"Who Believes What? Clearing up Confusion over Intelligent Design and Young-Earth Creationism

[Terry_Sampson]

@RichardG

So you are proving my point precisely

• That will teach me not to take a person off my Ignore List.

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@Roy

Irreducible systems can be built via indirect routes

That is ridiculous.

You are basically claiming that nothing is irreducible because it comes via other systems,

Dictionary meaning of irreducible

Impossible includes via another route. There is no other route. it is irreducible

@Roy

Evolution does not require that systems be built one unchanging piece at a time

If each step is not viable the creature dies.(or is impossibly disabled)

@Roy

Why should anyone give a rodent’s rectum what you claim?

A statement or theory stands on its own, not by the person either starting or even conceiving it.
Ad hominum is not a valid refute in science.

(and shouldn’t be anywhere else)

.Richard

[TomS]

And I do not reject all of evolution, only the capacity to get from a single cell to a human without God. (intelligence)

To get from a single cell to a human - that is what happens in reproduction.

[TomS]

@T_aquaticus

Having worked in biology for nearly 30 years, I see nothing wrong with “the theory of evolution”.

I accept your correction. I have no claim of expertise. But what I had in mind is that Darwin’s theory of natural selection is not the first, nor the last theory about evolution. There was Lamack’s theory, which didn’t;t work (but seems to have popular support, even today). Then Darwin proposed an second theory, the theory of sexual selection.There is the theory proposed by Kimera, the neutral theory. And the (now discredited) theory of symbiosis proposed by Margulis

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@T_aquaticus

@RichardG

I should not have to answer that. it goes without saying. That is the whole poin orf irreducible. The convex is unbuidable slowly!

It doesn’t go without saying. Why can’t irreducible systems evolve?

My apologies for calling you dumb, but, perhaps you need to find someone who can explain the ramifications of irreducibility to you.

@T_aquaticus

@RichardG

Of course it means that some things cannot evolve using the evolutionary process of small steps. That is the whole point of irredcibility. It can’t be built slowly!

Then why did you give Theistic Evolution as your explanation for how design was instantiated?

Theistic Evolution does not rely on a random change so has no limits on the scope of that change.

@T_aquaticus

@RichardG

Nothing gives other than your comprehension.

What does that mean?

It means that you do not understand irreducibility.

Perhaps because there is no example in Nature that I can stipulate as an example of it. (I have tried elsewhere but you fail to see them as such)

Richard

[Vinnie]

@klw

I haven’t read Rothman’s book myself, but several claims in the excerpt that you clipped and quoted strike me as incorrect…or very odd (e.g. that survival of individuals is what is crucial, not reproduction). I was curious about reviews of the book and found this one which articulated my own befuddlement:

Editorial Reviews

01/11/2016
In dense and repetitive text, Rothman (Life Beyond Molecules and Genes), a retired physiologist from the University of California, San Francisco, attempts to point out a major flaw in evolutionary theory and offer an alternative perspective. Unfortunately, the flaw he refers to is of his own making and is not recognized by other biologists, while his “fix” provides no meaningful mechanism for action and flies in the face of much of modern population genetics. Rothman simplistically and idiosyncratically defines evolution, claiming that “natural selection is about survival,” that it is distinct from change in a population’s genetic composition, and that it “progresses toward some optimum incarnation of a particular trait.” However, most biologists recognize that survival is important only because dead individuals can’t reproduce, that changes in allele frequencies is exactly how evolution is measured, and that evolution has no end goal. Given his definition, Rothman separates reproduction from natural selection, stating that its purpose is “to help ensure the continuance of our reproducing group, our species, the population of organisms which we are but an impersonal part.” But Rothman offers no mechanism for such action and ignores the point that his perspective is at odds with virtually every aspect of evolutionary theory that has been proposed for the past 40 years. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

@knor

As the editorial review in the comment of @klw shows, the explanation of Rothman is not supported by biologists. He understands and defines evolution in a way that differs from the common understanding and definition.

Cells and individuals are not eternal and are doomed to death. Cells or individuals that have not reproduced have disappeared without leaving a trace in this world. The process of evolution and the filter of natural selection are not about the survival of a cell or individual, except in the sense that a cell or an individual that dies before reproduction is a dead end.

What matters is the transfer of genetical heritage to the following generations. Some would say that also the transfer of immaterial information matters. In this sense, reproduction and anything that increases the relative number of viable, reproducing grandoffspring are more important than the survival of an individual. If dying after reproduction increases the relative number of grandoffspring, then natural selection tends to filter (‘select’) such traits instead of the prolonged survival of a cell or an individual.

