Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

None of what you have quoted serves as justification for you assuming that you can speak for others. I had my reasons and I still think they were valid - but they were expressed as my own feelings. I have equally strong feelings about your behaviour on this forum and on Skeptiko - being unrelentingly negative - so I could ask you the same question: why are you here? You seem to find faults in others but are blind to your own.

 And no, authoritarian does not equate to gestapo tactics. That was an analogy too far.

Gee wiz, you can't read. I struck gestapo in favor of autocratic. It will be better for you not to engage me.

[Laird]

Remember this forum is a break away solution to the gestapo like tactics you and alex used to turn that other forum into an echo chamber.  Here we have more lattitude to express ideas that are contrary. The question for you is, why are you here? Oh, remember you're not the mod here so we don't need to hear what you think is the appropriate participation.

Similarly as Kamarling, I think "gestapo like tactics" is unnecessarily hyperbolic and incendiary. It might even be considered to be the sort of personal attack from which, in the forum rules, we ask members to refrain. On the other hand, we also aim for liberal moderation, so I am not suggesting that any action will be taken in this case (it won't).

And also on the other hand, I can understand why you'd be angry, Steve, given that (IIRC) it was David who banned you from Skeptiko.

Personally, I disagree that Skeptiko became an "echo chamber" but you're of course welcome to your own opinion on this matter, as well as to express it on this forum.

I guess Steve001's post illustrates clearly why I decided to ban him from Skeptiko. Since it would seem no action is being taken against him - not even the deletion of his post or a requirement that he appologise - I am abandoning this forum.

I'd encourage others here from Skeptiko who may not like a forum where it is OK to call someone a member of the Gestapo without any provocation or justification, to consider returning the forum that upholds a decent standard of moderation, and has been helped reveal so much information about consciousness/psi matters over the years.

You would be welcome back.

David

[Laird]

You would be welcome back.

As would you be to this forum, any time you choose to change your mind, David. As many have often affirmed, and as I affirm too - as a forum contributor you are very valued.

Because we aim on Psience Quest to uphold the expectations of the community, you would be welcome to appeal to the community if you think that the moderation decision in this case is wrong or inappropriate.

To introduce a new argument about the bugs in Darwinian evolution, I've just come across a very interesting scholarly article by Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig which can be downloaded in PDF format here.

(Quoting Lonnig on the problem of the evolutionary origin of plant galls): "Hence, in each and every case of all the different some 132,930 independently arisen galling insects species, correspondingly literally thousands of supposed long evolutionary gall histories must be postulated, all by “uncountable successive small microevolutionary steps”, “infinitesimally small inherited variations” etc. – and each of the necessary mutations had to occur separately of each other at least some 50 times on average to have a chance to succeed in a given population."

The more than one hundred thousand different plant gall-producing insect species that seem to have all independently evolved basically very similar mechanisms controlling growth of plant galls for their own benefit, seem to be an extreme example of convergent evolution.

Article, Convergent Genetic Evolution: Surprising Under Unguided Evolution, Expected Under Intelligent Design:

A 2010 article in Trends in Genetics, "Causes and evolutionary significance of genetic convergence," addresses the apparently "convergent" appearance of genes or gene sequences and how unguided evolution can explain this. The paper defines convergence as the "independent appearance of the same trait in different lineages." Thus, genetic convergence is the independent appearance of the same genetic trait in different lineages. The article starts by explaining how widespread convergent evolution is:
The recent wide use of genetic and/or phylogenetic approaches has uncovered diverse examples of repeated evolution of adaptive traits including the multiple appearances of eyes, echolocation in bats and dolphins, pigmentation modifications in vertebrates, mimicry in butterflies for mutualistic interactions, convergence of some flower traits in plants, and multiple independent evolution of particular protein properties.
 .........................
But what causes these similar traits to appear in widely diverse organisms? It turns out that "convergent" phenotypic similarity is often based upon "convergent" genetic similarity. Accumulating studies on this topic have reported surprising cases of convergent evolution at the molecular level, ranging from gene families being recurrently recruited to identical amino acid replacements in distant lineages. In other words, as the paper explains, convergent phenotypic traits occur due to convergent genetic evolution, which supposedly "results from a strongly biased potential for a given phenotypic change as a consequence of mutations in different genes. 

Neo-Darwinian evolution isn't supposed to be goal-directed, but some force is causing the same sequences--at the genetic level--to appear independently over and over again. In an undesigned world, this is extremely unlikely. 

