you seem like a nice guy, and I am sure you mean well and are committed to your faith. I
respect that. However, you need to listen to what myself and others are saying. It is very obvious to us that this is just your opinion formed from a need to redefine natural selection to conform to your biblical interpretation of God’s plan and God’s nature. Natural selection as evinced by science is objectionable to you so you have tried to make an argument to redefine it. What you have done though is simply declared science and scientists wrong, yet you provided zero, I repeat zero evidence or argument to support your assertions.
Your response to my writing is also either a result of not understanding what I have said or evading it.
I say one last time Roger: What is your evidence for your claim about Natural Selection, and how do you show that all the evidence of the scientific establishment is wrong? And, where are your peer-reviewed publications? However, I know you are not going to provide this. I have asked several times now.
So, I am going to leave it at that Roger. I don’t want to continually dismantle you in front of your community. I did not come here to bring people down. I just feel that it is important to call out pseudo-science when I see it. I have done that now and so no need to continue.
Thank you for your response. It is to bad that youdonotspendsometimeonBioLogosbecausethenrouwouldknoethatyouaredead wrong. I am not a nice guy.
Natural Selection has been controversial for some time. Karl Popper, eminent philosopher of science, said that scientific thinking must be falsifiable to be valid. This means that it must be provable by experiment. Survival of the fittest was not provable or falsifiable because “the fittest” was never defined in a way that the theory could be experimentally be demonstrated. The theory does not say how an allele or species becomes fit or unfit so it cannot be verified.
For instance every teenager knows that the dinosaurs want extinct because of climate change, which caused their food to die out before they were able to adapt. Mammals were also stressed, but were better able to adapt, so they survived and flourished. The evolution of the mammals had little to do with survival of the fittest and every thing to do with adaption to the environment.
He did alter his position when he learned that bacteria developed resistance to the anti-biotic penicillin, after mutations changed their structure so that they were no longer vulnerable to the drug. In other words bacteria can change or evolve in the face of a hostile environment to avoid the effects of medications like penicillin. We can see this so we know that at least some evolution is caused by environmental change.
This kind of Natural Selection, which I call ecological selection because it is based on the science of ecology which has replaced evolution in the forefront of biological research, is based on the ability to adapt to its environmental niche.
This understanding of evolution has also found support in a peer reviewed paper published in Biology Notes of the Royal Society.
Published:27 January 2010https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2009.1024
Sahney, S., Benton, M.J. and Ferry, P.A. (2010),
The Abstract concludes by saying, "
Throughout geological time, patterns of global diversity of tetrapod families show 97 per cent correlation with ecological modes. Global taxonomic and ecological diversity of this group correlates closely with the dominant classes of tetrapods (amphibians in the Palaeozoic, reptiles in the Mesozoic, birds and mammals in the Cenozoic). **These groups have driven ecological diversity by expansion and contraction of occupied ecospace, rather than by direct competition within existing ecospace and each group has used ecospace at a greater rate than their predecessors.**Emphasis added.
The research indicates that evolutionary change is driven by ecological adaption, symbiosis, not survival of the fittest If you have contrary evidence, please submit it.
Roger, I wasn’t going to continue responding to you, but seeing your juicy post, I just had to reply.
I think you are a nice guy Roger, after all, you are making this very easy for me. (P.S. I think you should get someone to look at your spacebar)
Your use of the word controversial here, is the same as we find in creationist attempts to get creation taught in schools. This is the crazy idea that we should ‘teach the controversy’ (even though none exists) and let the kids decide! What I am saying Roger, is that you are using a term which really does not convey the way in which the scientific community actually discusses natural selection. Since Darwin, evolutionary science, biology, ecology, population genetics and so on have either been invented as disciplines or are enormously expanded. The science has grown and developed and new findings are building on existing knowledge and some of this will of course place more or less emphasis on the many different drivers of evolution, and all but a few of those drivers come under the general heading of natural selection. (Genetic drift for example). There is no controversy around natural selection, but a gradual fine tuning of the ideas involved as new findings provide new insights and further develop and expand our knowledge.
Your claim that survival of the fittest is not falsifiable is not only incorrect but I think reflects a total misapprehension of the science and the mechanisms involved. Plus I might add that this claim is easily shown to be wrong with the most cursory searches online of the scientific literature. So to perpetuate this narrative is in my view deliberately misleading.
Your claim that ‘the theory’ of …[survival of the fittest] does not say how an allele or species becomes fit is also totally wrong. Firstly, ‘survival of the fittest’ is not itself a theory, it is a catch phrase. Evolution by natural selection is a theory. Secondly, ‘fitness’ at an individual level relates solely to whether or not an individual has succeeded in reproducing. Thirdly, alleles are considered fit if and only if they succeed in ‘getting themselves’ expressed in the phenotype of an individual that succeeds in reproducing AND that allele variant is present in the offspring. Lastly, at the species level we may have one or more populations which may or may not share the exact habitat, and may have variable survival pressures on individuals, so we cannot say that the presence or domination of a particular allele means universally that the species is more fit. However, we can in some cases calculate a probability of reproductive success within a population based on allele frequencies within that population.
