Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

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

ID proponents believe in ID. Darwinists believe in Darwinism. They are both believers. However, not all believers in ID believe in God: among their ranks are agnostics -- David Berlinski, for example, and some somewhat sympathetic to ID are even atheists -- Thomas Nagel, for example. Also, not all ID proponents reject common descent, and some Darwinists are theists. Both Darwinists and ID proponents accept RM+NS, though ID people think it only has a role in microevolution and not at all in macroevolution.

All round it's a bit of a mixed bag and your "spin for the faithful" is just a bit of snide twerpery you couldn't resist. But I don't suppose there's much room for nuance in your lexicon, which being charitable, is somewhat  terse, laconic even.

I searched for "intelligent design" in Ewert's paper and came up with a couple of examples:

Abstract

The hierarchical classification of life has been claimed as compelling evidence for universal common ancestry. However, research has uncovered much data which is not congruent with the hierarchical pattern. Nevertheless, biological data resembles a nested hierarchy sufficiently well to require an explanation. While many defenders of intelligent design dispute common descent, no alternative account of the approximate nested hierarchy pattern has been widely adopted. We present the dependency graph hypothesis as an alternative explanation, based on the technique used by software developers to reuse code among different software projects. This hypothesis postulates that different biological species share modules related by a dependency graph. We evaluate several predictions made by this model about both biological and synthetic data, finding them to be fulfilled.

And:

Intelligent design advocates critique evolutionary theory’s account on a number of grounds [16–19]. Regardless of the merit of these critiques of common descent, advocates of design are left with a question: how do they explain the approximate hierarchical pattern? While some hold to common descent [20, 21], the more common position is separate ancestry [17, 22, 23]. They explain similarities among species by appealing to functional constraints or common design instead of common descent [17, 22]. Many species face similar functional constraints and thus must solve some problems in similar ways. Common design leads to similarity because designers frequently reuse components, modules, and solutions leading to similarity. As Nelson [17] writes: “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. Intelligent design proponents who hold to separate ancestry have no problem explaining similarities in biological organisms.

I searched for "God" and "Divine" but found nothing. Whilst I'm not totally sold on ID, the official ID position is that they are claiming intelligence has a role in evolution; they do not proselytise in their scientific work about God, which it is true most of them believe in. But quite a few conventional Darwinists also believe in God. They usually don't proselytise in their scientific work either. I find it amusing that out-and-out atheistic Darwinists turn a blind eye to the religious affiliations of theistic evolutionists but use them against ID proponents.

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.

With you.  As a Christian, I believe in ID but I doubt any science can ever prove or disprove it.  Belief will always be a matter of reasoned (or unreasoned?) faith.  If I wasn't a Christian I would be in exactly the same place as you.

With you.  As a Christian, I believe in ID but I doubt any science can ever prove or disprove it.  Belief will always be a matter of reasoned (or unreasoned?) faith.  If I wasn't a Christian I would be in exactly the same place as you.

Hi Brian. Actually, I regard myself as an Idealist and a Christian, albeit that I'm not the latter in a conventional way. Check out my post here if you're interested.

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.....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).
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From https://evolutionnews.org/2017/12/intell...f-science/:

"....physicist Walter Elsasser argued that the unfathomable complexity of the chemical and physically processes in life was “transcomputational” — beyond the realm of any theoretical means of computation. Moreover, the development of the embryo is not solely directed by DNA. Instead, it requires new “biotonic” principles. As a result, life cannot be reduced to chemistry and physics. An unbridgeable gap separates life from non-life.

Similarly, mathematician René Thom argued that the 3D patterns of tissues in an organism’s development from egg to birth and their continuous transformation cannot be understood in terms of isolating the individual proteins generated by DNA and other molecules produced in cells. The problem is that the individual “parts” composing tissues and organs only take on the right form and function in the environment of those tissues and organs. More recent work by Denis Noble further has elucidated how every level of the biological hierarchy affects every other level, from DNA to tissues to the entire organism. Based partly on these insights, Thom concluded in his book Structural Stability and Morphogenesis that the process of development should be thought of as being controlled by an “algebraic structure outside space-time itself” (p. 119). Likewise, Robert Rosen argued that life can only be understood as a mathematical abstraction consisting of functional relationships, irreducible to mechanistic processes. He observed that life is fundamentally different from simple physics and chemistry. It embodies the Aristotelian category of final causation, which is closely related to the idea of purpose. The conclusions of these scholars challenge materialistic philosophy at its core."

