Why a Designer?

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@GJDS

somehow making evolution theistic

That may be why BioLogos prefers “Evolutionary Creation”, EC, to “Theistic Evolution”, TE, and I may have mentioned something about evolution being fundamentally providential.

[Buzzard]

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[Buzzard]

@Paraleptopecten

@Buzzard

published at evolutionnews.org … the folks there specialise in exposing the holes in ToE.

How about holes from a source that has a better track record on doing purely scientific arguments and on honesty?

Please explain.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

They do to the untrained eye, but Timothy @Paraleptopecten knows what he’s looking at. That was part of the point about the size of the porch and the plans. Go back and look at the terminology he uses and look up the terms to understand how they correlate to the photos, and try and see the difference. They ain’t jus’ sim’lar bricks.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Oh, I should have pointed your back to his description and analysis, and look up gastropod anatomy and look at images.

[Buzzard]

@Paraleptopecten

@Buzzard

Finding predicted (alleged) transitional forms tells us nothing about how evolution proceeded.

How it proceeded is differential inheritance of mutations, which can be quite readily observed in modern populations.

Have you readily observed that “differential inheritance of mutations” produced the evolution of mammals from fish? Probably not.

Furthermore, “differential inheritance of mutations” doesn’t explain how mammals managed to (allegedly) evolve from fish.

How exactly did natural selection favour mutations to produce a mammal from a fish? Describe the environmental circumstances involved.

Finding transitional fossils tells us a great deal about the path which was taken, but the exact mechanism requires other sources of information to elucidate.

Do go on … please elucidate.

How does one go about testing for “the exact mechanism” that produced the evolution of mammals from fish?

[Buzzard]

@Dale

They do to the untrained eye, but Timothy @Paraleptopecten knows what he’s looking at. That was part of the point about the size of the porch and the plans. Go back and look at the terminology he uses and look up the terms to understand how they correlate to the photos, and try and see the difference. They ain’t jus’ sim’lar bricks.

@Dale

Oh, I should have pointed your back to his description and analysis , and look up gastropod anatomy and look at images.

Thank you, little duck.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

And yet you affirm the evolution of the universe. (There are some things we don’t know about it, but we don’t stuff the gaps with God.)

@Paraleptopecten

@Buzzard

Even someone armed with no more than highschool-level biology can see the gaping holes in ToE.

All right, where are they? As apparently I’m either willfully blind, delusional, or brainwashed, given that all the “holes” I have so far encountered are either somewhere in a gray area between laughably wrong, depressingly wrong, and offensively wrong; are irrelevant; or involve committing logical fallacies

[Buzzard]

@Dale

And yet you affirm the evolution of the universe. (There are some things we don’t know about it, but we don’t stuff the gaps with God.)

You appear to be getting off-piste … Affirming the evolution of the evolution of the universe and testing ToE are two separate matters.

[St.Roymond]

@Buzzard

Affirming the evolution of the evolution of the universe and testing ToE are two separate matters.

Are they really? Given that God let the universe evolve from a small basic set of constants and relationships, why would He not continue with the same approach?
In fact it would be the same program in essence since biology is just a special kind of chemistry, and chemistry is just “cold-particle physics”.

[Buzzard]

@St.Roymond

Are they really? Given that God let the universe evolve from a small basic set of constants and relationships, why would He not continue with the same approach?
In fact it would be the same program in essence since biology is just a special kind of chemistry, and chemistry is just “cold-particle physics”.

I don’t know that “God let the universe evolve from a small basic set of constants and relationships” … I’m not God and neither was I there to see how it all unfolded.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Buzzard

I’m not God and neither was I there to see how it all unfolded.

That would be a default YECish argument and certainly nothing to do with science, but you are trying to criticize science? You affirm the antiquity of the universe but not big bang cosmology?

[Buzzard]

@Paraleptopecten

Even if we haven’t fully formulated particular ones, an observation like the one here:

@Paraleptopecten

3.3 million years old:

~2.3 million years old:

~1.9 million years old:

Recent:

is a test of evolution by testing the general prediction that “forms of intermediate age should be intermediate in form.” And I could provide a few other examples, but the idea is the same.

Your “test of evolution” here is kinda funny … it took 3.3 million years for evolution to produce differences in those gastropod shells that are so excruciatingly tiny that an untrained eye can’t even see them.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Maybe that’s part of the point – there’s no hurry required, especially for organisms that are relatively suited for their niche and there are not other big pressures on them. (That would be a VFB.)

