Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

Over the last couple days, I've read this entire thread and greatly enjoyed it.

I'm curious about something though that no one's touched on to my recollection.  I'm pretty much intuitively convinced that if organisms were truly only evolving by RM + NS, that the random mutations would so often - almost always - be detrimental that the survival of any living thing would be close to impossible.  Has no IDer made and developed such an argument?

The feeling now is that many mutations are neutral, with most others detrimental and a few helpful. This is, in part, due to the degeneracy of the genetic code. Note that a detrimental mutation occurs in one or a few individuals and will often result in the death of those individuals.

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

~~ Paul

So if it is a choice of thinking, well that complex eye or that bird's feather could have evolved according to some teleological purpose or, in tiny steps, by waiting for chance to provide the right mutation and relying on survival advantage to adopt that mutation, then I am inclined to go with the former.

How does the teleological agent operate?

~~ Paul

Just by the way, this article seems to confirm what has been pointed out earlier in this thread: that atheists continue to erect the strawman argument that religious (or spiritual) automatically means biblical creationism. The article, unfortunately, makes no distinction between evolution and Darwinism, not to mention neo-darwinism. Nor does it mention any challenges to current evolutionary orthodoxy other than creationism so, in effect, the article commits the same error that it reports.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/s...ual-divide

I agree that people on both sides are often attacking a caricature of the other side. The only thing that this article says about what Christians might really believe is:

“To say that all things depend unilaterally on the eternal action of God is not the same as saying that specific steps in the universe’s history must be the direct result of divine intervention."

Not very enlightening.

Here's another related and more considered article:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/poli...eationists

This is about the UK and Canada. Of course they are more rational. Again, though, not much information.

"Furthermore, doubts about evolutionary science frequently appear to be related to the perceived limitations of evolutionary science-based explanations for human origins and human consciousness."

~~ Paul

Can you give a link to one of these pieces of evidence? David's argument was that a random search through sequence space wouldn't come up with anything in a reasonable time. I agreed and suggested that it's not a random search. I don't remember what Larkin said.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_s...evolution)

~~ Paul

Many of the contributions by Lone Shaman were lost, either due to server crashes or deletion after he left the forum. However, some of the threads on the older Skeptiko forum still exist. I don't have time to pinpoint the dialogue I remember but the following is an example of what I was saying. This snippet is from yet another long thread...

http://forum.mind-energy.net/forum/skept...post161915

Sorry, but you're the one making the claim. DNA is a functional code and we have absolutely no evidence that a mind was involved in its evolution. Unless you have evidence to the contrary, DNA is an example of an evolved functional code.

Reply from LS ...

I have presented evidence. It's not so much of a claim as inference. I'll say it again, the inference is as sound as any, and is falsifiable. I'm not required to prove anything. You don't really prove hypothesis, you only see how it fits against the evidence and it does. In fact it remains as the only valid explanation until science can show a naturally occurring code. Falsification is what your looking for. 

Why don't you write a short paragraph that summarizes your claim? Because, really, I have no idea why you think you've proved this. In particular, explain why you think your claim is falsifiable.

Paul, I've already explained my position on page one.

It is not about proof it is an inference. 

Once again an evolving code is not the issue. But your still pushing it for some reason. A simpler code is still a code. I would say the evolving potential must be towards error correction. That is what it appears to be. That would be sensible. I do believe in evolution you know.

Here's a paper that discusses many of the proposals for an evolving genetic code. There's a whole bunch here. Knock yourself out. 

The paper in our first link was one I would have linked myself! the second is in fact included in here.

He goes on to present more evidence.

I guess you're not willing to summarize it in a few sentences.

And it goes on like that. You can read it for yourself if you want more. David Bailey and Michael Larkin are both here and have both contributed to this thread. You might want to ask them to elaborate because they know their stuff much better than I do. I would recommend that anyone interested should take a look at that thread. Pity that later debates were lost but you get the gist of the arguments from this one.

This is another long thread from the original Skeptiko forum. Michael, Paul, Lone Shaman and others are heavily involved in the debate.

http://forum.mind-energy.net/forum/skept...in-s-doubt

A new species in two generation.
https://m.phys.org/news/2017-11-galapagos-species.html

A new species in two generation.
https://m.phys.org/news/2017-11-galapagos-species.html

What do you think this contributes to this conversation?

Many of the contributions by Lone Shaman were lost, either due to server crashes or deletion after he left the forum. However, some of the threads on the older Skeptiko forum still exist. I don't have time to pinpoint the dialogue I remember but the following is an example of what I was saying. This snippet is from yet another long thread...

This is his inference of design from the structure of the genetic code. As I said in my past few posts, I don't think it is legitimate to infer a designer just because a natural mechanism looks a bit like something humans would design. What you need to do is show that it could not have evolved naturalistically. This is what complex specified information tries but fails to do.
There is a lot of handwaving and claiming that a code can only be a human artifact and not a natural one. But there is object evidence for this claim.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...9314000113

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...2216309174

https://www.irbbarcelona.org/en/news/dis...netic-code

~~ Paul

What do you think this contributes to this conversation?

There is often talk that evolution is too weak to cause major changes, including speciation. It's also an interesting article.

~~ Paul

This is his inference of design from the structure of the genetic code. As I said in my past few posts, I don't think it is legitimate to infer a designer just because a natural mechanism looks a bit like something humans would design. What you need to do is show that it could not have evolved naturalistically. This is what complex specified information tries but fails to do.
There is a lot of handwaving and claiming that a code can only be a human artifact and not a natural one. But there is object evidence for this claim.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...9314000113

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...2216309174

https://www.irbbarcelona.org/en/news/dis...netic-code

~~ Paul

Well, as I said, this was argued at length in that thread. I guess people can make up their own minds by reading it but LS made a lot of sense to me.