The relevant alternatives are either immortality or reproduction (sensu lato, meaning it includes also the transfer of the genetical heritage through relatives), otherwise the given fate is disappearance in the anonymous black hole of past history - a dead end.

I may be wrong but I think in disputing a definition this is missing the actual argument. This is a bit outside my area of expertise to I tread cautiously and remain open to change.

Feser: A brief formulation of the argument, and perhaps the earliest formulation, is given by Peter Geach in his book Providence and Evil:

“The reproductive mechanisms certainly cannot be explained just by saying that creatures which failed to develop them failed to reproduce their kind and perished: without these mechanisms there would be no raw material for any cause of evolution to work upon. So in this case there can be no story of natural selection to replace the ostensible teleological account.”

Feser continues:

As Geach explained, he is not criticizing evolutionary explanations in general and he is not making a point about sex organs in particular.2 He is talking about reproduction in general, and arguing that an appeal to natural selection, in particular, cannot replace a teleological account of reproduction.

The basic idea of Geach’s argument is simple. It is commonly held that to explain a trait by way of natural selection is to obviate any basis for an irreducibly teleological account of it. For example, suppose we say that hearts first arose by way of a random mutation, that they pumped blood in
those organisms which had them, that because they did so those organisms tended to survive and reproduce in greater numbers than those who lacked hearts, and that this in turn resulted in all their current descendants having hearts. This will be an explanation of the heart that makes reference only to what Aristotelians call efficient causes, without any need for final causes or teleology. Even if we still spoke of the heart as having the function of pumping blood, it is often claimed that such a description can be analyzed in terms of this causal story, so that it has no irreducible teleological component.

For explaining a trait’s existence within a population by appeal to natural selection involves proposing a scenario in which certain ancestors of that population survived and reproduced in greater numbers. Hence such explanations presuppose that reproduction already exists. In that case, they can hardly explain how reproduction came to exist. To appeal to natural selection in order to explain reproduction is like trying to get the cart to pull the horse.

Also, Rothman seems to fully understand genetical heritage. In a chapter where he defines terms he writes:

THE MODERN SYNTHESIS

In a different conceptualization of the third way, natural selection and reproduction are not merely procedurally connected; they are also materially merged, fused in fact. This perspective arises out of the great accomplishment of R. A. Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright in the 1930s reconciling Darwin’s view of evolution by means of natural selection and Gregor Mendel’s genetic view of inheritance.

If evolution is driven by natural selection and inheritance is the result of reproduction, then Mendel’s and Darwin’s theories offered conflicting explanations for life’s genesis, or so it seemed. Independently, Fisher, Haldane, and Wright came to the conclusion that this clash was only apparent. It disappeared once one realized that natural selection and inheritance were different aspects of the same phenomenon. Evolution was the result of a genetically (reproductively) based natural selection.

Known as the modern synthesis, this insight moved natural selection’s locus of action from the expressed features of individuals, from life’s phenotype, where Darwin had firmly placed it, to its genes “or genotype, to the underlying source of these features.5 By the 1950s genes were known to be particular nucleotide sequences of the enormous DNA molecule. It was DNA that coupled natural selection and reproduction. DNA’s gene sequences singly and together (the genome) and changes in them (mutations) gave rise to the features of the organism on which natural selection acts, while duplication of the same DNA was the basis for reproduction. Natural selection and reproduction were joined in the properties of the DNA molecule.

Life was carried forward through DNA. It was DNA, not organisms, that survived and evolved. Organisms were merely containers for the evolving DNA. As evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explained:”

“We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same DNA…. This is exactly what we are for. We are machines for propagating DNA, and the propagation of DNA is a self-sustaining process. It is every living object’s sole reason for living.6

This gene-centric view of evolution can be understood in three ways. In Darwinian terms, while natural selection may act on the expressed features of organisms, it is really the underlying genes that evolve. Alternatively, natural selection acts directly on the genes, as well as on their expressed features, selecting among the DNA of different organisms. Finally and most radically, the inherited information of the organism embodied in its DNA evolved in its own right. Darwin’s natural selection and the phenotype or expressed features of organisms were not involved.

Though these concepts are straightforward, how the proposed events would take place is not. For instance, how can underlying genes (DNA) be the objects of selection if the environment acts not on them but on the expressed features of the organism? Or how would natural selection select among DNA molecules in their own right other than in terms of their chemical properties, such as their stability? And finally, without natural selection, how would evolution be achieved, by means of what alternative agency of selection?”

