Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

You must not look at other parts of the forum if you think I only post in response to you.

Oh, I'm sorry, you now have proof that evolution is purely a product of time and random genetic mutation? You should let the scientific community know. I'm sure they'll be glad to know that you've discovered something that will resolve a topic of intense and ongoing study. 

Do you have anything to add other than a link to a site with no information about its author, and no reason to believe anything that that author has written? Or the normal, "this person was in some way affiliated with the Discovery Institute, so it simply must follow that everything they say is completely worthless."

Whether you like it or not any association Ewert has with the Discovery Institute, it's members and any affiliated organizations and their members past or present taints anything Ewert writes.

Whether you like it or not any association Ewert has with the Discovery Institute, it's members and any affiliated organizations and their members past or present taints anything Ewert writes.

So, guilt by association?

So, guilt by association?

You don't generally associate with people whom hold radically opposing views to your own, Ewert is no exception.

You don't generally associate with people whom hold radically opposing views to your own, Ewert is no exception.

Does that mean you are secretly a psi proponent Steve?

I was wondering how he knew about my personal life.

Read a summary of Ewert's paper here and download the full PDF if you like from here. Ignore what bigoted twerps might say and make up your own mind.

Read a summary of Ewert's paper here and download the full PDF if you like from here. Ignore what bigoted twerps might say and make up your own mind.

Thanks for the links

Thanks for the links

And thanks for the thanks. There's another explanation of the paper today here that you might understand slightly better (I know I did). I can't claim to understand everything, but the upshot is that it is being claimed that an evolutionary tree with common descent is a significantly less probable explanation of the known data (derived from publicly available biological sources) than is a dependency graph model.

As far as I understand it, in the dependency graph model, the underlying working hypothesis is that genes aren't inherited or lost from prior species on the tree, but come from modules that can sometimes be found in species that are widely assumed to be only distantly related. For example, the sonar systems in bats and whales, or the eyes of octopuses and mammals.

IOW, if you treat biological features as if they are similar to computer software, where a program may draw on pre-existent modules (as well as custom code), you get a much closer fit to the available data than if you assume a common descent model.

Now if anyone thinks that I think this proves ID, let me say I remain on the fence about that: it's true that I think Darwinism is a load of bollocks, but that doesn't mean that I think ID is the correct explanation for evolution. I can only say that it seems to me that ID is a plausible hypothesis, far more plausible than Darwinism.

Of course, the real explanation might be something else that hasn't yet been thought of. I will say, though, that as an Idealist -- thinking that consciousness is fundamental, and matter (as well as space and time) are just appearances (aka Maya or illusion) on the screen of perception -- I believe that consciousness is the source of what we think of as living entities.

Does consciousness, as the source of all, actively design what appears to us as living beings? Well, that's a possibility, but I have my doubts. Cosmic consciousness need not be conscious in the same way we seem to ourselves to be. It needn't be an immensely bigger and more intelligent version of us, with far better design capabilities: that could just be a projection of ourselves onto it (which I believe is also the essential reason for Abrahamic religious interpretations).

I won't go much further: Bernardo Kastrup's many articles, videos, papers and books say it all, and much better than I can.

I’m not sure he’s saying anything we didn’t already know, but with spin for the faithful.

https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/phys.org/...e-bush.amp

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As far as I understand it, in the dependency graph model, the underlying working hypothesis is that genes aren't inherited or lost from prior species on the tree, but come from modules that can sometimes be found in species that are widely assumed to be only distantly related. For example, the sonar systems in bats and whales, or the eyes of octopuses and mammals.

IOW, if you treat biological features as if they are similar to computer software, where a program may draw on pre-existent modules (as well as custom code), you get a much closer fit to the available data than if you assume a common descent model.
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From the summary hyperlinked by Michael Larkin:

"....the probability of the data on the dependency graph model is so much greater than that given the common descent model, we need logarithms even to type it out. If you tried to type out the plain number, you would have to type a 1 followed by more than 3,000 zeros. That’s the ratio of how probable the data are on these two models!"

Note that this is for the HomoloGene data set available on the Internet, which in the study makes the very best case for common descent. Common descent apparently does very much worse (!) for the other eight data sets.