Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

What do you think this contributes to this conversation?

Let's see. a. Species can emerge very fast. b. Genetic information is combined to create species. c. Creating new species is a haphazard event requiring no goal, intelligence and design. What did you learn from reading the article? You did read it right?

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

Thanks.  I'm still inclined to doubt this.  How in God's name can we figure out whether random mutations would be neutral, helpful, or anywhere on the range of detrimental - whether slightly to lethally?  All I would wager we could do is figure it like any other system, right?  Meaning, wouldn't we naturally refer to entropy here?  And although I understand there would be such a thing as "neutral," that still seems dangerous, right?  We're talking about a tightly, finely tuned living system: there are an almost infinite number of ways to mess it up and only an absurdly small amount of ways that randomness might improve upon it . . . yet, the evolutionary system that's proposed relies on that absurdly small amount of random improvements increasing the fitness of almost every species on the planet at almost all times in history.  Seems a bit unlikely to me.

Going back to neutral mutations, to me that still sounds a bit like saying a "benign" tumor: it's still not really right, even if it's not doing anything super harmful (at the moment).

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.

From my post #244: 
"No matter what the problem, clever Darwinists can come up with a just-so story to explain the biological system. It's just a matter of being ingenious enough. Darwinism is quite impervious to falsification. The claim of Darwinism is that “Some unintelligent process (involving natural selection and random mutation) could produce this system.” To falsify this claim, one would have to show the system could not have been formed by any of a potentially infinite number of possible unintelligent processes, which is effectively impossible to do. So Darwinism is immune from evidence and must simply be accepted on faith.

Darwinists claim that ID isn’t falsifiable, but their own theory is the falsification of ID. All that is needed to falsify ID is to show in detail preferably by experiment and/or observation that some unintelligent process could indeed produce the system."

Behe published Darwin’s Black Box in 1996. He pointed out that there was not one single published research study in any relevant peer reviewed journal that provided the detailed, testable (and falsifiable) model of how neo-Darwinian evolution actually built any of the irreducibly complex systems Behe described in his book. That was 21 years ago - plenty of time for someone to publish something somewhere - even if only ONE study. Is there anything yet? If not, this is all bluff and bluster, wishful thinking and deception. It boils down to, we're supposed to accept the Darwinist account because that is the faith - it just had to have happened that way.

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

I wouldn't put much stock in RNA world studies and speculation - this area has been gravely discredited over the years. Susan Mazur's book The Origin of Life Circus contains a number of interviews with leading OOL researchers with pretty low opinions of RNA world ideas, including Pier Luigi Luisi: 

He is merciless in his attack, calling the RNA world a “baseless fantasy.” Mazur puts his criticisms in bold print on pages 362-363, where he finds it “full of conceptual flaws,” including its origin, the thermodynamics, the sequencing problem, the concentration problem, and more. The story of RNA turning into ribozymes he calls “chemical non-sense” (p. 363). Luisi then makes a confession so bold, Mazur says, “It’s remarkable to hear you say that.” Luisi: "the real problem is to make ordered sequences of amino acids, of or course ordered sequences of nucleic acids — and on that the prebiotic RNA world is absolutely silent. But this view of the prebiotic RNA world is still the most popular. I think it is a case of social science psychology more than science itself."
(from https://evolutionnews.org/2017/02/putting_the_rna/)

Let's see. a. Species can emerge very fast. b. Genetic information is combined to create species. c. Creating new species is a haphazard event requiring no goal, intelligence and design. What did you learn from reading the article? You did read it right?

a. How the term "species" is defined is up for substantial debate, and just saying something is a new species does not establish that some substantial amount of change has been undergone.

b. This is nebulous and not adding anything new to the conversation. It's not anything novel to suggest that a genetic change is one way in which an analysis of how species are defined is done.

c. Complete, unfounded assertion that has no support but your personal opinion. You (and all the scientists who claim to) do not have a clue as to how evolution operates in total. That's the entire discussion we've been having here. Further, having a "new species" of bird that is a minor variant of its predecessor in no way describes or gives any sort of help to figuring out how supposed R+M evolution boomed into the diversity of species observed today, allegedly from a single-celled organism that randomly just happened to self assemble (somehow - scientific community is at least willing to admit that that problem is confounding in a number of ways). It seems that you like to act like everyone who disagrees with you on this topic just refutes evolution at large or is some sort of young earth creationist, which is obviously not the case at all. 

