Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

OTOH: I don't believe for a single heartbeat in the biblical explanation, so I lean toward something that is a variation on the theme of evolution (incremental change over time). In my mind I'm thinking of the process as "guided" evolution.

Don't worry, I am not a Christian, and I am not even sure all the people in the ID movement are. They seem to have sawn off the old young Earth ideology as well.

J Scott Rurner is a "bad" Christian, whatever that means, but he seems to be pushing for some sort of consciousness running the cell - even though he likes to call it homeostasis  

David

Don't worry, I am not a Christian, and I am not even sure all the people in the ID movement are. They seem to have sawn off the old young Earth ideology as well.

J Scott Rurner is a "bad" Christian, whatever that means, but he seems to be pushing for some sort of consciousness running the cell - even though he likes to call it homeostasis  

David

Don't worry, I am not a Christian,

David, do you have to keep repeating this mantra over and over again ?  Yes those bloody "Christians," vicious bar stewards ....

We've got it. Christians are naive simpletons who venerate a person that you and your focus of worship (AT) have clearly (?) "demonstrated" never existed. Why don't you now focus your efforts on the prophet Muhammed ?

Very interesting subject. I don't have any contribution to make but I am reading avidly 
Keep it up

Rupert Sheldrake has a lot to say about what gets deployed where in the body (i.e. how multicellular organisms develop. Clearly epigenetics must be relevant here too - I mean those chemical notes stuck on DNA mean that the DNA in different types of cells behaves differently - the DNA for fingernail proteins remains silent in the eye, for example. However there is still an impossible organisational problem that obviously does need intelligence.

For example, Sheldrake reports on some work (not his own) in which the lens of the eye of a tadpole was removed. Over time it regrew. The amazing thing was that the regrowth used a quite different method from the way it is formed originally - which surely implies some intelligence - "Bugger that lens has gone missing, how can I fix it?"


David

I found Rupert Sheldrake's book "The Science Delusion" fascinating. If a bit heavy to read in places.

David, do you have to keep repeating this mantra over and over again ?  Yes those bloody "Christians," vicious bar stewards ....

We've got it. Christians are naive simpletons who venerate a person that you and your focus of worship (AT) have clearly (?) "demonstrated" never existed. Why don't you now focus your efforts on the prophet Muhammed ?

That remark was aimed at Jkmac, who write "I don't believe for a single heartbeat in the biblical explanation". I wanted to stress that the whole ID/Middle Way thing isn't a biblical issue - it is much wider than that.

I don't want to imply any of the other stuff, but the problem is that there is a small subset of Christians - mainly in the US - who believe the earth  is approx 6000 years old, etc. Those people are used by orthodox biologists to try to unfairly slur the ID crowd.

David

That remark was aimed at Jkmac, who write "I don't believe for a single heartbeat in the biblical explanation". I wanted to stress that the whole ID/Middle Way thing isn't a biblical issue - it is much wider than that.

I don't want to imply any of the other stuff, but the problem is that there is a small subset of Christians - mainly in the US - who believe the earth  is approx 6000 years old, etc. Those people are used by orthodox biologists to try to unfairly slur the ID crowd.

David

Okay, thanks for the clarification.

That remark was aimed at Jkmac, who write "I don't believe for a single heartbeat in the biblical explanation". I wanted to stress that the whole ID/Middle Way thing isn't a biblical issue - it is much wider than that.

I don't want to imply any of the other stuff, but the problem is that there is a small subset of Christians - mainly in the US - who believe the earth  is approx 6000 years old, etc. Those people are used by orthodox biologists to try to unfairly slur the ID crowd.

David

Yes, I'm afraid it goes deeper and wider than this. We've all seen car bumper stickers with the Darwin/Evolution logo (fish symbol with legs) as a counter to the Christian fish symbol. So many atheists like to create the impression that Darwin doubt is the same as biblical creationism. Which is why David (and I and others) make the point that it is not only the fundamentalists who have a problem with Darwinism - especially the current orthodoxy of neo-Darwinism. If BartV (Sparky) is reading this we can be sure of yet another intervention claiming a religious-creationist conspiracy. 

So there is funding from Christian sources for organisations such as the Discovery Institute (who Mayer works for). Also, many of the researchers are open about their faith. But people like Meyer are not preaching creationism. Meyer says that there is scientific evidence for design if you follow scientific protocols. His opponents say that he would say that because he is a Christian. How do we decide?