Excerpt From The Paradox of Evolution. Stephen Rothman

The argument is not that evolution is wrong, just that removing teleology from the equation is. Also, when you say this, it strikes me as odd:

What matters is the transfer of genetical heritage to the following generations. Some would say that also the transfer of immaterial information matters. In this sense, reproduction and anything that increases the relative number of viable, reproducing grandoffspring are more important than the survival of an individual. If dying after reproduction increases the relative number of grandoffspring, then natural selection tends to filter (‘select’) such traits instead of the prolonged survival of a cell or an individual.

It screams teleology to me. As Rothman says:

“Natural selection presents another discomforting oddity. While perhaps more than anything else the raison d’être of Darwin’s theory of evolution was that natural selection provides a mechanical explanation for biological evolution, natural selection has no material incarnation, no physical basis. Like mutations and genes, it is a reductionist idea, but unlike them it has no embodiment. It is not a mechanism at all, but a principle. Though broad and all-encompassing, it is not causative because it lacks a causative instrument. Unlike a mechanism, natural selection cannot be reduced to something else. All we can say is that the principle of natural selection is the principle of natural selection. It is nature’s mindless choice about the fate of things in the material world, and that world includes living things.”

Rothman seems to say natural selection is not the cause of evolution but its agency.

[mitchellmckain (Scientist and Christian)]

@RichardG

It means that you cannot build them slowly as per the evolutionary process

@T_aquaticus

I think we all accept the fact that some biological systems can’t have any parts removed without the system losing function. Is there anything beyond this?

Seems to me you two are just not in agreement on what you mean by irreducible. So when T_aquaticus agrees there are irreducible systems, he is not talking about something which cannot evolve. He is talking about systems which don’t work if you remove a functional piece of it. So the point is that this absurd picture you are painting that evolution means things evolve by adding all functional pieces separately like a two year old playing with tinker toys is just wrong.

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@TomS

To get from a single cell to a human - that is what happens in reproduction.

My first reaction was that you were deliberately misrepresenting what I said, but perhaps this was genuine.

@TomS

I have no claim of expertise

So perhaps you misunderstood.

Single cell to human is shorthand for evolving a single celled lifeform, over time to what we have now. as multicellular beings. The first creature being a single cell , then two cellular beings, simple multicellular beings ,and so on. Evolution assumes that there id a development from simple to complex, caused by accidental mutations in the DNA, that "build a better and cmore complex being. This is the basis of the theory of Evolution.
Technically, an embryo starts from two d=cells not one, and develops in an egg, before growing into the creature e.g. human) That embryo is protected until able to fully function on its ow.

@TomS

But what I had in mind is that Darwin’s theory of natural selection is not the first, nor the last theory about evolution

There have been various theories on how life developed but scientists seem to have decided on one basic process. the details of which are still being thrashed out, boils down to what I said above.

Richard

[Roy]

@RichardG

Single cell to human is shorthand for evolving a single celled lifeform, over time to what we have now. as multicellular beings. The first creature being a single cell , then two cellular beings, simple multicellular beings ,and so on. Evolution assumes that there id a development from simple to complex, caused by accidental mutations in the DNA, that "build a better and cmore complex being. This is the basis of the theory of Evolution.

I’d say “you need to find someone who can explain” evolution “to you”, but it wouldn’t help. You mistakenly think you already know more about evolution than professional scientists, so you don’t listen.

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@Roy

I’d say “you need to find someone who can explain” evolution “to you”

I would say that you need to distinguish between a Layman’s understanding and a scientific one. If you can explained ToE in a few sentences go right ahead, but all I see from you ins insult and mockery. You have yet to demonstrate any real knowledge or understanding (of me or ToE)

Richard

[knor (Kai)]

@Vinnie

It screams teleology to me. As Rothman says:

“Natural selection presents another discomforting oddity. While perhaps more than anything else the raison d’être of Darwin’s theory of evolution was that natural selection provides a mechanical explanation for biological evolution, natural selection has no material incarnation, no physical basis. Like mutations and genes, it is a reductionist idea, but unlike them it has no embodiment. It is not a mechanism at all, but a principle. Though broad and all-encompassing, it is not causative because it lacks a causative instrument. Unlike a mechanism, natural selection cannot be reduced to something else. All we can say is that the principle of natural selection is the principle of natural selection. It is nature’s mindless choice about the fate of things in the material world, and that world includes living things.”

Rothman seems to say natural selection is not the cause of evolution but its agency.

