An
interesting article surveying the current declining and turbulent state of Darwinian evolutionary biology:
Quote:"While Christians have long challenged Charles Darwin’s theory of undirected evolution, few appreciate the true extent of the challenge beyond the church. Current estimates are that approximately one-third of professional academic biologists who do not believe in intelligent design find Darwin’s theory is inadequate to describe all of the complexity in biology.
The plain truth from the literature, conferences, expert perception, and a bit of anecdote for color, is that current Neo-Darwinism is far from the untouchable theory it is lauded to be. Not only this, but it has serious and increasing skeptics and challengers from within the secular scientific community.
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In the past decade, the works of professor Michael Behe, Steven Meyer, and others have given more life to the debate on the national stage. In “Darwin Devolves,” Behe points to the process of mutations to describe the inadequacy of an unguided materialist process to add information. Meyer explores the Cambrian explosion and the complexity of the cell to show the biodiversity and complexity we observe, and notes that natural processes have never been observed to produce such results.
Importantly, these two men, and many others, believe in the standard multibillion-year timeline for the Earth and make their findings based on deduction of natural evidence rather than starting from authority in scripture or elsewhere. The growth of the intelligent design community is noteworthy, but not as interesting as those who are apart from it, secular, and nonetheless find Darwinian evolution to contain serious flaws.
Behe explained that, “Based on conversations with my own colleagues at Lehigh [University], dozens of other biologists, and news stories in journals I would guesstimate that a third or more of biologists are quite skeptical that Darwin’s theory explains all of biology.” The growing literature speaks for itself.
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The important note is that these are not ideologues or religious zealots, nor do they propose a god or biblical solution. Rather, they find problems with the explanatory value of Darwin’s theory in light of modern understanding of mutation, variation, DNA sequencing, and more. These expressions of doubt do not reject naturalism or evolution per se, but the rigor of the Neo-Darwinian model for explaining the development of life."
The Third Way folks seem pretty adamant they don't think there's anything "supernatural" going on? =>
Quote:It has come to our attention that THE THIRD WAY web site is wrongly being referenced by proponents of Intelligent Design and creationist ideas as support for their arguments. We intend to make it clear that the website and scientists listed on the web site do not support or subscribe to any proposals that resort to inscrutable divine forces or supernatural intervention, whether they are called Creationism, Intelligent Design, or anything else.
That said IDers criticisms as they stand seem to suggest, at best, something like evolutionary panenthiesm, or Nagel's non-theistic teleological principles. But one could argue for some kind of animism as well, or some Psi-related explanation. And the latter may be explicable through mechanisms of quantum/magento- biology.
Of course the latter, in showing a mechanism for some variety of Psi, would be a major paradigm breakthrough in itself just not the one IDers seem to hope for. Though it's hard to reconcile, in any case, the idea of God piddling around with DNA after creating that very DNA and the processes involved with evolution. At best such a "God" would be a little-g god, or some spirit(s) playing around at the time of the Cambrian explosion...
(2019-04-17, 03:23 AM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]The Third Way folks seem pretty adamant they don't think there's anything "supernatural" going on? =>
That said IDers criticisms as they stand seem to suggest, at best, something like evolutionary panenthiesm, or Nagel's non-theistic teleological principles. But one could argue for some kind of animism as well, or some Psi-related explanation. And the latter may be explicable through mechanisms of quantum/magento- biology.
Of course the latter, in showing a mechanism for some variety of Psi, would be a major paradigm breakthrough in itself just not the one IDers seem to hope for. Though it's hard to reconcile, in any case, the idea of God piddling around with DNA after creating that very DNA and the processes involved with evolution. At best such a "God" would be a little-g god, or some spirit(s) playing around at the time of the Cambrian explosion...
Adding to the Cambrian mentioning.
The Cambrian "explosion" is a misnomer. It's termed that because when compared to other evolutionary periods it was relatively rapid. That so-called rapidity took 10-20 million years, not mear decades, centuries or even thousands of years. There are competing theories on the cause(s) but they all have in common environmental change. Also continued new fossil discoveries are bringing clarity where these new animals came from morphologically.
(2019-04-16, 11:04 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]An interesting article surveying the current declining and turbulent state of Darwinian evolutionary biology:
As you know, my take on this claims there is a clear-cut functional role mind plays in the behavior of living things. Further, that this informational "how" works to creates pathways for messages to be used by following generations of a species.
Darwinian evolution - as a term in this time - means that the primary cause of evolution was random to fitness. Of course, reading Darwin reveals that was not at all what he thought. At Darwin's death he was already left behind; and it was George Romanes who carried forth Darwin's emphasis on mental evolution.
Neo-Darwinism is now DOA, as it was formulated with Weismann's barrier. (a direct response to Romanes and Darwin's challenges)
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49458
(2019-04-16, 11:04 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]An interesting article surveying the current declining and turbulent state of Darwinian evolutionary biology:
If you read the primary sources, the disagreement isn’t about the collection of mechanisms which contribute to variation, selection, and heredity. On that there is general agreement. The disagreement is about naming rights for that collection.