I learned that a bird that is extremely similar to another bird was declared to be a new species based on a minor variation that in no way changed the fact that it was a bird, or what kind of bird it was.

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

~~ Paul

Do you really consider that a major change? Interesting isn't what steve was going for.

a. How the term "species" is defined is up for substantial debate, and just saying something is a new species does not establish that some substantial amount of change has been undergone.

b. This is nebulous and not adding anything new to the conversation. It's not anything novel to suggest that a genetic change is one way in which an analysis of how species are defined is done.

c. Complete, unfounded assertion that has no support but your personal opinion. You (and all the scientists who claim to) do not have a clue as to how evolution operates in total. That's the entire discussion we've been having here. Further, having a "new species" of bird that is a minor variant of its predecessor in no way describes or gives any sort of help to figuring out how supposed R+M evolution boomed into the diversity of species observed today, allegedly from a single-celled organism that randomly just happened to self assemble (somehow - scientific community is at least willing to admit that that problem is confounding in a number of ways). It seems that you like to act like everyone who disagrees with you on this topic just refutes evolution at large or is some sort of young earth creationist, which is obviously not the case at all. 

I learned that a bird that is extremely similar to another bird was declared to be a new species based on a minor variation that in no way changed the fact that it was a bird, or what kind of bird it was.

I've notice none of your replies elucidates another method how life evolves. Scientists of course don't know all the details, but they know enough to be confident natural means is the only way living things evolve.

So far the four respondents, that includes you Dante, refute evolution by natural means. One thinks design is involved. One favors morphic fields and another thinks the answer lays with psi. I'm don't know what you think, but it's probably some idea resting on shaky ground.

I've notice none of your replies elucidates another method how life evolves. Scientists of course don't know all the details, but they know enough to be confident natural means is the only way living things evolve.

So far the four respondents, that includes you Dante, refute evolution by natural means. One thinks design is involved. One favors morphic fields and another thinks the answer lays with psi. I'm don't know what you think, but it's probably some idea resting on shaky ground.

I think it's important to always remember that a lack of an alternative does not magically make issues with the primarily accepted model disappear. They are real issues. Those issues are not rendered irrelevant because people don't have a fully supported alternative, especially when little research has been conducted into any such alternative path. Additionally it seems clear that it might be difficult to scientifically uncover intelligent intent or something of the like, if such a thing exists. Regardless, evolutionary theory as it is rests on incredibly shaky reasoning that is rarely challenged at all, which probably has led to a lot of the discord surrounding the issue.

I think it's important to always remember that a lack of an alternative does not magically make issues with the primarily accepted model disappear. They are real issues. Those issues are not rendered irrelevant because people don't have a fully supported alternative, especially when little research has been conducted into any such alternative path. Additionally it seems clear that it might be difficult to scientifically uncover intelligent intent or something of the like, if such a thing exists. Regardless, evolutionary theory as it is rests on incredibly shaky reasoning that is rarely challenged at all, which probably has led to a lot of the discord surrounding the issue.

Some things I've noticed. People love science as long as it does not threaten their existential beliefs. TOE does just that. If study of psi had the same depth of knowledge as does evolutionary theory does you'd and a few others would say psi is a bonifide science backed up by a big marching band. Tell me what really chaps your arse about TOE?

[Laird]

Some things I've noticed. People love science as long as it does not threaten their existential beliefs.

Ah, you mean, say, the way the science of parapsychology threatens the existential beliefs of "skeptics"?

Ah, you mean, say, the way the science of parapsychology threatens the existential beliefs of "skeptics"?

Not in the least. I dare you to ask any skeptic if they have parapsychological existential angst.  You can ask here or better yet since there are so many more at The international Skeptics forum.