Purpose, and abstractions held in thought are inherently aspects of consciousness.

It seems we all agree that nature "shapes" life to efficiently function in its environment; the building blocks of life appear to be very "shapeable".

If one sees a god in that nature (and it's hard to resist given the course of human history and culture) "shaping" becomes "design".

There is a way to try and follow the science without spin but it's not easy. Trying to make those who attempt this look a century and a half out of date by calling them "darwinists" is a rhetorical tactic, and is a red flag precursor to incoming nonsense. This heuristic has rarely let me down.

With you.  As a Christian, I believe in ID but I doubt any science can ever prove or disprove it.  Belief will always be a matter of reasoned (or unreasoned?) faith.  If I wasn't a Christian I would be in exactly the same place as you.

My whole approach throughout this thread has been to try to look past the aspects of faith and just look at the arguments as they stand or fall on their own merits. I am not a Christian. I am not religious at all - in fact I'm pretty antithetical towards religion. But it seems to me that the knee-jerk reaction of darwinists - as we have seen right here with Steve001's latest posts - is to attack people because they are Christians (or have some connection to the Christian-financed DI) rather than to consider what they have to say. Look back through to the very early days of this thread and you will see the same pattern.

In my view, as a scientific layman, the arguments for some form of intelligence involved in the evolutionary process are overwhelming. You just can't escape it and the continued reliance on Random Mutation enabling Natural Selection is a sinking ship as has been shown by groups of scientists and philosophers with no ID agenda to push. The only reason that those involved with epigenetics and the so-called Third Way continue to discount intelligence is because materialism is still the dominant metaphysic in orthodox science. Scientists are taught to start with certain assumptions from day-one and those are materialist assumptions. Mind has no place therefore, to quote that infamous documentary title, no intelligence allowed.

So the whole ID debate has been deliberately cast by atheists as a religious crusade and it is not. It might be an idea supported by religious groups who are confident that any evidence of intelligence will be evidence of (their) God but that evidence can be read without such bias and is often presented without such bias. Pity we can't can't say the same of the darwinist reaction to such evidence.

It seems we all agree that nature "shapes" life to efficiently function in its environment; the building blocks of life appear to be very "shapeable".

If one sees a god in that nature (and it's hard to resist given the course of human history and culture) "shaping" becomes "design".

There is a way to try and follow the science without spin but it's not easy. Trying to make those who attempt this look a century and a half out of date by calling them "darwinists" is a rhetorical tactic, and is a red flag precursor to incoming nonsense. This heuristic has rarely let me down.

There you go. Malf just dismissed my whole post while I was typing it! And they say there is no such thing as psi.

Just to add to what I said about Christianity. I have never argued for a designer - more specifically The Designer - which is the religious viewpoint. All I am saying, along with many others (including the atheist Nagel) is that there appears to be intelligence in the system (or that the system is itself intelligent). This is not a problem for idealists like me - it is indeed inevitable. 

If malf wants to call that system nature, fine, but take the next step an allow for intelligence and you don't then have to rely on impossible odds to justify the continued use of the word "random".

Just to add to what I said about Christianity. I have never argued for a designer - more specifically The Designer - which is the religious viewpoint. All I am saying, along with many others (including the atheist Nagel) is that there appears to be intelligence in the system

Wondering if it is not somehow the same thing.  When we think of the religious view of a designer, our brains assume something like a person in the sky working literally with his hands.  Maybe it doesn't have to be that way.

Hi Brian. Actually, I regard myself as an Idealist and a Christian, albeit that I'm not the latter in a conventional way. Check out my post here if you're interested.

My apologies.  I had made the assumption that you were agnostic.  Looks like an interesting site you have but I haven't had time to have a proper look yet.