Now before I go on Roger, I would like to digress for a moment. I know that you are not a YEC, but I want to shine a light on something that people often fail to notice in the ‘teach creationism in schools’ battlefield. What everyone does know, is that the YECs will often push the line that creationism or ID is an alternative scientific theory, and will also assert that ‘evolutionism’ or ‘Darwinism’ is not proper science and is the product of an atheistic/socialist agenda. Their claim is that we ought to teach ID alongside evolution, or not teach evolution at all because it takes children away from God and corrupts them. So, now here is what is not proposed by the YECs - strangely they do not advocate that we teach children the critical thinking skills that might enable them to ‘see through’ evolution’s alleged ‘flaws’. Why not? I mean surely, if evolution is wrong, then it should be their goal to give children the capacity to identify where the science itself has been corrupted? Surely, by teaching children how science works, they will be able to see evolution is ‘false’? Why do they not want children to study its methodologies, its structure and processes, to learn the peer-review publication model, to learn
the skill of identifying and removing errors and bias, to have an understanding of the use of statistical techniques, and things like causation verses correlation, and how evidence works? Why not teach them the concepts around predictive models, experimentation, verification, falsification, repeatability, referencing, citation of other published works? Surely by teaching them the way a proper scientific paper should be structured, and how to identify logical fallacies, sound and valid argumentation, syllogisms, predicate logic and valid conclusions, would give them the skills necessary to ‘see through’ evolution and protect them from the clutches of those evil atheists?
All the current tactics of the YECs struggle on the basis of violating the first amendment (in the USA), and have a string of legal failures as a result. So here is an idea, instead of fighting that battle, surely just teach children the skills of skeptical inquiry, critical thinking, logic, evidence, and the fundamentals of the scientific method and they will defeat evolution once and for all? Surely?
The reason YECs do not take this approach is obvious. They know that science, once properly understood, will do the opposite. I will show them that science has fully verified and validated evolution by natural selection to a point closer to the concept of proof than any other scientific theory we have. Such a skill-set in the heads of children would backfire on the YECs! So YECs definitely do not want children to know this! They do not want children asking difficult questions of the young earth model and demanding proper answers based on evidence and reason. So their strategy is to keep children ignorant and cognitively unequipped to see through their own bad arguments. They want to be able to get kids to believe that evolution is a corruption of science and is not true science. They want to convince kids that it is just ‘man’s’ word which cannot be put up against God’s word and that it is all about your worldview and that science does not have within it the ability to remove personal bias from its findings.
This mentality and strategy is clearly not exclusive to the YEC world. I see it in your writings too Roger. Albeit in a lesser, more subtle form. I think you may be a victim of that lack of proper training, and are suffering from the classic blind-spots through having taught yourself and having started with a belief system that you are intellectually bound by. However, since you have not done the formal training and lived and worked in the scientific community as a scientist, you clearly don’t have a proper grasp of the essence of how science works and how scientists operate, and don’t have the training to recognize the corrupting influence of your own bias. You have come at your views by first committing to a specific biblical interpretation of reality and have worked tirelessly to try to force science to conform to it.
I congratulate you on your honesty about this Roger. You have made it very clear that you are motivated by your interpretation of the bible. But I am prepared to consider the possibility that you really are not aware that it is your prior beliefs rather than the evidence that control your conclusions. It could be that this lack of training in science is why you cannot see where you are going wrong. However, I am forced to take a less generous line with you for the simple reason that you are attempting to position yourself as an authority on this subject and therefore I say that you have a moral and ethical responsibility to intellectual rigor and intellectual honesty. It is these last two items that motivate me to take issue with your posts.
By intellectual honesty, I do not necessarily mean that you are knowingly misleading - although this is quite possible, but that you have a duty to the ideal of honesty which is to be able to say that you have honestly attempted to master the requisite skills, background theory and scientific knowledge so that your research and conclusions truly carry the weight that you place on them, and in turn expect your readers to place on them. The honesty I refer to would be in not trying to imply that you know more than you do, yet I think you have done exactly that. It is clear to me that your conclusions do not carry the weight of someone who has done the necessary research and the hard work of gaining a thorough understanding of science itself, or of the current research in the areas you are dealing with. Another aspect of intellectual honesty is to not make claims about your scientific opponents that you cannot verify, such as that their personal biases are clouding their science, or, as you attempted to do to me, try to say that they use their false conclusions - that perhaps did not result from their biases - to then support their biases. I think this last angle from you is a deliberate dodge and is at odds with your overall narrative. That honesty is also not found in trying to pass off philosophical remarks made by scientists as representing their scientific opinion.
We are all dependent on the honesty of our interlocutors. If you are not prepared to respect the truth wherever it may lead, then you cannot truly claim to be honest in your dealings. Unpreparedness to change your mind if the evidence dictates it, is a form of dishonesty. Attacking your scientific opponents by claiming first that the are wrong (without providing evidence), and then that they are corrupted by bias (again without providing evidence), is also a form of dishonesty, because it is trying to pass off ad hominem attacks as scientific argumentation. I may be using a particularly pointed and harsh definition of honesty here, and this is not meant as a personal attack, but it is important to be very clear in my description of your actions.
This also shows up in that you have not produced anything approaching a valid scientific critique of the published literature. In scientific terms this is known as a literature review, which is part of the process of doing any scientific work that intends to make a contribution to the field, and is a standard component of a scientific paper. You have not presented a balanced and fair summary of the research results in the field or cited counter-examples that would show your ideas to be incorrect and why. You have not set out criteria that would either demonstrate your hypothesis to be true or for it to be false, and you have not referenced any substantive body of research by others, recognized and cited in the field, that honestly and truly support your contention. You also do not provide a clear set of definitions and have not properly defined your own terms, and you misuse existing terms to mean what they do not. You have not submitted your ‘research’ for peer-review and have not published any findings in scientific journals. In short, your views are not accepted anywhere in the scientific community.
