I agree wholeheartedly with this. Conspiracy mongers might not.
Best,
Chris
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There are no competing theories to the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis.
It’s more like they appropriated the term and introduced a meaning which was foreign to it’s understanding in mainstream science. Refer to evolution outside of the creationist or ID circuit, and let’s be real, everyone has a pretty consistent idea of the broad scope of meaning involved. Thus, a prefix or adjective of any sort is not required, including Darwinian.
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I originally suggested that you don’t use it because it’s old-fashioned and inaccurate. Use it all you want. Just don’t expect anyone to take you seriously. It’s what’s called a “tell” in poker. As soon as it comes out of your mouth, people already know you’re bluffing.
Wrong again. You’re still confusing “origin of life” with evolution. Evolution starts with existing life, not chemical soup. Have you figured out yet that Darwin spoke of variation, but “random” doesn’t even appear in his book? If you want to incorporate natural selection with Mendelian genetics, “Neo-Darwinian” is the term. (Also out-of-date, but at least you’re getting within 50 years of the modern world with that one.)
It’s also quite silly (and wrong) to imply that ID was the first to look at the data.
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“We prefix many other scientific theories with the originator’s name, especially when it marks an important distinction from competing theories. E.g. Newtonian physics vs relativistic physics vs quantum physics.”
Are there really “many”? Please then keep going beyond just Newton. You should be able to come up with at least 10-20 names of “scientific theories with the originator’s name” that are still used today. Please show your list so people can check if what you say is true or not.
In any case, the explanations provided here by several people to drop “Darwinian” from “evolution” seem sound to me, even if they don’t to you.
The latter we call Intelligent Design. - EricMH
The Discovery Institute doesn’t call it “Intelligent Design” though, do they? They instead call it “intelligent design”.
Did you know that BioLogos leadership accepts “intelligent design” while rejecting “Intelligent Design”, EricMH? Why do you think that is? Please share your thoughts about it.
Your argument it seems, is not at all about “how design”, but rather “that Design”. And since almost everyone here already believes in God, you are not shocking us with apologetics. In short, that’s unimpressive.
“When capitalized, however, ‘Intelligent Design’ refers to a more particular set of views and arguments as exemplified by the work of the Discovery Institute.” – Deborah Haarsma (Reviewing “Darwin’s Doubt”: Introduction - BioLogos)
“All Christians believe in intelligent design with a small ‘i’ and a small ‘d,’ though they have every right to critique the particular theory called intelligent design.” – Howard Ahmanson
“I think it advisable to capitalize “Intelligent Design" (ID) in order to signal that we are using the words in a technical sense, rather than in the sense accepted by every Christian.” – W.L Craig (http://www.reasonablefaith.org/should-christians-accept-intelligent-design#ixzz3ZEUvk8mE)
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Ok, let’s just call it “evolution”, since we get sidetracked on these silly debates about words.
The basic point of contention is whether the genome is changed without foresight as to what will or will not be fit, i.e. ‘randomly’. There should be no correlation between which nucleotides get mutated and the organism’s ‘fitness’ when we look at the biological data.
So, let’s do some science and test this claim! Already, we have an excellent candidate with Schaffer’s article, where we can download the genetic data from NCBI or some such and run a few Python scripts. Let’s get some more ideas to test!
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“Ok, let’s just call it “evolution”, since we get sidetracked on these silly debates about words.”
Will this realization hold the next time you get an itch to write “Darwinian”? Have you learned your lesson? Will you make an effort across the board to stop saying “Darwinian”, and just instead speak about evolution, or is this a one-time effort from you after realization?
No, I typically refer to it as “Einstein’s theory of relativity”, as this helps distinguish it from any other particular formulations, especially if i were discussing it in a context where other people embrace alternate theories of relativity. And that seems to be the most common use of the terminology…
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Good decision. It will make your life easier and your rhetoric slightly more palatable.
Well, you’re talking to a bunch of Christians, with a few exceptions, so you shouldn’t assume that everyone on BL forum has the same opinion on “without foresight” or “randomly.” To say that “God is intelligent” is to state the obvious, and every Christian believes God had a purpose/design. As @Nikolai mentioned, BioLogos as an organization endorses lower-case “intelligent design.” Whether God had foresight or used random processes is not the point of contention.