Though the authors of course do not advocate any sort of purpose behind evolution, their paper's teleological language about the "potential" or "predisposition" for beneficial evolutionary change is striking."

Apparently, only the rare genes that are suitable for it can undergo the restricted number of actual substitutions that can lead to the very limited number of ways of bodily functioning. Compared to the huge number of possible different random with respect to fitness mutations and permutations and combinations of them. Finding functional genetic pathways to new useful phenotypes (bodily forms and functions) is known to be fraught with peril. If neo-Darwinism has difficulty finding intricate complicated functional gene modifications, new genes and gene sequences once, how is it stumbling upon the same sequences over and over again as repeatedly found in actual convergent evolution? 

"Is there a better explanation for why similar gene sequences appear over and over again in different organisms, even when common ancestry cannot suffice as the explanation? What known cause can do this? Stephen C. Meyer suggests one:
Agents can arrange matter with distant goals in mind. In their use of language, they routinely 'find' highly isolated and improbable functional sequences amid vast spaces of combinatorial possibilities." (Stephen C. Meyer, "The Cambrian Information Explosion," in Debating Design, p. 388 (William A. Dembski and Michael W. Ruse eds., Cambridge University Press, 2004).)
Convergent evolution implies that these rare functional sequences are discovered not just once, but repeatedly. Perhaps a better explanation for the existence of rare functional sequences is intelligent design. Paul Nelson and Jonathan Wells explain why intelligent design is a viable explanation for the repeated appearance of similar gene sequences:
An intelligent cause may reuse or redeploy the same module in different systems, without there necessarily being any material or physical connection between those systems. Even more simply, intelligent causes can generate identical patterns independently." (Paul Nelson and Jonathan Wells, "Homology in Biology," in Darwinism, Design, and Public Education, pg. 316)
Might convergent genetic evolution actually be a pointer to intelligent design?"

Apparently, only the rare genes that are suitable for it can undergo the restricted number of actual substitutions that can lead to the very limited number of ways of bodily functioning. Compared to the huge number of possible different random with respect to fitness mutations and permutations and combinations of them. Finding functional genetic pathways to new useful phenotypes (bodily forms and functions) is known to be fraught with peril. If neo-Darwinism has difficulty finding intricate complicated functional gene modifications, new genes and gene sequences once, how is it stumbling upon the same sequences over and over again as repeatedly found in actual convergent evolution?

Yeah. Over at Evolution News, there are many articles about how Darwinians, when all else fails, can call on convergent evolution to save their bacon -- see for example here.

I quote: The same data that are considered evidence of convergence can become evidence for common ancestry when you switch positions in the tree, and vice versa. What most evolutionary biologists have exorcised from their mind is that such incongruences (homoplasies) per se are not evidence for evolution as some evolutionists boldly proclaim (Wells 2017) but, instead, prima facie conflicting evidence against it (Hunter 2017).

Convergence, which Lee Spetner has called “even more implausible than evolution itself” (Klinghoffer 2017), and other incongruent similarities have to be explained away with ad hoc hypotheses. In past decades, convergence morphed from an inconvenient exception to the rule — to a ubiquitous phenomenon, found virtually everywhere in living nature. In his book Life’s Solution, paleontologist Conway Morris (2003) felt compelled to declare it a kind of necessary natural law. It thus cannot really be considered a success story for the Darwinian paradigm.

Yeah. Over at Evolution News, there are many articles about how Darwinians, when all else fails, can call on convergent evolution to save their bacon -- see for example here.

I quote: The same data that are considered evidence of convergence can become evidence for common ancestry when you switch positions in the tree, and vice versa. What most evolutionary biologists have exorcised from their mind is that such incongruences (homoplasies) per se are not evidence for evolution as some evolutionists boldly proclaim (Wells 2017) but, instead, prima facie conflicting evidence against it (Hunter 2017).

Convergence, which Lee Spetner has called “even more implausible than evolution itself” (Klinghoffer 2017), and other incongruent similarities have to be explained away with ad hoc hypotheses. In past decades, convergence morphed from an inconvenient exception to the rule — to a ubiquitous phenomenon, found virtually everywhere in living nature. In his book Life’s Solution, paleontologist

 Conway Morris (2003) felt compelled to declare it a kind of necessary natural law. It thus cannot really be considered a success story for the Darwinian paradigm.