As I described above with the YEC discussion, if there are demonstrable shortcomings in the prevailing science behind natural selection, or at least failings in the public understanding of the current science, then it is incumbent upon you to show where the science is wrong by providing evidence and publishing peer-reviewed work that demonstrates the veracity of your claims. This goes to the lack of rigor behind your approach. As with the YECs, it seems that this lack of focus on identifying - scientifically - the supposed flaws in the ‘Dawkinsian’ concepts of natural selection, speaks to the lack of veracity in your approach. If there are indeed flaws in the science, and you actually knew what you were doing, you should be able to demonstrate this by analysis of their published peer-reviewed work, by repeating their experiments and getting different results, or by showing that the assumptions described in their methodology and background data they cited have flaws, and lastly that all the other papers cited in their work, supporting their results, are also wrong and why. You must demonstrate the ‘why’ they are wrong with data, experimentation and methodology, with rigor, and not just make an empty claim.
Nothing you have written from what I see Roger, shows me that you have engaged in a proper, rigorous, scientific methodology. When I have asked you for evidence and publications of your own you have produced nothing, and the link you provided in your last post does nothing at all to support your claims. In previous posts, examples you have used in your work and your book, have not been the least bit convincing and your explanations of those examples simply demonstrate a lack of understanding on your part of what the literature says, what the evidence says, and the proper definitions used in the field. A few of us have tried to point this out to you Roger, to no avail it seems.
So that we can move forward, rather than me just providing a critique of your comments and approach, let me lay out some basic information that may help the readers of this post, and hopefully you too, to appreciate where exactly you are going wrong.
Your faith driven thesis is not that evolution is wrong, but that the drivers of evolution as proposed by mainstream science (typified by Dawkins et al) are not competition and predation, but are adaptation to the environment, the ecological system in which each life-form exists, and a quasi-cooperative interpretation of symbiosis. Further, you assert that in fact science has overturned or greatly diminished the role of competition and predation in nature and is now coming around to your way of thinking. Unfortunately Roger, all of this is either incorrect or misrepresents the situation sufficiently that we can say that your central idea is wrong.
It is not my claim that ecology plays no role or that symbiotic relationships are not important factors in evolution. I would agree that they are. I would also agree with the literature that other components like genetic drift, transfer, viruses and so forth drive change in allele frequency in populations, but I would emphasize that whatever the genetic changes are due to, insofar as they are expressed in the phenotype and are non-neutral, they will be acted upon by the set of selective forces that we refer to as natural selection.
My contention is, and what is in fact supported by the literature, is that predation and competition are primary factors in natural selection. Further, that these are factors vary significantly from species to species, and that there is no ordering and weighting of the different components of selective pressure that is universal.
Before we proceed to the science on this, we first need to deal with definitions.
Natural selection The process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. The theory of its action was first fully expounded by Charles Darwin, and it is now regarded as be the main process that brings about evolution.
Note three things here. 1. That natural selection is considered to be the MAIN process that brings about evolution, and 2. That natural selection is not simply equated with ecology or symbiosis, and 3. That adaptation to their environment is not making a statement that the environment excludes competitive, adversarial and life-threatening forces, and so does not exclude such factors as competition for resources, sexual competition, predation, disease and so on.
The science has never excluded adaptation to one’s environment as a driver for change in allele frequency in a population - which at the end of the day is all evolution is. The science on this has always been open to the many causes of differential survival and reproduction rates in individuals. So to suggest that you have personally identified, and have research to show, that ecological/environmental factors are A driver of evolution, would be to add nothing new to the discussion.
However, if you are saying that natural selection is only due to ecological/environmental factors excluding predation and competition between individuals and species, then you would be completely and comprehensively at odds with all of the scientific community.
Fitness
Your comment about fitness lacking a definition and therefore not being falsifiable is nonsense. Plus your attempts to make your claim sound scholarly and sciency by referencing Karl Popper did nothing to support your claim. Please review the following link Fitness (biology) - Wikipedia
A thorough reading of these types clearly shows that what is meant by symbiosis in the scientific community and hence in the peer-reviewed publications does not match your claims. Symbiosis includes concepts of mutual benefit, one-sided benefit, parasitism, competition, mutual harm, poisoning and even killing your symbiotic species partner. So, your claim that natural selection does not come as a result of predation and competition but rather symbiosis is a false dichotomy since symbiosis is defined by science to include these elements too. The science of symbiosis clearly is not aligned with your theistic model of the workings of the natural world.
I agree that symbiosis, so defined, is indeed a significant driver of evolution, however it is not the primary one.
From wikipedia again;
Symbiosis is increasingly recognized as an important selective force behind evolution;[4][53] many species have a long history of interdependent co-evolution.[54]
Now let us take a closer look at the Predator/Prey relationship and its impact on evolution.
The Predator-Prey relationship
The predator-prey relationship is significant factor in natural selection. There are countless articles about this. I could list them on and on. Here are just a random grab for you.
There are just thousands of papers exploring all kinds of aspects of the differential selection rates of predator/prey relationships, the measures of covariance of phenotype to fitness in the individual and across the predator/prey relationship. These papers, and many others, show evidence of the impact of predation on allele frequency and hence evolution.
I want to note again that I am not excluding ecology from the discussion. If you read some of the papers I have linked to you will see that the ecology of the organisms involved are always important components in the discussion. Insofar as your comments are merely indicating that ecology is important, I can’t disagree, but for you to suggest that ecology itself, along with your friendly version of symbiosis, is all that drives (or indeed what is) natural selection, then you are incorrect. You are wrong because you are trying to exclude predation and competition, and because ecosystems are in the larger sense, food-chains.
