(2017-09-19, 07:21 PM)jkmac Wrote: [ -> ]OK. I suppose referencing intelligence doesn't require one to specifically point to the intelligence. After all, if what we often talk about is real, there are multiple possibilities...
I just keep thinking that this design didn't happen all at once but changes seem to have been introduced in occasional chunks, over time. I think of them as "nudges in the right direction". Just my intuition. Haven't read on the subject. It this the way it is purported?
How about thinking of evolution in a spiritual sense as well as the physical? So whatever intelligence is behind evolution is also learning, adapting and evolving.
(2017-09-19, 08:23 PM)DaveB Wrote: [ -> ]The fundamental problem with evolution by natural selection is that it absolutely has to proceed one small step at a time, and each step has to somehow be beneficial. This may have sounded reasonable in Darwin's day, but it doesn't really stand up now.
Why does each small step have to be beneficial? As long as it's not deadly, it might fix in some portion of the population.
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpag...ecular-839
~~ Paul
(2017-09-19, 11:16 PM)Kamarling Wrote: [ -> ]How about thinking of evolution in a spiritual sense as well as the physical? So whatever intelligence is behind evolution is also learning, adapting and evolving.
Why are you compelled it would seem too inject a spiriual sense?
(2017-09-19, 08:23 PM)DaveB Wrote: [ -> ]The fundamental problem with evolution by natural selection is that it absolutely has to proceed one small step at a time, and each step has to somehow be beneficial. This may have sounded reasonable in Darwin's day, but it doesn't really stand up now.
1) Most DNA evolutionary developments require large numbers of DNA-base additions/changes. Sure it is possible for genes to get passed around by horizontal transfer, bu that doesn't explain how they arose in the first place. Also, I would argue that even if a new enzyme (say) were to be created against the odds, it would almost certainly upset the biochemical balance inside the cell and be selected against. Think of a protease - without some sort of a tight control mechanism, it would just wreak havoc.
2) The same sort of problem appears on the macro scale. For a whale to evolve from a land based mammal, a lot of changes have to take place. These don't seem to appear in the fossil record, and anyway, it is very hard to imagine intermediate creatures that would be viable, let alone superior to their less evolved cousins.
David
Point 2. Should you be so certain? A failure of your imagination should not a barometer for what is possible or has happened.
Point 1. Not having lived for millions of years David you don't know how many failures may have happened. I would go so far as to say you are talking from a place that blows smoke.
(2017-09-20, 12:33 AM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]Why are you compelled it would seem too inject a spiriual sense?
Why don't you read the whole thread so that you can see what was being discussed?
Why should I (or anyone) adopt your base assumptions? (And please try to resist repeating your mantra that they are based on fact.)
My response, as if you really care, was for
who commented upon
design appearing to have happened "in chunks". The word spiritual serves to differentiate between purely physical, random and undirected versus something that appears to have been
designed. So the spiritual element was already in play throughout the discussion.There are some atheists who have speculated about some form of intelligence being involved in evolution (I already mentioned Nagel) but, for most proponents here, trying to constrain a universal consciousness within materialist metaphysics is unnecessary. Something beyond materialism (i.e. spiritual) seems so much more parsimonious - unless you are
compelled to limit your thinking to materialism.
(2017-09-20, 06:12 AM)Brian Wrote: [ -> ]It is possible to believe that all was created by a conscious entity but not know anything about that entity. The same happens when people say "I don't believe in God because of all the suffering in the world" We see the error clearly if we substitute another word or name - "I don't believe in the Queen because of all the suffering in the world" You see the argument pre supposes that if there were a God, he would of necessity have to eliminate suffering but there is no law that says such. If we take ID, if design is an intelligent thing, explain to me how it could work without a conscious entity involved. If you find a conscious entity has to be involved, explain why you would balk at calling it "God"
OK, but maybe it is best not to call such a being God. Also, I believe in not making a ton of assumptions before really necessary. Orthodox science made a huge assumption - materialism - and look what a mess it got them into!
David
(2017-09-20, 02:52 AM)Kamarling Wrote: [ -> ]Why don't you read the whole thread so that you can see what was being discussed?
Why should I (or anyone) adopt your base assumptions? (And please try to resist repeating your mantra that they are based on fact.)
My response, as if you really care, was for who commented upon design appearing to have happened "in chunks". The word spiritual serves to differentiate between purely physical, random and undirected versus something that appears to have been designed. So the spiritual element was already in play throughout the discussion.There are some atheists who have speculated about some form of intelligence being involved in evolution (I already mentioned Nagel) but, for most proponents here, trying to constrain a universal consciousness within materialist metaphysics is unnecessary. Something beyond materialism (i.e. spiritual) seems so much more parsimonious - unless you are compelled to limit your thinking to materialism.
I'm not asking you to adopt my base assumptions. I'm asking why you reason the way you do?
(2017-09-19, 11:46 PM)Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Wrote: [ -> ]Why does each small step have to be beneficial? As long as it's not deadly, it might fix in some portion of the population.
https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpag...ecular-839
~~ Paul
Because without selection at most steps, it you get a huge combinatorial explosion. If each step can go K ways, and there are N of them, you get K^N possible outcomes. So take K=4 and N=30, you get 1152921504606846976 outcomes - most of which will be nonsense. Darwin himself could have answered your question!
I mean, yes there may well be neutral genetic drift, but the only thing that gives it any reasonable chance of drifting into something useful, is Natural Selection (or, of course an ID based theory).
Also, who is talking about neutral changes? Suppose you want to envisage the changes that supposedly transformed a land based mammal into a whale. Most of the changes would be far more likely to be deleterious until all had happened. I mean what use would a pair of gills be until the creature could live in the water - they would probably be liable to dry out and become infected. Besides, any change of that sort would probably make an animal sexually unattractive to its peers - would you form a relationship with a woman who had webbed feet and gills
David
(2017-08-19, 10:21 PM)Kamarling Wrote: [ -> ]Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution
I happened across this blog while searching for something else. It is quite long and I haven't even finished reading it yet but I felt it might be of interest to others here. So far, I have found myself nodding and smiling as I read it and, whatever your views on evolution, Neo-Darwinism or ID, there are some pretty quotable passages in there, IMHO.
I finally finished reading this blog this evening. I don't regret it. Lots of good food for thought in there. I am more and more convinced that neo-Darwinist evolutionary theory is bankrupt. Here's a quote from the blog that I quite liked re the tarantula hawk, "a gigantic wasp that begins life as an egg inside a paralyzed and buried tarantula, where its mother put it":
Quote:Now, some of this may be imagined as evolving by gradual steps (emphasis on “imagined,” which in matters evolutionary is good enough) as required by Darwin. All it takes is enough time. In enough time, anything desired will happen. Of millions and billions of eggs deposited in unfortunate tarantulas, over millions of years, some larvae ate the spider’s vital organs and so died in a rotting spider, not passing on their genes. Others pupated but tried to dig out by going downwards or sideways, thus dying and not passing on their genes. Only those with don’t-eat-the-important-parts mutations and this-way-is-up mutations survived, and so their genes became universal. This we are told.
But…but knowing what a tarantula looks like when you have never seen one, or seen anything, knowing that you need to sting it and just how, that you need to dig a burrow and drag the spider to it, and cover it up, when all of this has to occur in order or the whole process fails….
You have to be smoking Drano.
(2017-09-20, 11:51 AM)Steve001 Wrote: [ -> ]I'm not asking you to adopt my base assumptions. I'm asking why you reason the way you do?
Oh man, this one takes the cake...
