Are there Non-Religious Skeptics of Darwinian Evolution and Proponents of ID

You probably still reject the reasoning and conclusions of the ID researchers on this example of sudden, abrupt impossible-for-Darwinist-undirected-processes "evolutionary" event, but it seems to me that this rejection requires a little of what could be termed hyperskepticism.

It seems difficult to accept an argument that requires knowledge of biology and paleontology. I don't reject it but I don't think the answer is obvious whether the evidence is a sign of intelligent intervention, Dembski's option of an impersonal process that has to be added to laws of physics, or possibly nothing at all.

I think there are much less complicated arguments to show the materialist conception of RM + NS is inadequate to explain life. I just posted one such argument today.

It seems difficult to accept an argument that requires knowledge of biology and paleontology. I don't reject it but I don't think the answer is obvious whether the evidence is a sign of intelligent intervention, Dembski's option of an impersonal process that has to be added to laws of physics, or possibly nothing at all.

I think there are much less complicated arguments to show the materialist conception of RM + NS is inadequate to explain life. I just posted one such argument today.

So you think it's not obvious that there was intelligent intervention. It appears that you simply don't have any "boggle threshold" whatsoever when it comes to these issues.

The following is just a glimpse of the magnitude of the problem the Cambrian Explosion poses for the undirected semi-random walk RM+NS Darwinistic process. It is so complicated that even in outline it is extensive in description:

The 410,000 years allowed by the fossil record for the Cambrian Explosion of new animal body plans would have allowed say 200,000 generations of a short lived proto-animal over a population of say a few millions. Over that period of time, in each generation say 1000 beneficial random mutations would occur each generation in different isolated individuals in the population over its range, each one varying some parameter a just a little, say a small protrusion in the front carapace starting to form a head, another a small group of proto-neurons in that region starting to form a brain, but of course not wired up with any sort of neural network, just a group of neurons. The process naturally has to wait until another precisely required random genetic change occurs to accomplish the beginning of that network structure of perhaps thousands of neuron interconnections (as opposed to a much more likely degradative change undoing some of the built-up structure already produced.

It is important to note that the vast majority of the random genetic changes and mutations would have been either deleterious or neutral with respect to the reproductive fitness and survivability of the organism.

Each of these randomly occuring beneficial mutations would then have to overcome the next hurdle, which is spreading in the population over a number of further generations.

And so on - very little coherent biological structural information actually being added each generation. This sort of undirected inch-by inch semi-random process is supposed to have slowly built up the organism's brain, consisting of hundreds of thousands to millions of neurons precisely connected and coordinated to perform needed neurological processing functions, connected to multiple external and internal sensors and muscle actuators like complex specialized eyes, whose structures also had to have been slowly inch-by inch created by the same undirected semi-random RM+NS mechanism. And this sort of process was somehow coordinated across a whole array of different biological subsystems.

This is just a greatly simplified microcosm of the overall global organismal transformation, in which the painfully slow semi-random undirected mechanism somehow had to build up an extremely complex, intricate biological machine design consisting of millions of specialized cells making up multiple organ subsystems whose operations were all perfectly coordinated together in an integrated body design. Of course there was also the absolutely essential need to somehow simultaneously maintain reproductive and other survival capabilities in each generation regardless of the fact that the changes in those generations were just intermediate stages of the final structure. For instance, a nonfunctioning proto-brain and proto-kidney and proto heart and circulatory system had to be designed so that they didn't hamper the viability of the organism during these long intermediate stages of formation.   

And of course this is just the biological structure. This undirected RM+NS process also had to build up the embryological construction plan and system at the same time so that each generation the previously built-up structure was continued into the next generation. 

A technological analogy for this resultant biological structure (actually totally inadequate to convey the actual integrated biological complexity and degree of complex specified information involved) would be for instance a Boeing 747 jet aircraft containing hundreds of thousands if not millions of parts all integrated together to form the overall great system of multiple subsystems making up the aircraft's design (engines, wings and fuselage, electrical system, engine controls, aerodynamic controls, central computer, autopilot, radio communication system, it goes on at great length to enumerate all the subsystems).

And that's just part of it, since there also is the essential design of the manufacturing process and the design of the manufacturing machinery.

Just an outline of the problem for Darwinism. As far as I am concerned, to believe this actually occurred is equivalent to believing in the tooth fairy.