If natural selection is not hugely influenced by predation then why do we see creatures whose most significant feature set is about how to catch and kill their prey? Why is it that we have apex predators like sharks who have evolved into the most efficient killing machines on earth? Why is it that gazelles are so fast when what they eat does not run away from them at high speed?
Your search for a more palatable version of the natural world, one that is more aligned with your personal take on scripture, leads you to ignore those features of reality that don’t fit your worldview, and leads you to recoil at the idea of survival of the fittest because of its brute implications of cruelty, suffering and pain, and that this simply cannot be reconciled with God’s plan as you see it. While I can sympathize with your feelings on this, this simply is not science.
What you seem not to want to face is the real world. In nature we see brutality everywhere. The scenes of lions ripping apart a zebra, or a tribe of Chimpanzees hunting together to catch and kill a monkey or a member of a competing tribe, or a snake unhinging its highly evolved jaw in order to swallow a paralyzed (sometimes still breathing) victim, come readily to mind and must not be ignored if we are to present an honest account of nature. Predation results in the evolution of features like teeth and claws, speed, strength, agility, stealth, pursuit and evasion tactics, camouflage, venoms, antidotes, and toxins. Predation has resulted in the evolution of keen eyesight in birds of prey, incredible smell and hearing in the canine and feline families, armored skin, horns and spikes in the many herbivores and so on. These animals are locked in a biotech arms race to the death. Fail to catch and you die, fail to escape and you die. It is harsh, brutal, painful, and destructive, yet amazingly creative and beautiful. To deny this Roger, and to deny that this is a major driver of evolution, is simply to deny reality.
Not convinced? Well you don’t have to believe what I say. Just look at the evidence. Let’s review some examples shall we?
Consider the competition between certain wasp and bee species… https://www.google.com/search?q=bees+vibrate+to+kill+wasp&oq=bees+vibrate+&aqs=chrome.0.0i457j69i57j0l2j0i22i30l4.6177j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
There are wasp species (hornets) that invade beehives and kill the queen and destroy the whole hive. There are bee species that have evolved a method of vibrating their bodies at high speed to increase the temperature in the hive to be higher than the wasps can handle and that kills the wasps and protects the hive. This is not about ecosystems and symbiosis, but about a battle for survival between predator and prey.
What about Dicrocoelium dendriticum (or the lancet liver fluke) which is a parasitic flatworm that gets into the brains of certain ant species and makes an ant behave in a way that will get it eaten by a grazing animal? The brain worm that turns ants into zombies | Natural History Museum .This is not an ecological adaptation, but a brutal takeover of the brain of the ant to cause it to get itself killed so that the liver fluke can get to reproduce. Yes, this is all part of the ecological framework we adduce from our investigations, but that does not detract from the fact that evolution of this parasitic relationship is hardly aligned with your idea of God’s nature.
Even more unsavory is the not-so-lovely Spider Wasp also known as the Pompilidae family, of which there are 5000 species. These creatures paralyze spiders, lay their eggs inside their bodies, and the pupae then eat the spider alive as they grow, eating the heart and lungs last to keep the spider alive. Spider wasp - Wikipedia
Various spider species have evolved strategies that can sometimes fend off the attacking wasps, and some wasps have evolved counter-measures to these tactics. It is important to note that the toxin does not anesthetize the spider against pain but merely paralyzes it. There is no evolutionary pressure to spare the spider the agony of being eaten alive, only to immobilize it. Would this killing and suffering not also be against the nature of God as you see it?
What about Bats and Moths? Bats have evolved to use echolocation to detect and catch their prey. Moths have in turn evolved to detect the echolocation calls of hunting bats, and evoke evasive flight maneuvers,[6][7] or reply with their own ultrasonic clicks to confuse the bat’s echolocation.[8]
Then there is the Rough-skinned newt… Rough-skinned newts have skin glands that contain a powerful nerve poison, tetrodotoxin, as an anti-predator adaptation. Throughout much of the newt’s range, the common garter snake is resistant to the toxin. While in principle the toxin binds to a tube-shaped protein that acts as a sodium channel in the snake’s nerve cells, a mutation in several snake populations configures the protein in such a way as to hamper or prevent binding of the toxin, conferring resistance. In turn, resistance creates a selective pressure that favors newts that produce more toxin. That in its turn imposes a selective pressure favoring snakes with mutations conferring even greater resistance. This evolutionary arms race has resulted in the newts producing levels of toxin far in excess of that needed to kill any other predator.[14][15][16]
Honestly, I could go on and on here, as there are tens of thousands of well studied examples. I didn’t even get to the evolution of crocodiles, the war between ant-eaters and termites, the existence of electric eels (a feature that need not have evolved other than for defense and attack), the evolution of Venus fly-traps, the strategies and capabilities of Antlions are a good example of evolved techniques https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MedF-al1quU, and the power of constrictor snakes is also interesting from an evolutionary viewpoint. I could also have spent hours copying links to articles and videos on inter- and intra-species competition for resources and mates and the killing and suffering that produces, along with the way that this impacts and directs natural selection.
Unfortunately for your central thesis Roger, the natural world really is not a nice place. The battle for survival is a tough, winner-take-all, never-ending process which will go on until life is finally extinguished by the death of our solar system. The brutality of it all is made no more clear than the fact that 99% of all species on earth that have ever existed, have gone extinct. Such wastefulness, such loss, the apparent pointlessness of species evolving and living for millions of years only to die out. The picture of the world this presents to us is not a rosey one, and yes I agree that it is hard to reconcile with the idea of a loving personal God who cares. That task is best achieved though, not by destroying the science, but by considering your faith and how you may better interpret it and God’s role in the world.