Natural selection is a filter-like mechanism that does not ‘act’ or ‘select’ any more than an ordinary filter. If all individuals are similar (clones), what comes through the filter is similar to what was before the filtering. If there is variation between individuals, depending on the quality of the filter, what comes through the filter is likely to be somewhat different than what was before the filtering. In other words, some variants produce more offspring than the others. The quality of the filter is usually the quality of the environment: some variants succeed better in one type of environment, some others in another type of environment and some do not cope well anywhere.

Assume we compare the composition of the population at one moment, then again when the offspring are born and again after the grandoffspring are born. If we note any differences between the three time points, these changes are called ‘evolution’. Natural selection is one of the blind mechanisms of evolution that may explain the changes we observe.

There is not and cannot be any goals in such blind and mechanical matters as natural selection or evolution - in that sense, they are neutral. If teleology is understood in a sense that aims towards a goal, then there is no teleology in natural selection or evolution.

Teleology in the sense of aiming towards a goal is only possible if someone manipulates the quality of the filter (the environment) in a way that causes changes towards the wanted direction.
That is one way how God could direct evolution towards the direction He wants - a possibility, not a claim that that is the chosen way to act.

A short period of cold that kills many individuals, an earthquake or vulcanic activity that changes the availability of food at the site, a favourable weather period that increases the breeding success of predators - there are multiple ways how even ‘chance events’ could affect which individuals produce offspring and which fail. As these events appear as fully natural phenomena, even if they would be ways how God guides the direction of evolution, there would be no scientific evidence for the acts of God. The scientific description of the events that affect evolution cannot speak for or against the possibility that God guides the direction of evolution, if needed.
Creation through evolution would be a hidden way to work in this world.

Reproduction as such is just a mechanism that ensures that the genetic heritage continues existence on the scene. It does not matter much if ‘reproduction’ is the division of a cell or individual to two or if it is sexual reproduction. Those cells or individuals that do not divide to two or reproduce in some other way are lost - a strong selection pressure. How the first division of a cell appeared is probably difficult to tell, as is the emergence of life itself. It is probably not too difficult to invent hypotheses to explain these but showing if any of these hypotheses is true may be (almost) impossible.

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@knor

Natural selection is one of the blind mechanisms of evolution that may explain the changes we observe.

There is not and cannot be any goals in such blind and mechanical matters as natural selection or evolution - in that sense, they are neutral. If teleology is understood in a sense that aims towards a goal, then there is no teleology in natural selection or evolution.

And yet, how often do we here things as adapting, as if they can both diagnose and solve a change, or see a niche to adapt into.

Perhaps it is just language, but it seems, at least to me, to be a basic flaw in the way evolution is often presented or represented.

Richard

[Terry_Sampson]

• I prefer videos: Simulating Natural Selection.

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@Terry_Sampson

I prefer videos:

If only it was that simple.

Ah well, I guess you have to start somewhere.

Rychard

[T_aquaticus]

@RichardG

My apologies for calling you dumb, but, perhaps you need to find someone who can explain the ramifications of irreducibility to you.

Why can’t you explain it?

@RichardG

Theistic Evolution does not rely on a random change so has no limits on the scope of that change.

So would you agree that theistic evolution accepts the observed natural processes that produce mutations in living populations as the cause of differences between species?

@RichardG

It means that you do not understand irreducibility.

Then explain what I don’t understand. Why is it impossible for irreducible systems to evolve? More than 100 years ago biologists already had explanations for how these systems evolve.

“… thus a complicated machine was gradually built up whose effective working was dependent upon the interlocking action of very numerous different elementary parts or factors, and many of the characters and factors which, when new, were originally merely an asset finally became necessary because other necessary characters and factors had subsequently become changed so as to be dependent on the former. It must result, in consequence, that a dropping out of, or even a slight change in any one of these parts is very likely to disturb fatally the whole machinery; for this reason we should expect very many, if not most, mutations to result in lethal factors …”
Muller, H. J. (1918) “Genetic variability, twin hybrids and constant hybrids, in a case of balanced lethal factors.” Genetics 3:422-499.

We can also have the case of the irreducible mammalian middle ear.

Remove any of the three middle ear bones and you lose hearing. However, we can see two of those bones were originally jaw bones in our reptilian ancestors. Those bones evolved over time to become two of our middle ear bones, and we have the step by step fossil evidence.

So how can you claim that irreducibility can not evolve when we can see it evolving step by step in the fossil record?

[T_aquaticus]

@TomS

But what I had in mind is that Darwin’s theory of natural selection is not the first, nor the last theory about evolution.