So you think it's not obvious that there was intelligent intervention. It appears that you simply don't have any "boggle threshold" whatsoever when it comes to these issues.

Well Dembski apparently thinks there might not be intelligent intervention either, just some kind of "impersonal" process.

Though some isolated incident of intervention could as easily be alien life than something that genuinely contradicts materialism.

The challenge for me is I am not a biologist nor paleontologist so I can't really set a boggle threshold. For example what can I as a layperson make of this ->

“Darwin’s Dilemma”: Was the Cambrian Explosion Too Fast For Evolution?

Authors Michael Lee, Julien Soubrier, and Gregory D. Edgecombe conclude that despite fast rates of evolution during the Cambrian, “The fastest inferred rates are still consistent with evolution by natural selection and with data from living organisms, potentially resolving ‘Darwin’s dilemma.’”

For example, Henry Morris, the founder of the Institute for Creation Research, wrote in his 1974 book Scientific Creationism:

There is obviously a tremendous gap between one-celled microorganisms and the high complexity and variety of the many invertebrate phyla of the Cambrian. If the former evolved into the latter, it seems impossible that no transitional forms between any of them would ever be preserved or found. A much more likely explanation for these gaps is that they represent permanent gaps between created kinds. Each organism has its own structure, specifically designed for its own purpose, not accidentally evolved by random processes.

Seems like there's some truth to the claim that after Creationism was rejected as having any scientific basis there was a switch to ID advocacy.

Now this doesn't mean ID advocacy is scientifically false but it does seem that just as the pseudoskeptics would reject any sign of ID not matter how good the evidence the advocates would push forward even dubious claims.

So how can a layperson without deep knowledge of biology and paleontology decide between these factions? Better, IMO, to focus on arguments that don't have so much complexity, require extensive knowledge of varied disciplines, and finally could just be an "impersonal telic process" or the intervention of aliens rather than a sign that materialism is false.

[quote pid="52041" dateline="1684429304"]

“Darwin’s Dilemma”: Was the Cambrian Explosion Too Fast For Evolution?

This paper you cite pronounced that the authors showed in their study that Darwinistic RM+NS evolution was in reality eminently fast enough.

This paper makes the claim that according to the authors' calculations, "the fastest inferred rates (of the evolution of the Cambrian phyla, based on the Arthropoda phylum) are still consistent with evolution by natural selection and with data from living organisms." 

This claim was based on an erroneous key assumption.

The paper dates back to 2013, and its claims are based on the assumption (based on now known to be inaccurate fossil data) that the Cambrian diversification period lasted 10 million years, rather than the more recently measured 410 thousand years. So the authors of the paper you cite assumed that the time Darwinist RM+NS had to generate 20 new animal phyla was 25 times the actual much more accurately measured time period which turned out in the 2018 published study to be a mere 410 thousand years.
[/quote]

This paper makes the claim that according to the authors' calculations, "the fastest inferred rates (of the evolution of the Cambrian phyla, based on the Arthropoda phylum) are still consistent with evolution by natural selection and with data from living organisms." 

Surely that also begs the question. If you measure the mutation rate, you don't know if those mutations were 'natural' or intelligently induced.

Also, perhaps more to the point, how do you get round the fact that until a gene is very close to something useful, it is still not going to confer a direct advantage to the cell, and so will not be selected for?

The DI have done rather tedious experiments in which they mutate a protein one amino acid at a time. Some still have some residual activity, others none. Of course once the protein ends up folding a different way, all hope is lost.

David

[quote pid="52041" dateline="1684429304"]

This paper you cite pronounced that the authors showed in their study that Darwinistic RM+NS evolution was in reality eminently fast enough.

This paper makes the claim that according to the authors' calculations, "the fastest inferred rates (of the evolution of the Cambrian phyla, based on the Arthropoda phylum) are still consistent with evolution by natural selection and with data from living organisms." 

This claim was based on an erroneous key assumption.

The paper dates back to 2013, and its claims are based on the assumption (based on now known to be inaccurate fossil data) that the Cambrian diversification period lasted 10 million years, rather than the more recently measured 410 thousand years. So the authors of the paper you cite assumed that the time Darwinist RM+NS had to generate 20 new animal phyla was 25 times the actual much more accurately measured time period which turned out in the 2018 published study to be a mere 410 thousand years.

