Intelligent Design Discussion

[The Barbarian]

1 hour ago, Starman said:

Unfortunately, you haven’t addressed my issue.  The Gould quote does not nullify the voice of many other scientists (all references to the quotes are available but providing  gets too tedious) 

I just picked out one you cited and checked it.   Turns out, it's a fraud.   I'm very sure you didn't know.   But how do you know all the others aren't frauds, too?

This is why quotes don't work in science.   It goes by evidence.    I'm still willing to listen to your examples of major groups, said to be evolutionarily connected, which have no transitional forms.  Or even better, transitions between groups that are not said to be evolutionarily connected.  

Why not find those and we can dispense with quotes altogether?

 

 

[The Barbarian]

1 hour ago, Starman said:

And the question is not whether evolutionists believe there are transitional forms, but whether they can posit the necessary molecular pathways and a reasonable likelihood of occurrence.[/quote]

As you just saw, the molecular pathway for heme (a fragment of hemoglobin) points to a common ancestry for T-rex and birds.

1 hour ago, Starman said:

 Your reference to heme in a Trex fossil is interesting but doesn’t come close to addressing the difficult issue I’m concerned about (and in no way points to a Darwinian process).

We can check that by looking at molecules in organisms relative to their DNA.  Turns out, it does point to mutation and natural selection.  Which as you know, are Darwinian processes.  In many cases, we can even check using organisms of known descent.

1 hour ago, Starman said:

I understand that you find the evidence convincing, but I don’t.

Doesn't matter.  Reality is remarkably resistant to opinion.

1 hour ago, Starman said:

As I said, supply the math and physics and I’ll listen.

Sure.    Engineers work with information, do they not?   Want to see how information theory shows how evolutionary processes increase information in a population?

[The Barbarian]

1 hour ago, Starman said:

Here is an article by Stephen Meyer that helps explain my perspective.  I’d be interested to hear your critique

https://intelligentdesign.org/philosophy-of-science/not-a-chance/

From the link:

In making this claim, Muller and Newman are careful to affirm that evolutionary biology has succeeded in explaining how preexisting forms diversify under the twin influences of natural selection and variation of genetic traits. Sophisticated mathematically-based models of population genetics have proven adequate for mapping and understanding quantitative variability and populational changes in organisms.

 

Yet Muller and Newman insist that population genetics, and thus evolutionary biology, has not identified a specifically causal explanation for the origin of true morphological novelty during the history of life.

That's more the province of evolutionary development:

Evolutionary developmental biology (informally, evo-devo) is a field of biological research that compares the developmental processes of different organisms to infer the ancestral relationships between them and how developmental processes evolved.

The field grew from 19th-century beginnings, where embryology faced a mystery: zoologists did not know how embryonic development was controlled at the molecular level. Charles Darwin noted that having similar embryos implied common ancestry, but little progress was made until the 1970s. Then, recombinant DNA technology at last brought embryology together with molecular genetics. A key early discovery was of homeotic genes that regulate development in a wide range of eukaryotes.

The field is characterised by some key concepts which took evolutionary biologists by surprise. One is deep homology, the finding that dissimilar organs such as the eyes of insects, vertebrates and cephalopod molluscs, long thought to have evolved separately, are controlled by similar genes such as pax-6, from the evo-devo gene toolkit. These genes are ancient, being highly conserved among phyla; they generate the patterns in time and space which shape the embryo, and ultimately form the body plan of the organism. Another is that species do not differ much in their structural genes, such as those coding for enzymes; what does differ is the way that gene expression is regulated by the toolkit genes. These genes are reused, unchanged, many times in different parts of the embryo and at different stages of development, forming a complex cascade of control, switching other regulatory genes as well as structural genes on and off in a precise pattern. This multiple pleiotropic reuse explains why these genes are highly conserved, as any change would have many adverse consequences which natural selection would oppose.

New morphological features and ultimately new species are produced by variations in the toolkit, either when genes are expressed in a new pattern, or when toolkit genes acquire additional functions. Another possibility is the Neo-Lamarckian theory that epigenetic changes are later consolidated at gene level, something that may have been important early in the history of multicellular life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_developmental_biology

The toolkit shows a remarkable consistency in evolution, and this demonstrates the way many novel body plans occur.

But not all of them.   The deuterostome body plan was initially not at all like that of chordates (evolved deuterostomes).  So how did we get from sessile, rounded tunicates (sea squirts), to bilaterally-symmetrical chordates like us?