Natural selection is viewed more as a mechanism than a theory, and I would argue Darwin treated it in the same way. Darwin proposed two mechanisms for evolution: natural selection and common ancestry. Having read some of Darwin’s work, I think he had enough self awareness and humility to understand that there may be more mechanisms involved. In fact, he offered his ideas about how heritable variation is created, but he never planted a flag on a hill and declared his ideas to be absolutely correct. That was a good idea because his idea about gemmules turned out to be wrong. Darwin as actually quite Lamarckian when it came to the generation of new heritable variation.

Since Darwin we have uncovered many more mechanisms, such as horizontal genetic transfer and neutral drift. I don’t consider these separate theories. Rather, they are mechanisms within the ever changing theory of evolution. The basics of the theory really haven’t changed since the Modern Synthesis of the 1930’s and 40’s, but in the modern age we do have a much better understanding of the nuance and messiness of the evolutionary process.

@TomS

Then Darwin proposed an second theory, the theory of sexual selection.There is the theory proposed by Kimera, the neutral theory. And the (now discredited) theory of symbiosis proposed by Margulis

I would consider all of those to be mechanisms within the theory of evolution, but other biologists might disagree. I consider the theory of evolution to be similar to the theory of geology which is the overarching theory of how the Earth changed over time. Glacial erosion of mountains is not a separate theory from sediment deposition in lakes. Rather, those are both mechanisms within the overarching theory of geology.

[T_aquaticus]

@Vinnie

It screams teleology to me.

It screams inevitability to me. When you have imperfect replicators competing for limited resources, natural selection is an unavoidable deterministic outcome.

If during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organisation, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometrical powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being’s own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterised will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterised. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection.
–Charles Darwin, “Origin of Species”

In population genetics, you can actually quantify natural selection.

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@T_aquaticus

So how can you claim that irreducibility can not evolve when we can see it evolving step by step in the fossil record?

If it can be made up slowly it is not irreducible, simple as that.

Making up slowly is the converse of pulling appart slowly. IOW the same thing in reverse. If you can’t pull it apart without making it inviable, then you cannot make it up slowly without makint it inviable.

As soon as one thing in an engine breaks the whole engine stops.
If you build an engine it does not work until the last piece is in place.

An organism cannot wait for the number of changes to happen before the thing works, It will either be a burden, or kill it, Neither of which will make it competitive The advantage only comes when the thing is complete.

I did once suggest that you could grow something non functional if it behaved like a parasite, and the organism can sustain it without detrement.

Eventually the growth might become partially beneficial as in a symbiant, before finally becoming the full growth tht is beneficial and fully integral

But that is so far fetched as to be outrageous.

(But this was probably a wasted effort)

And, No you cannot make your assertions about Theistic evolution , they are not the same. ToE is random generated, Theistic is intelligence generated so the mechanisms do not tally. (even if the observations match exactly)

Richard

[T_aquaticus]

@RichardG

If it can be made up slowly it is not irreducible, simple as that.

The how do you determine which systems can not be made up slowly?

@RichardG

Making up slowly is the converse of pulling appart slowly. IOW the same thing in reverse. If you can’t pull it apart without making it inviable, then you cannot make it up slowly without makint it inviable.

You can’t pull apart the three mammalian middle earbones without losing hearing, and yet we have fossil evidence of them evolving slowly.

@RichardG

As soon as one thing in an engine breaks the whole engine stops.
If you build an engine it does not work until the last piece is in place.

If you remove one middle ear bone from you middle ear it breaks. And yet, we have the fossil evidence of the mammalian middle ear evolving step by step.

@RichardG

An organism cannot wait for the number of changes to happen before the thing works, It will either be a burden, or kill it, Neither of which will make it competitive The advantage only comes when the thing is complete.

You ignore the possibility that it worked throughout, even as new parts were being added. At first those parts were merely helpful, but over time they were made necessary.

@RichardG

And, No you cannot make your assertions about Theistic evolution , they are not the same. ToE is random generated, Theistic is intelligence generated so the mechanisms do not tally. (even if the observations match exactly)

Mutations are observed to be statistically random, but no scientists, atheist or theist, can make a scientific claim that they are ontologically random. Another way to put it is random mutation would be sufficient to produce the genomes we see today.

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@T_aquaticus

If you remove one middle ear bone

I am not tlaking about an ear, I have told you before You refuse to accpet that anything is irreducuble so how can we talk specifics!

Irreducibility is a concept. It is not based on observation, It does not conform to the scientific method.

@T_aquaticus

Mutations are observed to be statistically random, but no scientists, atheist or theist, can make a scientific claim that they are ontologically random. Another way to put it is random mutation would be sufficient to produce the genomes we see today.

Just quit. You do not get it. You will never get it. Stop trying to make it something it is not. Theistic Evolution is not a scientific theory.

Richard