Linda
(2019-04-18, 12:37 PM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]If you read the primary sources, the disagreement isn’t about the collection of mechanisms which contribute to variation, selection, and heredity. On that there is general agreement. The disagreement is about naming rights for that collection.
Linda
That it is just Nominalism being the difference between the modern theory of evolution and NeoDarwinism (based on the Weismann Barrier) is like believing that Dixie is coming back!
As process models - one corresponds to the data and another is shown as a failure. The genetic systems of living things do show "Lamarckian" traits. Phenotypes change when information learned in the mind of an organism creates instinctive traits in off-spring (as Darwin documented). Further, modern research shows that it is not only behavioral traits, but ontogenetic (developmental) chemistry.
Linda, in your view of evolution is mind there from the very start? Or was it a magical materials science or quantum physics event that caused intentional behavior like -> go or -> eat.
Or even, can you name an old-line scientist speaking up for Darwin's view of Mental Evolution and the Lamarkian events he observed as part of the modern synthesis?
If there are these physical events where frankystien becomes a single cell organism from electrochemical sparks - please just send the link. Till then, I will stick with "it from bit" and think the mind evolved by organizing matter with natural informational processes.
Quote:If there were something like a guidebook for creatures, I think the first line would read like a biblical commandment: Make thy information larger. - Werner Loewenstein in Touchstone of Life.
https://www.amazon.com/Touchstone-Life-I...0195140575
(2019-04-18, 02:43 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]That it is just Nominalism being the difference between the modern theory of evolution and NeoDarwinism (based on the Weismann Barrier) is like believing that Dixie is coming back!
Yes, that is the straw man which is presented by the pro-design contingent. In actuality, both have evolved in concert.
Linda
(2019-04-19, 01:06 AM)fls Wrote: [ -> ]Yes, that is the straw man which is presented by the pro-design contingent. In actuality, both have evolved in concert.
Linda
In what way have they moved forward in "concert"?
Physiology has shown the molecular pathways for these signals carrying instincts and have documented their effects on future generations. These signals prove explicitly the falsity of the Weismann barrier supporting the foundational law of NeoDarwinism - genes only change by random action during recombination - and not from about the information they processed during life (Lamarckianism).
Why is current paradigm so steeped in denying the obvious, that if acquiring information is as important for a species, as is food and sex, why wouldn't the evolution of mind be front and center!
Quote: George John Romanes (1848–94) was considered by The Times to be 'the biological investigator upon whom in England the mantle of Mr. Darwin has most conspicuously descended'. Incorporating some of Darwin's unpublished notes, this book explores the question of whether human intelligence evolved. In a stance still often considered controversial at the time of its first printing in 1888, the first half establishes a link between humans and animals, and introduces some of the most important issues of nineteenth-century evolutionary psychology: the impact of relative brain sizes of humans and primates, the origin of self-consciousness and the possible reasons behind the apparent mental stasis of what Romanes terms 'savage man'. Following the argument that one of the main factors to be considered is language, the second half focuses on philology. Romanes' earlier work, Mental Evolution in Animals (1883), is also reissued in this series. -
https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/su...1108037976
(2019-04-20, 03:32 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]In what way have they moved forward in "concert"?
Regardless of which name they prefer, biologists and others working on evolutionary theory are referring to the same state-of-the-art with respect to ideas, research, mechanisms, etc. That is, there isn't a group of biologists stuck investigating only ideas at play in the 19th century or only in the first half of the 20th century, and a separate group dealing with the state-of-the-art, regardless of when any of the variety of names evolutionary theory goes by was invented.
Linda
Why the "new wave" of evolutionary biology, in trying to find some other blind, purposeless mechanism for evolution to replace Darwinism, abjectly fails:
Article - A game of thrones as Darwinism dissolves and top evolutionists scramble for a successor
Quote:"The various new proposals include punctuated equilibrium, neutral evolution, evolutionary developmental biology, self-organization, epigenetic inheritance, and natural genetic engineering. Big claims are made for each of these variants and other versions of blind evolution. But in the end those claims — while undoubtedly believed sincerely by their proponents — have little more substance than a bluff. Each has serious shortcomings as a substitute for foresight and planning with a purpose."
Punctuated equilibrium, for example:
"(This) attempts to explain why we see few transitional fossils in the fossil record from one animal form to a fundamentally different animal form. But the theory offers no credible mechanism for the geologically rapid appearances that it posits. Indeed, whatever challenges traditional neo-Darwinism faces in this regard, punctuated equilibrium faces them in an intensified way, since it has less time to build new forms."
Neutral evolution:
Steven Meyer: "(Michael) Lynch (in his neutral evolution research) vastly underestimates the waiting times required to generate complex adaptations and, therefore, fails to solve the problem of the origin of genes and proteins or any other complex adaptation."
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The other alternative evolutionary proposals face similarly devastating shortcomings. What they all lack is the secret sauce in every great engineering success — foresight, ingenuity and planning with a purpose in mind."