Oh aye Liam. I appear to be on the spectrum like many here. But there are points in there and they all feed to the larger point. If there were intervention, we’d know it scientifically; Jungian knowing doesn’t count. Incarnation being the only possible exception of course. I can’t think of a hypothetical less than every eye seeing that would prove anything.
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Neither of those is assumed. Both of those are conclusions drawn from evidence. One piece of evidence that leads to both those conclusions is discussed by @glipsnort in his wonderful essay found here:
https://biologos.org/articles/testing-common-ancestry-its-all-about-the-mutations
We have evidence for humans sharing common ancestry with other apes. We have evidence for the differences between genomes being the result of known and observed natural processes. These aren’t assumptions. Let me repeat, THESE ARE NOT ASSUMPTIONS.
Do you call relativity the Einsteinian theory?
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Actually, Steve Schaffner’s conclusions rely on 3 implicit assumptions:
- The mechanisms of inheritance and mutation in DNA over the past 66 million years worked approximately the same way they work today.
- The biologists who have compiled genomic data into databases have done so accurately.
- The software Steve is using does not have fatal, undetected bugs that lead to erroneous conclusions.
These assumptions seem eminently reasonable to me. Do they seem reasonable to you, @Daniel_Fisher?
Best,
Chris
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That is false. We conclude that the processes were the same through this part of history because the patterns of substitution mutations matches what we see in living populations. Again, this is a conclusion, not an assumption.
Reported data that can be checked by anyone is not an assumption in science.
Again, that can be checked. More to the point, multiple people have run the same tests and have produced the same data.
First, in the peer reviewed literature:
Genomewide average frequencies for various nucleotide differences between chimpanzees and humans ( A ) and among humans ( B ). Ti = transitions.
Edersberger et al., 2002
There is another blogger that did his own analysis and produced the same results:
If you are going to dismissed repeatable scientific results then you aren’t skeptical, you are in full denial.
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This is excellent. Exactly the sort of repeatable experimental evidence of evolution I am looking for.
An interesting control would be to compare a genetically modified organism to the original, to make sure the signature is not an accidental feature of the data and how genomes are compared, and does not also show up when looking at known designed DNA sequences. I should be able to easily test this by splicing in DNA between two different organisms, and the calculating the distribution for substitutions over the Levenshtein distance derived edits.
Another interesting comparison would be at the kmer level, potentially with gaps. Evolution only independently mutates individual nucleotides, but a designer can swap out kmers and do synchronized changes across the genome. Also seems fairly easy to test.
So if Darwian evolution is true we should see none of the latter patterns in evolutionary history, and visa versa for design.
Anyways, I’ll dig into these tests when I get some time. Feel free to throw out more ideas!
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Don’t worry. Evolution (Darwinian is redundant, adds nothing, in fact it detracts) is a rational fact. True. There is no reasonable alternative.
Don’t be a religious dogmatist! Let’s see the science! Preferably science I can reproduce on my home laptop!
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The vigorous discussion is in the nuances of genetic drift and punctuated equilibrium, not the basic outline of common descent and the age of the earth. There is no dogma there, but established science which has by now recognized for decades, for longer that I have been alive. I have an open mind to evolution alternatives like I have an open mind to perpetual motion machine patents.
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Then it should be trivial for anyone to demonstrate! Science is not a popularity contest, but a matter of hard, cold facts and reproducible experiments.
Well let’s be clear about this, now. it does add a very important qualification, and is absolutely not redundant. If there is a better or more agreed upon term, i’ll be happy to use it, but we do need some kind of qualifying term.
Otherwise, we are using a term far too broad - after all, Discovery Institute, Stephen Meyer, the folks at Answers in Genesis, Michael Behe and Ken Ham all wholeheartedly embrace “evolution”.
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I don’t understand the objection to the use of Darwinism in this thread. 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.
The same applies to this particular debate. One side claims evolution can produce the organisms we see today, starting from a chemical soup, purely through random variation and natural selection, and only those. The other side says we might need something more, and we should look at the data before we draw any hard conclusions. The former we call Darwinian evolution, named after the theory’s originator. The latter we call Intelligent Design.
None of their pseudoscience usages is relevant.
We have the science. We’ve had it for three centuries. What more do we need? I am a bit of a Puritan on this, true.
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?