My goal here Roger, is not to attempt to deny God or belief or faith, but to respect the truth. It is not scientism that I am promoting, but in the natural realm, science is the best tool we have for getting to the truth, and if you are going to play in that space and not simply try to look like you are, then I want you to do that properly. I want you to respect science, scientists and the scientific process. I want you to be an example to those who would read your work, of someone who actually has learned the science, mastered the information, has acquired the knowledge and understanding of the subject domain, and has an intimate understanding of the scientific method. I would want anyone who purports to know their stuff in the scientific domain to actually know their stuff, otherwise it is quasi-scientific at best and pseudo-scientific at worst. Unfortunately what you have shown is that you do not know your stuff, and worse than that, you are willfully ignorant of it and willfully misleading people into thinking that you are not ignorant of it. All of this in the name of trying to bend reality to your pre-existing beliefs. Beliefs, I might add, that include a commandment to not bear false witness…
I think that you will find that none of my criticisms of your work are out of alignment with the ethos of this site, but your approach does run counter to the 11th tenet under the ‘what we believe’ page in that you have not, in my view, operated with humility, grace, honesty, and compassion. Humility: because you have, without sound justification, asserted your untrained views over the thousands of properly trained people who have devoted their lives to their work. Grace: because you have not really listened to those who disagree with you. Honesty: because you have not represented the science accurately or fairly. Compassion: because you have not treated scientists in the field - whose reputations you are seeking to diminish - very well at all, and have sort to elevate yourself at their expense.
Science is done by adjusting your theory to fit the facts, not adjusting the facts to fit your theory. Roger, I highly recommend you take a course in the theory and application of the scientific method, critical thinking, statistical analysis and error, the theory of measurement, and a course in logic would also be useful I think. I am not saying this to antagonize you Roger but to help.
Thanks for reading this long post, and I hope that this leads to you taking a step back and rethinking your whole approach.
I hadn’t made any claim to universal Darwinism, and clearly artificial selection by breeders is a counter-example anyway. The question of whether there are non-NS entities or things that are not selected I leave with you, as this is not central to the point I think. Happy to tackle that on another thread perhaps?
I agree that lack of clarity on either side can be a big problem
I do indeed enjoy my porridge in the mornings, but this did not give me pause. I am not arguing that people do not have ideologies, or are not ideologically driven. If your use of ‘ideology’ was simply a literal place-holder for the phrase “Logic of ideas” I would be more relaxed. However, it seems to me that the term is being pressed into service as a pejorative that implies that one is an unwitting slave to one’s ideology and our default stance should be to assume that the product of all men’s endeavors are thus corrupted, and so it is implied, is all of science and the works of scientists.
I realize this is likely to be an area of contention between us, and it is not my goal to be provocative, or make criticisms of your field of sociology. I am not trained in your discipline and am therefore not qualified to offer a critique. What I can say refers to scientific training. One of the core units scientists do in first year is usually called something like ‘Statistics and Scientific Research Methods’. In this, students are taught how to avoid cognitive biases, avoid fallacious reasoning, isolate variables, establish causal links, and perform other essential functions in conducting scientific research. It teaches them how to think critically about any problem.
Science depends on these disciplines for its success. The core of science, its centerpiece, is the systematic removal of error from our assumptions, our observations, our reasoning, our methods and our results. The study of all the possible sources of error is profoundly important and an enormous body of work exists on this within the scientific literature. The training of scientists is heavily focused on checking your assumptions, your conscious and unconscious biases, your influences, your goals, and your strengths and weaknesses. Therefore scientists become not just self-aware of bias, but positively paranoid. These days, this paranoia is compounded by the risk of professional embarrassment should it become apparent that their work is nonsense driven by personal bias or ideology.
While I appreciate that in the humanities, ideology is also a prominent topic, and you might make a case that the social sciences might attract those who are more interested in people and more in tune with our biases and other shortcomings. Indeed, philosophers make a name for themselves by taking a particular position or pursuing an ideology and arguing for it, as have sociologists and historians and so forth. Careers have been forged on this basis by many in the humanities, and people often wear there biases as a badge of honor. However, just because people in the humanities are immersed in this stuff, does not mean that people in science are ignorant of this or somehow less aware or able to comprehend biases and ideological influences. As I said, it is the business of science to know this.
But there is a further and important point to make here. That is, that science itself is a bulwark against bias due to the structure of its methodologies and practices both within the working processes of individual scientists and in the mechanisms of the scientific establishment as a whole. Peer-review, publication of background, assumptions, methods, data and findings, the citation of other papers, experimentation, repeatability, and falsifiability are also key elements in a system thoroughly stress-tested to rid itself of ideological influences that might disturb or corrupt the results.
The philosophy, theory and practice of science is the centerpiece of the scientific body corporate. It represents what scientists are most proud of, and scientists know that without this, science is nothing.
So my reaction to the usage of the word ideology is that I feel it is being used in the pejorative sense to imply that the scientist being referred to has produced work that has either unwittingly being corrupted by ideology or consciously so, and may even be using science to push that ideology. But when challenged on this I feel that you are offering the definition of “Logic of ideas” rather than addressing the point of mentioning ideology in the first place.
