Until there’s a scientific alternative to the Darwinian synthesis, what else should I believe?
You could always believe that the truth has not yet been discovered, of course. That is a very valid position. One can disbelieve theory A or recognize it to be faulty in various ways even if you cannot (yet) offer or embrace an alternative, no?
What truth? What’s missing? Nothing in physicalism.
There is a scientific alternative. It is called ecological evolution and it has shown to be true many times as in the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Hi Daniel,
Thank you for the time and effort you put into answering my initial question. I will go ahead and start with Human Evolution.
So the first thing I would like to understand is whether you would think it to be the case that humans share a common ancestor with chimpanzees/bonobos?
What you say sounds like you either accept or are willing to accept common ancestry between humans and chimps/bonobos that was directly/‘strongly’(?) guided by God (at least in certain respects)?
Very good and apposite question. Briefly, it depends in part by what we mean by “common descent”… I don’t harbor nearly as strong an objection to biological/reproductive common descent itself as I do to the supposed mechanism of common descent… whether in human ancestors, across Other species, or all the way from an original single-called organism to man. I have my reasons for doubting it - partly because there seem to me alternate legitimate hypotheses (which I’ll outline below), but my doubt or rational objection is not nearly as strong as to the “random mutation + natural selection” mechanism itself.
But if by “common descent” we mean it in a broad sense, I essentially have no objection whatsoever…
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Firstly, common descent is largely predicated on the supposed mechanism of small, minute variations accumulating and directed by natural selection. If this were somehow fully disproven, at least one plank of the larger biological common descent hypothesis would be removed.
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that said, I can conceive the basic logic of a process (I believe as embraced by Behe) where God (or whichever designer) allowed evolution to proceed, but then at various points introduced by some direct manner certain radical, fully formed, complete innovations. I don’t have any particular rational or scientific objection to this hypothesis, as I do the blind natural selection/random mutation mechanism.
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Thirdly, though, I could conceive, hypothetically, of a process wherein the essential design or blueprint of any certain organism was a starting point, and a designer made heavy modifications (mentally or otherwise) to the design, and created new organism de novo, but with heavy reliance on previous design, making required modifications. (This, and the above, seem like they would be relatively consistent with the “punctuated equilibrium” hypothesis of Gould, by the way).
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also a bit odd, but variations on the above, I could conceive hypothetically of the design going in the reverse… that man could have been the first organism conceived, then as the design process unfolded, we kept modifying that template to achieve the lesser organisms. Or even many various designs informing each other all at once.
The third bullet above by the way is essentially how we do things in the engineering world. I can walk through various classes of submarines, and see lots and lots of identical components, systems, structures, designs, etc. Or one could do it with automobiles. obviously one can take a bunch of automobile designs, examine them in detail, and perceive and outline The “common descent“, based on introduction of new features, vestiges if previous designs, etc… obviously they didn’t have common descent in the biological/reproductive sense, but one could recognize such common descent.
I’ve observed the same in computer science. I can still (on windows 8 on my PC) pull up files that are vestiges of good old windows 3.1 back in the 90s. My favorite is “moreicons.dll”, which I often used to select different icons back in windows 3.1… and which I can still use for more icons to this day in windows 8. and half the icons reference “MS-DOS.” a vestigial item if I’ve ever seen one!
So yes, I’m the broad sense, there is unquestionably some kind of “common descent” in submarines, automobiles, and software programming. And I would wholeheartedly endorse the same in biology. I remain a bit dubious of the core biological /reproductive common descent, only because, logically, we’d have to somehow remove the other competing hypothesis (of common design). And the other half of my skepticism comes from the fact that scientists… whether atheist or EC/MN devotees, would not even be willing to consider the other alternatives for the reasons I discussed above. I’m not willing to toss out such hypotheses so quickly. Again, they seem to be very much predisposed to only see biological common descent, as they have essentially a priori ruled out alternate hypotheses from consideration, as previously discussed.
But in short, again, no, I don’t have a very significant scientific or logical objection to common descent in any kind, including the hypothesis that a single cell was started and through whatever processes was adapted, and changed, and eventually became us people. My core scientific objection is almost strictly in the attribution of that process to the unaided random mutation/natural selection process as having the ability to achieve such changes.
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Link? To science of course. You are the only person who uses that term.
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Why I remain a skeptic of the value of discussions like this?
If people want to believe in fairies, ghosts, UFOs, psychics, healing crystals, necromancy creating golems of dust and bone, vampires, magical fruit, mermaids, talking animals, or that the earth is flat, then they are going to believe in them. I don’t see the point of participating in their delusion even to point of being drawn into a discussion with them. I came to this site because I was sick and tired of it. It’s time to move on to the discussion of what these discoveries of science mean for Christian theology. Let’s leave the dark ages back in the previous centuries for it is insanity to resurrect this age of filth, sickness, poverty and human abuse.
No one doubts except perhaps Dawkins that ecology is a science. On the other hand ID is not scientific per se, nor is EC. Karl Popper rightly said that natural selection as survival of the fittest is not scientific.
All I am saying is that ecological natural selection is based on verified science, such as symbiosis and the extinction of the dinosaurs, even if scientists do not accept it.
I studied ecology at university. I didn’t come across it then. And 45 years later, one still doesn’t.
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Ok, so I would like to know what you think about things like the following,
1) Whole Genome Duplication
2) Horizontal Gene Transfer
3) Transposable Elements
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/barbara-mcclintock-and-the-discovery-of-jumping-34083/
4) Polyploidy Rapid Speciation
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/700636
https://www.nature.com/articles/6800038
5) Endosymbiosis
https://www.pnas.org/content/112/33/10270
The reason I bring these up is for three main reasons,
I) Many challenge evolutionary gradualism. That is they provide possible mechanisms to understand something like punctuated equilibria as observed in the fossil record.
II) Depending on how you think about ‘random’, something like transposable elements allows for adaptation in response to environmental conditions.
III) Evolutionary processes can differ between organisms.
Something all this suggests to me is that they cut against your e-coli/dolphin comparison. They are different organisms and do not necessarily undergo the same evolutionary processes which makes comparison between them more complicated than a simple generation/adaptation comparison. Also different environmental contexts can have different evolutionary results.
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Appreciated thoughts. I’ll need some time to read through and digest everything, in order to give a proper response. Thanks for all the thoughts. Will get back to you soon as I can.
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This falsehood is typical of the author of this post (@Relates) and it’s shameful. To repeat this falsehood after it’s been called out, multiple times, is to openly disrespect the other participants in this forum. To other readers: @Relates doesn’t tell the truth about Dawkins’ ideas. To boot, the falsehood dodges the question that was asked, which I can answer: there’s no such discipline as “ecological evolution.”
That fallacy is what you see looking down the wrong end of the telescope.
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Why is that generous? It’s equivalent to saying that only 1 out of every 10^110 combinations that would have any function. What justification is there for making such an extremely ungenerous assumption?
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As anticipated…
Are you familiar with search algorithms in computer science, Daniel?
In this study, a library of 6x10^12 random proteins yielded four proteins with a single function, ATP binding. Since the number of possible functions is very large, this is an extremely conservative estimate of the fraction of all proteins that are functional.
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Huh?
The Dawkins Prize is awarded to outstanding research in the field of ecology.
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To add to what @glipsnort said, a protein with beta-lactamase activity was found in a random antibody library of 2.7x10^9 sequences.
Some ID proponents want to claim that it would tak 10^64 or some crazy number in order to find lactamase activity, but in the real world it takes just 10^9.
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