Another trick evolution has - paedomorphism.

The sea squirt has a larval form that is motile until it settles in, attaches somewhere, becomes sexually mature, and lives as a sessile blob.

If a larva should become sexually mature before the final stage, we have an ur-chordate.

Not so surprising.    Is there evidence for this?  Sure.   Axolotls, for example, are salalmanders that become sexually mature as larvae and live out their lives underwater.

Central to their concern is what they see as the inadequacy of the variation of genetic traits as a source of new form and structure.

It's a lot more interesting than they imagine.

They note, following Darwin himself, that the sources of new form and structure must precede the action of natural selection (2003:3)–that selection must act on what already exists.

Yep.  The axolotls, for example.  Or that paedomorphic tunicate.    Stuff like that.

Yet, in their view, the “genocentricity” and “incrementalism” of the neo-Darwinian mechanism has meant that an adequate source of new form and structure has yet to be identified by theoretical biologists.

Perhaps, if they were to point out such a case that couldn't have evolved, they'd be more persuasive.

Instead, Muller and Newman see the need to identify epigenetic sources of morphological innovation during the evolution of life.

What do you think "epigenetic" means?

In the meantime, however, they insist neo-Darwinism lacks any “theory of the generative” (p. 7).

See the diagrams.   

[The Barbarian]

To say that the fauna of the Cambrian period appeared in a geologically sudden manner also implies the absence of clear transitional intermediate forms connecting Cambrian animals with simpler pre-Cambrian forms. And, indeed, in almost all cases, the Cambrian animals have no clear morphological antecedents in earlier Vendian or Precambrian fauna

This guy look familiar?    Vendian animal.    Lots more, including tracks of multi-legged organisms.

 

[Starman]

I can’t keep up.  You win! Let’s move on.  PLEASE!

[The Barbarian]

3 hours ago, Starman said:

I can’t keep up.  You win! Let’s move on.  PLEASE!

I'm not as good as you think.    This isn't my first rodeo, and the arguments you advanced here, aren't new ones.

You alluded to epigenetics.   Would you like to talk about that?

 

[Starman]

17 hours ago, The Barbarian said:

I just picked out one you cited and checked it.   Turns out, it's a fraud.   I'm very sure you didn't know.   But how do you know all the others aren't frauds, too?

I don't want to discuss the issue further since the debate has become tedious with no new information is being shared.  However, I do want to set the record straight.  Your assertion that the Gould quote is a fraud was incorrect -  I found the article and the quote here: http://www.somosbacteriasyvirus.com/gould.pdf

The quote is on page 127, top left.  In fact, the whole paragraph is worth reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[The Barbarian]

Here's what Gould has to say about it:

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists—whether through design or stupidity, I do not know—as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

• "Evolution as Fact and Theory", p. 260

He recognizes that punctuated equilibrium confirms Darwin's expectation that well-adapted populations in stable environments should not change much.   Hence, speciation should be relatively rapid, and generally allopatric.   That is, in small, isolated populations in new environments.   This is supported by Mayr's observation that aberrant populations tend to be small, and in out-of-the-way places.

Hence, Gould's ire with those who misrepresent his statement.

Transitional forms, as even informed YE creationists admit, are abundant.    

 

[The Barbarian]

Perhaps we could focus on one or both of two topics you brought up, epigenetics, and information content in populations as it applies to evolution.

Both are very interesting and shed considerable light on other evidence.  

 

 

[The Barbarian]

As an engineer, perhaps you'd be interested in an engineer's look at nature and how it works:

Adrian Bejan is a Romanian-American professor who has made contributions to modern thermodynamics and developed what he calls the constructal law. He is J. A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke University^[1][2] and author of the 2016 book The Physics of Life: The Evolution of Everything.^[3]

The constructal law was stated by Duke's Adrian Bejan in 1996

The constructal law is the law of physics that accounts for the phenomenon of evolution (configuration, form, design) throughout nature, inanimate flow systems and animate systems together.

The constructal law was stated by Adrian Bejan, the J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Duke University, in 1996 as follows ^1,2:

“For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it.”

https://mems.duke.edu/research/energy-technology-and-thermodynamics/bejan-constructal-law

If you're not into a lot of biological material, or complex ecology, this might be a good start:

https://www.amazon.com/Design-Nature-Constructal-Technology-Organization-ebook/dp/B004YWKKC8/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=design+in+nature&qid=1583417651&sr=8-1