Well, for one thing, we could read a Meyer book or two - if nothing else they provide a very good history of evolution research. They also explain the difference between ID and creationism and the fact that ID does NOT deny evolution, nor does it claim that natural selection is not an important factor in evolution. What ID (and the so-called Third Way) claims is that NS/RM cannot fully explain evolution. I agree but that doesn't make me a biblical creationist. I don't have the same concept of God the designer that Meyer does but I do think that intelligence permeates all of life, from DNA to the human brain.

If Meyer is too Christian for your tastes, then try Thomas Nagel - an atheist philosopher who not only agrees with Meyer (though again, not about God) but recommended Meyer's book for the Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, much to the horror of his fellow atheists. Nagel himself wrote this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Cosmos-Mater...0199919755

I have several articles and links on intelligent design on my blog:

http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/articles-an...subject_id

Topics include

Overviews
FAQs
Origin of Life
Origin of Species ("Macro-Evolution")
Human Origins
Cosmology
The Politics of Intelligent Design

A quick summary: Everything we know about chemistry tells us that life could not have arisen naturally. There would need to have been many orders of magnitude more time for evolution, including human evolution, to have occurred naturally. Micro-evolution, eg. Darwin's finches, caused by changes in the frequency of existing mutations and simple loss of function mutations, does not explain macro-evolution, eg. how a deer might evolve into a whale. The fine turning of the universe is best explained by design - many Nobel Prize winners and other great scientists were convinced by the data, and no, the multiverse doesn't explain it. Intelligent design is not a god of the gaps theory. It is based on the same logic used by Darwin's mentor: in order to explain something that occurred in the remote past, you should try to understand it terms of causes known to be in operation today. Just as we can  infer an unknown mass through gravitational effects on known objects, we can infer an unknown intelligent actor based on evidence of fine turning of the universe and the existence of the genetic code in living organisms etc. This summary is just a summary, for the full details see the link.

I have several articles and links on intelligent design on my blog:

http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/articles-an...subject_id

Topics include

Overviews
FAQs
Origin of Life
Origin of Species ("Macro-Evolution")
Human Origins
Cosmology
The Politics of Intelligent Design

A quick summary: Everything we know about chemistry tells us that life could not have arisen naturally. There would need to have been many orders of magnitude more time for evolution, including human evolution, to have occurred naturally. Micro-evolution, eg. Darwin's finches, caused by changes in the frequency of existing mutations and simple loss of function mutations, does not explain macro-evolution, eg. how a deer might evolve into a whale.  The fine turning of the universe is best explained by design - many Nobel Prize winners and other great scientists were convinced by the data, and no, the multiverse doesn't explain it. Intelligent design is not a god of the gaps theory. It is based on the same logic used by Darwin's mentor: in order to explain something that occurred in the remote past, you should try to understand it terms of causes known to be in operation today. Just as we can  infer an unknown mass through gravitational effects on known objects, we can infer an unknown intelligent actor based on evidence of fine turning of the universe and the existence of the genetic code in living organisms etc. This summary is just a summary, for the full details see the link.

As in a lot of "causes" sometimes the popular name gets in the way. 

"Intelligent design" implies to me that we were totally envisioned and "designed" by some person or thing. And that might imply a singular event and not a long, slow creative process. This is why I was some quick to contrast against "biblical" accounts. 

Honestly I've never spent any time digging into the subject deeply so I must admit, I saw ID in that (binary) light. Nice to here that another view of ID is more rational .

This is very similar to the fact that MANY people look at the survival of consciousnesses/psi/paranormal questions as binary: ie- religion vs science. When actually there are at least three alternative views: religion vs science vs consciousness-centric (is that a good label?)

Late into this and grateful to Kamarling for introducing me in the first place to Stephen Meyer and the whole subject some years and many books ago.
All the posts above have been excellent and I am learning a lot from you all. Thanks.
I too tend to shy away from Christians in a slightly similar way to my aversion to Atheists - but in perhaps both camps there are fundamentalists which are my particular poison brew.
This can be such a complex subject but I found this presentation by Perry Marshall, a more simplified explanation of his ideas - or rather the prelude to the ideas he now holds.
http://cosmicfingerprints.com/origin-of-...tation=497

You can also get free the first three chapters of his book Evolution 2.0 on this link - scroll down to the bottom right of the page.
http://cosmicfingerprints.com/evolution/