[/quote]

You're throwing a lot of numbers around - can any layperson really shift through all this to decide whether the odds are for or against Intelligent Design?

Remember, Dembski says ID evidence may just be the result of an impersonal force...is it really worth trying to suss out the correctness of ID what IMO seem like paltry gains?

If there was some definite slam dunk here for ID...but when even some Christians say they are unsure if ID shows anything or that ID is unscientific...

Are there Non-Religious Skeptics of Darwinian Evolution and Proponents of Intelligent Design?

Yes, me!

David

You're throwing a lot of numbers around - can any layperson really shift through all this to decide whether the odds are for or against Intelligent Design?

I think the way to look at this is to start with the way that Darwin seems to have conceived his idea - namely that there were a variety of genes and somehow you selected a set of whole genes whenever an organism came into existence - selecting most from its parents but others at random. Genes and cells were conceived as rather simple entities. Thinking that way NS sounds somewhat plausible I suppose.

However, that predated the discovery of DNA, which really should have knocked Darwin's theory on its head. Because now each gene looks more like a little machine in its own right - something that would require a lot of design to make it work. Mutations are conceived of as something like a cosmic ray whizzing in and changing one of the magic letters CAGT, but there might be 500 such letters in a gene.

Thus improving a gene or building one from scratch is going to take a hell of a lot of cosmic rays and all the intermediate steps are good for nothing.

Imagine a modern car, which is going to be less complicated than a single cell, and you fire a machine gun at it. OK, in principle you could imagine that those bullets would have a small chance to rearrange the car into a more powerful vehicle, but the probability would be vanishingly small. Even if you had a whole mass of vehicles to attack in this way - they would just come out wrecked (think Ukraine).

The modern version of Darwinism relies of the vast numbers of organisms that have lived and died to boost the probability that something like the above might, just might come out with an improved vehicle, but the plausibility of Darwin's theory disappeared once the DNA explanation of inheritance was accepted.

Darwin always emphasised the idea that evolution had to occur in small steps for his scheme to work, but 500-odd changes to a gene - each caused by independent random events - isn't exactly a small step!

David

Hi Nbtruthman!

Thanks for pointing me to this thread! I think we both see very much eye to eye.

Since you are a quite knowledgeable ID advocate. I thought I would ask for your reaction, positive and/or negative, to my long post on the virtual impossibility of the RM+NS evolution of the Cambrian Explosion, at https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-a...0#pid52040 .

Do you think my arguments there are unfounded? There was only one direct reply, Sci's, which was negative for various reasons, most importantly that in his opinion a layperson who is not an expert evolutionary biologist with a deep understanding of the mathematics involved simply can't validly evaluate such arguments. Do you agree with that?

I'm not a biologist, but I think that understanding this issue doesn't really need much biology.

To me, the most exciting thing about the Cambrian explosion is that it suggests to me that this was organised by a finite intelligence, because suddenly a large number of animal forms appeared, and most soon disappeared. This looks like the designer could not just solve the problem by sheer thought, be had to try some experiments and see what looked most useful - just like an engineer might.

David

The modern version of Darwinism relies of the vast numbers of organisms that have lived and died to boost the probability that something like the above might, just might come out with an improved vehicle, but the plausibility of Darwin's theory disappeared once the DNA explanation of inheritance was accepted.

Darwin always emphasised the idea that evolution had to occur in small steps for his scheme to work, but 500-odd changes to a gene - each caused by independent random events - isn't exactly a small step!

David

Sorry David but do you really think this is something that can be assessed by laypersons not in the field?

To me this is akin to the mathematical parts of physics arguments - I majored in mathematics in my younger years but I don't feel that even with a lot of refresh I could completely judge the arguments for one QM interpretation [over] another. I can look at the variety of opinions among physicists that allows a place for consciousness - going back to Einsein's openness to Psi - and rationally conclude that there is a live possibility that consciousness is an important piece of physics.

I think similarly the best a layperson not in the field of biology can say about ID is that it's a live possibility. I do think the RM + NS picture is incomplete but I don't think I could tell you whether millions of years is an "eye-blink" for evolution, whether the fossil record in the Cambrian period shows the intervention of intelligence, whether the eye itself has to be designed, etc.