[rsewell (All Truth is God's Truth)]

@Buzzard

Your “test of evolution” here is kinda funny … it took 3.3 million years for evolution to produce differences in those gastropod shells that are so excruciatingly tiny that an untrained eye can’t even see them.

Unsurprisingly, where the fossil record is more complete, fewer gaps and more continuous change is documented.

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@rsewell

Unsurprisingly, where the fossil record is more complete, fewer gaps and more continuous change is documented.

Unfortunately the fossil record only really covers a limited period of time and relies on a certain rock formation. it can never be a complete record of life.

Which makes the whole thing a trifle futile. TOE can never provide the record I and others require of it.

Richard

[knor (Kai)]

@GJDS

I have also read some accounts that sought to apply biological evolution in some settings - I discussed these some time ago and will not go over this here, but it was beyond dispute that the predictions made by biologists were inaccurate (some of these introduced species to bring beneficial outcome, but results were disastrous, others sought to encourage populations of selected species but failed); you can probably find examples in the literature.

So, my impression is that biologists have a descriptive notion based on using data from past events, but lack the predictive capabilities found in well researched and scrutinized scientific theories. I would be interested in your comments.

You are mentioning introduced species. This and comparable ecological issues have been rarely dealt with applying the theory of evolution, except in a very general sense (a consumer on another continent is adapted to eat an introduced pest species, therefore lets bring the consumer into play). The history of species introductions is sad, it is full of selfishness, indifference, and very poor ecological understanding. These cases can be used as excellent examples of how things should not be done but they do not tell much about attempts to apply biological evolution.

Theory of evolution is perhaps the most general theory within biology but for much of biology, it works more as background information than something that is actively applied to daily problems. The difference between evolutionary research and ecology is that evolutionary research looks how populations change during very long time periods, ecology inspects a cross-section of the very long history, focusing more closely on what happens at a scale of days, years, decades or few centuries. Problems like introduced species are usually dealt within ecology rather than evolutionary research.

The predictive capabilities of biological theories depend on what questions you are thinking. Biology has a very wide scope, practically anything that deals with biological life is biology, but as a field of science, it has a very short history compared to physics and many other fields of science.
Scientists have been studying narrow specialities and may have advanced much within their narrow field of science. There are predictive mathematical models in some narrow fields of study whereas some fields of study have just general, sometimes vague, verbal models. Because of the largely independent research histories, many narrow fields of study have even their own terminology that other biologists do not know.

Much of the linking of the findings done within the various narrow fields of study within biology is work in progress. After a few decades there may be predictive mathematical models that unite the findings of many narrow specialities but we are not yet there.

[Buzzard]

@GJDS

and the best (worst) of all, “nothing makes sense without evolution (or words to that effect)”,

That line comes from revered evolution guru, Theodosius Dobzhansky’s celebrated essay, Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution” … in which he claims human embryos have “gills”, which are evidence of our (alleged) evolutionary link to our ancient ancestors, fish.

Theodosius Dobzhansky

My understanding is that what Dobzhansky meant by “Evolution” in his essay title is (what he perceived as) the evolutionary history of life on earth, according to ToE. If so, in effect, he believed that nothing in biology makes sense without a neo-Darwinian interpretation of the fossil record.

Without a neo-Darwinian interpretation of the
the fossil record, biology would make no sense? I don’t think so. Thousands of practical applications of biology exist that make perfect sense and require no knowledge of the fossil record whatsoever.

[Buzzard]

@Buzzard

I don’t understand how the hypothesis that mammals evolved from fish (for example) via known biological mechanisms can possibly be tested

@rsewell

One consilient test of the direct mechanism of evolution is that phylogenic trees based on genetics will correspond to trees based on morphology, including genetic markers which are not essential to morphology. In general, this has held up pretty well, with many studies especially at the level of various families.

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is, genetics don’t confirm that humans evolved from a hominid (or that mammals evolved from fish) via known biological mechanisms.

If so, the question remains: How does one test the theory that mammals evolved from fish (for example) via known biological mechanisms?

I would focus on primates, because there is a lot of data, and even if that does not extend back to fish, the human status goes to the heart of the argument anyways.

I disagree. The “heart of the matter” goes much deeper than evolution within a taxonomic Family. ToE is applied to the (alleged) evolution of mammals from fish, but the (alleged) evolution of humans from prokaryotes.

[Buzzard]

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