The point of contention is whether God’s involvement can be empirically demonstrated. So far, every attempt has failed. I’m not surprised. I agree with Isaiah and Pascal. Our God is a God who hides himself. If he wished to provide proof of his existence, he surely would’ve given an obvious sign by now.
“A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah."
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Exactly! So let’s test the hypothesis. If evolution is guided by God, then changes will not be random, i.e. without foresight, and we can detect this. If it is not guided by God, then changes will be random, which we can also detect as Schaffer has proposed.
Anyways, Schaffer’s paper is trivial to test, and I hope to get some results by tomorrow. Stay tuned!
Since you all get triggered by the word “Darwinian”, I’ll use the terms guided vs unguided evolution. Same difference.
“If evolution is guided by God, then changes will not be random.” - EricMH
“It is accidental to us, not to God.” – J.H. Newman
“Divine providence does not exclude fortune and chance.” – St. Thomas Aquinas
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Your conclusion doesn’t follow the premises, and it’s equivalent to the “Bible Code” fiasco of years back. If God has chosen to hide his involvement and thereby deny us mathematical proof, he can easily hide behind what mathematically appears random.
Let’s take the “whole genome duplication” event that @DennisVenema mentioned a long time ago. At an instant, this doubled the genetic raw material for evolution’s “random” mutation algorithm to work with. I see God’s fingerprints all over that, but I see with the eyes of faith. Good luck mathematically demonstrating his involvement.
Here’s my view: God’s Presence and Guidance in Evolution
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Sure, but at that point we are arguing how many angels dance on the head of a pin. If it’ll make you happy we can use the term empirically detectable guidance. Whatever words you want to use, the question is whether we can empirically detect it.
I think everyone is clear what we are doing here, so let’s move on to settling the question with some living room science!
When I design genomes I tend to use exact copies of genes/sequences. If I do change sequences I never look at the ratios of transitions, transversions, and CpG mutations in order to match the rates of de novo mutations. I don’t know of any reason why any molecular biologist (i.e. designer) would do that.
Indels and repeat regions occur naturally, so I’m not exactly sure what you are getting at. Also, biologists will often use existing systems in living organisms to manipulate DNA. CRISPR/Cas9 is an excellent example.
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All too often, evolution deniers use the term “Darwnism” to try and make the theory of evolution appear more like religion or philosophy. It gets a bit old.
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It’s an attempt to make the theory of evolution look less scientific. As I state above, it wears a bit thin over time.
That’s not what I observe. What I see are people stating emphatically that something more is needed, but they fail to back any of these claims with evidence or reasoned arguments. They continually misrepresent data, and outright deny that data exists as we have seen in this very thread. I have a real hard time seeing any honest inquiry from that side of the discussion.
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??? You and I are obviously reading very different books on ID (I am assuming you actually read the works of those you critique).
Now, one might say the evidence does not support the conclusions, or you disagree with the reasons, but one thing the the ID publications do not have is lack of evidence or (very rigorously) reasoned arguments!
After you get done clutching at your pearls, perhaps you could present these arguments and evidence?
Let’s start with a simple example. Behe claims that irreducibly complex systems can not evolve. Why? Because Behe can’t think of a way that they could evolve. Combine an argument from incredulity with an argument from ignorance, and point to the complete lack of evidence for any of it.
Explanatory filter? In your own words, hasn’t been applied to biology at all.
In this very thread, @Daniel_Fisher claims that there hasn’t been enough time to produce the genetic differences between humans and chimps. He also claimed that there had be just the right mutations. No evidence to back up any of these claims.
I could go through some articles at ENV if you want. Plenty of more examples just waiting.
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LOL!!! You are too funny! 
Me: I have yet to see a single person apply the filter to real genetic sequences and real biology which is why I am skeptical, but still hopeful.
EricMH: I too haven’t seen any inference to big D Design in biology.
Find a stretch of homologous DNA shared by humans and other apes. Find the genetic differences. Use the explanatory filter to tell us which of those differences came about due to design. If you can’t do this, then the explanatory filter is useless.
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