While I am a fan of Dawkins as a biologist and writer in the sense of improving the public understanding of science, I am not claiming to agree with everything he says, nor am I stating anything about whether or not he has ideological biases. What I am saying it that to assert, as Roger has done, that his work on NS is a product of his bias, or that he uses his scientific results to push an agenda, and somehow therefore his science is wrong, must be backed up with evidence, and this is what he has not done. What is crucially important for non-scientists to understand here is that an allegation of bias is a very serious thing in science. You do not fling this mud around lightly and if you do, you need to expect some strong push-back.
If I share any ideology with any scientist, would that invalidate any of their work? If I share an ideology with a scientist would I be blind to that ideology, until it is pointed out? Would that lead me to defend that scientist even if they were in the wrong? Because this is kind of what you are implying here. Frankly, I think this is a misdirect. I am quite capable of an objective assessment of the writings of scientists of all persuasions just as I am of non-scientists. My training on identification of bias and error is as described above, and is something that I take pride in.
My philosophical training is fairly broad too and I am quite able to liberate myself from the shackles of bias as well as anyone can. The role of metaphor is not lost on me, and I understand the limitations of language. And as we learned in physics, we cannot remove ourselves entirely from the experiment. Through Heisenberg and then Godel we learned the ultimate uncertainty and indeterminacy of reality, the concomitant limits to our knowledge even if we were gifted with perfect language and objective minds, and the fallibility of human reasoning. Yes we are all limited and working with limited tools, but that does not mean that science does not work and scientists cannot produce reliable results free from ideology and other biases.
I am not making the claim that science and scientists are the object of perfection and above reproach. What I am saying though it that in Christian circles it seems to be a constant refrain that scientists cannot be trusted, are biased, corrupted, ideologically driven and so forth. This is undermining the public confidence in science and trust in scientists as professionals and as people. It is this concern that is my primary motivation in writing these posts.
I will finish by pointing out that the tireless playing of the ideology card at scientists is limited just to those areas of science that offend people’s religious ideas. The science of metallurgy by contrast is overlooked by these critics and its practitioners apparently exemplars for us all to follow. The reason I used the word ‘trope’ is that it is a frequent, tiresome and worn out theme, common from Christian circles in particular, to claim ideological influence as a justification to dismiss the findings of certain branches of science over and over again. The very fact of this, reveals that those that make these allegations on selected scientific topics, are the ones who are truly the slave to their own ideology, and seemingly impervious to correction on it.
While I agree with the broad thrust of you comments, I still wonder how you may respond to the observation that the authority of the physical sciences is sometimes used to bolster particular views (I think this blog often presents arguments that are examples of this). My question is, just how self-critical should we as scientist become. If a theological opinion is discussed, should this requires an understanding of the relevant theology before we launch into ‘science says’ and thus and thus …
We should always be concerned about arguments from authority, whether it be from within science or by those outside of science. We must be clear that no scientist is an authority in the way that we might mean this when referring to a member of the clergy, or indeed the bible itself. Science should be seen as providing provisional explanations that are at any given point, merely the best explanations we have that explain the data. Once people start to treat science as authority then it treats its findings as pronouncements handed down from on high, and its teachings as dogma. Thus, I am not opposed to referring to the ‘current scientific opinion’ or ‘current consensus’ or that ‘the latest research indicates that…’, but I am opposed to someone saying ‘Dr Sandra Scientist, an authority on this subject, says X is true’ therefore you have to support my policy platform.
Science needs to be ever self-critical, ever humble, and ever ready to question itself and its findings. That is part of the discipline that is our quality assurance.
For me it is those outside of science who abuse science. This is done mostly out of political, financial or religious reasons, and almost always as a result of a failure to understand science itself, or a reliance on the general ignorance of science in the general public.
As for your theological question; If we are discussing a theological opinion, then there is no basis for bringing science into the discussion. If the opinion is related to the natural world, then it is no longer theological, and falls into the domain of science. Problems occur only when people conflate the two.
On the other hand you wasted much time and energy creating a strawman saying that I I did not take predation seriously, which is absolutely wrong. On the contrary I have always known that Predation is a form of Symbiosis. Indeed humans are predators who eat plants and animals, so predation is not a bad or evil place. It is one of the ways that Nature/God maintains the necessary balance of that includes death.
That is a judgement or philosophical statement, rather than a scientific statement. This is exactly what Dawkins does that is wrong. He makes a statement, which he claims to be based on science, when in fact it is not.
You saying that just because something or someone lived and then died or died out that their lives are pointless. That is not true. We know that those people who have lived before us have made a way for us. We know that the dinosaurs have made a way for us. Therefore if our lives have any value, then so do the lives of those persons and living creatures which have lived before us.
I would say that just because predation/symbiosis seems to be harsh that means that life is evil and meaningless. They used to say that optimist says that the glass is half empty, while a pessimist says that the glass is half full. It seems to me that Darwinism said that the glass is completely empty,. while ecology and I say that the glass of life is three quarters full. How do you justify saying that life is evil because of predation? Have you done a study to determine how dangerous the world is or is this just a subjective impression?
Survival of the Fittest was a catch phrase which Darwin accepted as another name for Natural Selection and he incorporated into the Origin of the Species’ later editions. I am using this phrase to mean what most if not all people understand it to mean it, as life is composed of conflict and struggle, which is not accurate.
Darwin wrote that Natural Selection arose from the unending struggle for scarce resources among members of a species. The observation of Malthus that population grew geometrically while food supply grew arithmetically led him to think that competition would reward the fittest with more offspring so they could spread their genes. This indeed sounds very plausible, But science is not about plausibility. Science is about evidence and proof, which have yet to be found.