"Lee Spetner is a physicist and Creation apologist. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri.[1] He was educated at MIT and Washington University, and employed by Johns Hopkins University. Lee Spetner majored in physics. He endeavoured to prove God's creation using physics. Dr. Spetner is a convinced Jewish scientist with regard to such evidences. He opposes evolutionists who support Darwinism. He wrote numerous articles and emails to support his view.[2][3][4]"

If only he could find God.

It would be interesting to speculate about some future evolutionary theory that would add to random genetic variations (mutations), the periodic intervention of outside consciousness into the process by somehow designing and inserting elaborate genetic innovations into the genome, and then waiting for natural selection to do its work of macroevolution. 

I have been following some of the authors that are now listed on the Third Way of Evolution website for decades.  Long before they came together.  It is now a solidly scientific offering that is steadily replacing RM + NS formulation.  In short, the general idea is that living things design themselves in an active way.  I would love to hear pro & con about this sea-change in Bio evolutionary theory.

"Consciousness" in this new view would not be seen as a "periodic intervention", but a constant root-cause of the adapting/designing process.  Living things solve problems at the level of colonies and species.  We are learning how in an accelerating fashion.

Dividing the causal platforms into two or more levels breaks the heart of the materialistic hammer.  The idea that a full and complete account of the materials and electro-chemistry of biology covers all causes --- disappears.  There should be a physical basis of all that happens!  Finding every intermediate evolving form proves nothing, as half the picture is happening in the informational objects that structure behavior.

Along with each trait in an ecological niche - there are behavioral and informational causes that drive their separate-but-equal level of causation.  Behavior and information processing (mental evolution) are a parallel map of causes to changes in codons in microbiology.

I have been following some of the authors that are now listed on the Third Way of Evolution website for decades.  Long before they came together.  It is now a solidly scientific offering that is steadily replacing RM + NS formulation.  In short, the general idea is that living things design themselves in an active way.  I would love to hear pro & con about this sea-change in Bio evolutionary theory.

"Consciousness" in this new view would not be seen as a "periodic intervention", but a constant root-cause of the adapting/designing process.  Living things solve problems at the level of colonies and species.  We are learning how in an accelerating fashion.

Dividing the causal platforms into two or more levels breaks the heart of the materialistic hammer.  The idea that a full and complete account of the materials and electro-chemistry of biology covers all causes --- disappears.  There should be a physical basis of all that happens!  Finding every intermediate evolving form proves nothing, as half the picture is happening in the informational objects that structure behavior.

Along with each trait in an ecological niche - there are behavioral and informational causes that drive their separate-but-equal level of causation.  Behavior and information processing (mental evolution) are a parallel map of causes to changes in codons in microbiology.

A scientific theory (at least "scientific" as defined by modern methodological materialism) for living organisms to design themselves in an active way would have to propose some sort of creative physical mechanism that somehow produces apparently intelligently designed complicated irreducibly complex machines. Such a mechanism would seem to have to incorporate qualities like inventiveness, insight, imagination, persistence and an aesthetic sense. I don't think the "Third Way" proponents have proposed anything like this, only mainly new mechanisms of generating random with respect to fitness genetic variations. Monistic or panpsychist concepts of some sort of distributed intelligence spread out over innumerable cells would not meet the evident requirements for some sort of focused sentient intelligence at work. If you have found something I would be very interested.

I have been following some of the authors that are now listed on the Third Way of Evolution website for decades.  Long before they came together.  It is now a solidly scientific offering that is steadily replacing RM + NS formulation.  In short, the general idea is that living things design themselves in an active way.  I would love to hear pro & con about this sea-change in Bio evolutionary theory.

"Consciousness" in this new view would not be seen as a "periodic intervention", but a constant root-cause of the adapting/designing process.  Living things solve problems at the level of colonies and species.  We are learning how in an accelerating fashion.

Dividing the causal platforms into two or more levels breaks the heart of the materialistic hammer.  The idea that a full and complete account of the materials and electro-chemistry of biology covers all causes --- disappears.  There should be a physical basis of all that happens!  Finding every intermediate evolving form proves nothing, as half the picture is happening in the informational objects that structure behavior.

Along with each trait in an ecological niche - there are behavioral and informational causes that drive their separate-but-equal level of causation.  Behavior and information processing (mental evolution) are a parallel map of causes to changes in codons in microbiology.

I'd be interested to read some more about these things you mention: how living things design themselves and how consciousness intervenes. If only to give me an insight into how much evolution science appears to be moving away from the neo-darwinist model. I've read a few articles on epigenetics and I think I get the idea although I have not yet found a source indicating the role of consciousness (apart from Bruce Lipton, if I recall correctly).