First, and foremost please remember that Survival of the fittest is about competition between members of the Same species (alleles.) In other words Survival of the Fittest is not about prey vs. predators struggling against each other for food, because they don’t. Prey, like cows, usually eat plants, and predators, like humans, eat meat like humans. Predators do not compete against each prey for food because they are different species, which eat different type of food
Predation as survival of the fittest does not cause evolution because the purpose to kill, but to eat or survive. The prey is not an enemy, but necessary food, so predators kill to eat, not to compete.
The evidence indicates the the purpose of predation of all sorts, including vegan and scavenger predation is to fill out the food chains so Nature or God make fullest use of all resources to benefit all. This is symbiosis, not survival of the fittest.
As you say I it is clear that ecology/symbiosis is a primary source of evolution. When it is understood that predation is a form of symbiosis, then it is not clear that competition a primary force. This has still
to be verified.
Peter, you explained to me the importance of peer reviewed research to science so in my last response I gave you the reference on the internet of a study, which confirms my research. I do not see the evidence that you reviewed that paper. Why? Does the scientific method only apply to me, and not to you?
Thank you for the opportunity to share my research. I hope you found it interesting.
I did not say that you think predation doesn’t exist or that you are not aware of it. What I said was that you are excluding it as a driver of evolution. There was no straw-manning on my part, but this point of yours is very much a straw-man of what I said.
This is where you get things so horribly wrong. Firstly, I was obviously summarizing my more structured work earlier in my post, with a more poetic description of what I think is apparent from looking at the natural world with eyes open to the reality as revealed by science. It is obviously a personal opinion because one cannot demonstrating meaning through the tools of science. It is the same with Dawkins. He is free to draw his own philosophical conclusions about meaning and purpose based on his legitimate scientific work. I think his views, if they carry any weight at all though, would carry more weight than yours simply because unlike you, he actually has done the science and knows what the evidence is. However, in both cases, Dawkins and I are very clearly talking about our impression, as human beings, of how life is. This should not and could not be construed by any honest person to be an expression of a scientific opinion. The fact that you are deliberately using this sort of thing to mount your argument shows how weak your position is.
At the end of his book The Selfish Gene, Dawkins says ‘DNA neither knows nor cares, DNA just is, and we dance to its music’ Any normal person will see that this is in a book not a scientific paper, and is a case of the author expressing his opinion as a writer and philosopher of science informed by the science, but nevertheless this is prose and obviously so. To try to represent it otherwise is dishonest of you.
The key word above is ‘apparent’. (emphasis added) I am talking here again about the impression of pointlessness being what you are recoiling from, and is clearly your motivation to distort science to avoid the feelings of nihilism it can provoke in people. A feeling that is at odds with your idea of God’s nature. I did not say that lives lived or still living are in reality pointless or meaningless. Learn to tell the difference between talking about how one interprets reality and what reality is. A proper and fair reading of my entire post made it clear that I was talking about how life, as revealed through ‘real’ science, does indeed give the impression of a harsh, cruel and heartless world that does not care about us. I don’t think I am saying anything here that most Christians have not said themselves. After all, if this was not the impression we get when looking at the apparent harshness of the natural world, why are we even having this conversation? This nit-picking approach of yours is silly and frankly a red-herring.
I never used the term evil.
Now who is waxing philosophical? ‘Ecology’ does not say anything about a glass being three quarters full. ‘Ecology’ is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. It is a neutral descriptive science, that’s it. The rest is just your spin, and frankly just a lot of nonsense. And again, I did not say predation was evil, I did not use the word evil, nor did I imbue ‘predation’ with intent, as if it is some sort of thinking agent. You are straw-manning me again.
To follow that stuff with the question ‘have I done a study to determine how dangerous the world is or is that a subjective impression?’ is absurd and ridiculous. Sorry Roger, I am really trying hard to be friendly, but this is just silly stuff, and hypocritical.
Of all the points I made in the larger original paragraph, you pick out the least important one and quibble over it, rather than addressing the substance of my argument entirely. I invite the readers to judge this for themselves by going to my original paragraph.
Again, totally incorrect. Just sitting in your armchair and making incorrect claims like this is offensive to all those hard-working people in science over decades, who have provided exactly the evidence you say does not exist. This is the lack of humility and grace I spoke of. This is what the YECs do all the time. This is just completely lazy, dishonest and willfully ignorant.
I never said predators and prey eat the same thing! That would mean that either Cheetahs eat grass, or Gazelles eat other Gazelles! The stuff you write just boggles the mind Roger.
If you had looked at any of the links I sent you about co-evolution in predator-prey relationships, you would see that the science exactly says - and demonstrates - the exact opposite of what you are claiming. Again, you just refuse to listen or do proper research and adjust your thinking to comport with the facts. I have provided you with the necessary information but you refuse to acknowledge it. You are just spouting personal beliefs from your armchair.
What evidence ‘indicates’ that? This is total nonsense again. You have no evidence whatsoever for this and have produced non at all. This is purely a theological statement from you, not based on any science at all.
I am really trying to be nice Roger, really. I don’t want to be censured by the moderators here, but I have to admit, you are testing my ability to respond calmly. I have a personal issue with people who stubbornly refuse to stop spreading misinformation on the internet.
Here you are conflating competition with predator/prey relationships. The clarity you think is lacking in the science is really lacking only in your understanding Roger, which is not surprising given you do not read the research. The science is very clear. The problem is that you have not read it or understood it.
Roger, I have provided you will loads of peer-reviewed research which you have totally ignored and misrepresented and/or claimed doesn’t exist. Yet, you complain to me about not responding to the one article link you sent to me?! Well here is my response. You have provided one article that talks about the ecological space left behind after the Dinosaurs were wiped out. Obviously, when existing ecosystems are all but destroyed by a massive meteorite strike, resulting in mass extinctions and climate change, the normal order and interrelationships of living creatures will be fundamentally disturbed. These extraordinary circumstances represent a unique and different mix of selective pressures. What you have done Roger, is use this one exceptional case and tried to imply that this can be applied to all of life throughout the history of life. I stress again, that you have provided an example of exceptional circumstances and used it to argue for a general case! This would imply that meteorite strikes or similar disturbances are routine! This is why I did not bother to reply to it the first time, because anyone can see that this is just a ridiculous thing to do and not really worthy of a serious response. But you did ask, and there it is.
Roger, you are the one claiming to be making scientific statements, so the scientific method does apply to you. However, you have not made ANY attempt to use it, and have dodged and mislead and confused and conflated and misrepresented at every turn. So further exchanges with you are futile.
Please do a course on scientific research methods, critical thinking and philosophy of science, and please refer to the eleventh tenet of this site as I referred to in my last post.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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Did Darwin regret not reading Scripture? Perhaps he simply didn’t read the gospel. Is it known to anyone here?
In November 1880, within 17 months of his death, Darwin answered a letter, saying:
“I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the son of God.” | Darwin Correspondence Project
Did Darwin actually read the Bible, or is this just his opinion about the Bible, not having read much or any of it? Did the “regret” Darwin expressed regarding an “enfeebled” moral character and loss of higher esthetic tastes above apply to his treatment of Scripture too?
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
135
The gospel isn’t known here. Any more than it was then.
To clarify the question: Is it known to anyone here if Darwin actually read the Bible, or perhaps only cracked the cover? Information about this may be in one of his biographies, though I don’t recall coming across it.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
137
What difference would it have made if he had? And in his culture, especially at Cambridge, he’d have had no option but to be familiar with ‘scripture’, despite huntin’ and shootin’, as he was going to become a priest.
‘…Darwin applied himself to his studies and was delighted by the language and logic of William Paley’s Evidences of Christianity (1794). In his final examination in January 1831 Darwin did well, coming tenth out of 178 candidates for the ordinary degree… He studied Paley’s Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (first published in 1802), which made an argument for divine design in nature, explaining adaptation as God acting through laws of nature.’ you know w…iki
As with any disinterested intellect, the apologetics and ID couldn’t stick.
It would be astounding if he hadn’t - especially given the earlier aspirations thrust upon him toward clerical work. But even short of that, I don’t think biblical illiteracy would have been so profoundly widespread in that day among well-read circles like Darwin’s (not as widespread as it has become today). Rejection of much of it, or certain kinds of attitudes towards it might have been widespread by Darwin’s time, but not unfamiliarity.
Perhaps, but please forgive that my request is for more than conjecture. Is there evidence Darwin read the Bible from cover to cover or even in part during his theology studies, rather than just having “cracked the cover” or being “somewhat familiar” with it culturally?
First of all, I really believe that Dawkins meant this statement to be more than a personal opinion.
However, if it is just a personal opinion based on good science it needs to be respected. If it is not based on good science, it need not be respected. There are other scientists, who have a different view, namely Lynn Margulis, Lewis Thomas, and E. O. Wilson who I think are better qualified to make this conclusion than Dawkins, and I think come to that conclusion on a much stronger basis, which is not biased by their ideology. I follow them and do not think that I should be vilified just because I disagree with predominant opinion. ,
Peter, The Selfish Gene is not a book about poker. It is a book about science by a scientist. That is why I complain about Dawkins mixing science with his ideology. If he is going to do this he needs to back it up with some scientific evidence which he does not, or separate his opinions from his facts which I try to do in my writing…
After all what normal person would write poetry about DNA. If humans are governed by their genes, then they do not have free will, but then we must not question science. .
OK, maybe we are getting someplace here. First of all I must say that my problem with this statement is not with the way it makes me feel. Not true. My problem is with what it says. I am not trying to distort science to avoid feeling of nihilism, but to clarify science because the feelings of nihilism are not supported by scientific facts.
Are you saying that the statement is true or is meant to be a lie? Are you telling me that nihilism is not the rational response to the reality that life is empty of real meaning and purpose? Please stop talking out of both sides of your mouth. If you think that science justifies an atheistic view of reality, then own up to this and you must allow believers to present our case.
The reason we are talking about this is because, I disagree with your view, which for some
reason disturbs and causes you to claim that I am anti-science.
Yes, ecology is about the facts, but you need to learn that facts are important. Ecology is about how biota interact to each other and their surroundings, which is positive. Evolution as Darwin defined it is about how biota struggle against each other, which is negative.
You are saying that prey and predators are enemies? Not proven and not true.
I can’t believe that you called the extinction events “exceptional circumstances,”
which some how would not be generally true of evolution. You blame me for this “error” when I referred you to a scientific paper in a very reputable journal. Talk about a weak argument! There are at least 5 of these extinction events, six if you include the one we are in. Evolution is the whole story, not just part.
The dinosaurs has their day and it was a long one, but now the mammals have taken over. Newton had his day, but now Einstein has taken over. Survival of the fittest had its day. but now it is time to change to ecological natural selection. Let us not be like Donald Trump, stuck in an “alternate” reality.