"Exposing Discovery Institute": video series by "Professor" Dave Farina

Although this does complicate the argument with the professor a little, don't forget that Dennis Noble and the Third Way deny evolution by natural selection!

https://evolutionnews.org/2024/07/denis-...m-is-dead/

I don't think the professor realises there is the Third Way (and of course I had forgotten it).

As with all things nonmaterialistic, I tend to think all the ideas ae in some sense equivalent, but it is best to choose the simplest explanation.
I'm less interested in Cosmic Fine Tuning, because cosmology is one of those areas in which science may be greatly corrupted by bad science of various sorts.

Does the prof contribute anything other than his fight with James Tour - i.e. actual research of his own? Judging from this:

https://www.davefarina.com/bio

I would say that he is simply milking YouTube for some fame and cash.

David

I think the difference between ID and the Platonic Form or Morphic Field options (which are arguably equivalent) is that the former posits that mechanistic explanations suffice save for certain key intervention points by Design.

The Platonic Form idea Levin & Wagner proposed independently (though both note this is a tentative argument) would narrow the necessary search space. This diminishes things like the "Waiting Time" because the available possibilities are reduced. I believe Morphic Resonance, [while differing in exact metaphysics], would work similarly, though I'll admit it's been awhile since I dug really deep into Sheldrake's exact ideas here.

As for Farina, I think he does make a good layman case for why all supposed novel forms appearing actually do have ancestors. He bases this on looking at the transitional forms we do have in the fossil record and inferring this would be the case for those species for which we don't have such fossils.

Now I need to get to Bechly's rebuttals to see if Farina's argument holds, but I am currently in agreement with the basic argument: 

IF we can show good transitional histories for a sampling of biological life that demonstrates the evolution of seemingly novel forms, it stands to reason that any life for which we are lacking a comprehensive fossil record for should have also evolved without need for Design.

I think the difference between ID and the Platonic Form or Morphic Field options (which are arguably equivalent) is that the former posits that mechanistic explanations suffice save for certain key intervention points by Design.

I think I've been working with a far looser definition of Intelligent Design, then. For me, it encompassed anything involving intelligence and design. But then I don't know precisely what the Discovery Institute means by it.

The Platonic Form idea Levin & Wagner proposed independently (though both note this is a tentative argument) would narrow the necessary search space. This diminishes things like the "Waiting Time" because the available possibilities are reduced. I believe Morphic Resonance, [while differing in exact metaphysics], would work similarly, though I'll admit it's been awhile since I dug really deep into Sheldrake's exact ideas here.

Morphic Resonance leans more towards the idea that previous iterations of a form inform newer forms, in what he calls a collective memory. He seems to rely on Jung's concept of a Collective Unconscious here quite heavily. So, while it doesn't conflict with Platonic Forms ~ it just focuses on a particular set of ideas.

As for Farina, I think he does make a good layman case for why all supposed novel forms appearing actually do have ancestors. He bases this on looking at the transitional forms we do have in the fossil record and inferring this would be the case for those species for which we don't have such fossils.

Unfortunately, I've seen nothing from Farina or the Neo-Darwinist crowd that this is actually the reality, because we do not find transitional forms for any of the novel forms in the fossil record. At best... we have proclaimed "transitional forms" by Neo-Darwinists, many of which have been refuted by the Intelligent Design crowd as being either pure fantasy or so lacking in information that there is no actual case to be made.

Sometimes, for the worse, it's exposed to be just outright fraud, because the Neo-Darwinist wants there to be a transitional form in the absence of one. After all, if you can make people believe it, it becomes their reality. And there is indeed some exposed fraud in the Neo-Darwinist circles. But they will never acknowledge that ~ maybe they just don't want to believe that any of their own could be corrupt like that.

Now I need to get to Bechly's rebuttals to see if Farina's argument holds, but I am currently in agreement with the basic argument: 

IF we can show good transitional histories for a sampling of biological life that demonstrates the evolution of seemingly novel forms, it stands to reason that any life for which we are lacking a comprehensive fossil record for should have also evolved without need for Design.

Why should this be necessarily the case? Why cannot we not have a combination? Why is just one or the other? I don't believe that this is the case, mind you... but it's a possibility to consider.

It could logically happen in a Deist universe... you have forms that are seeded, and are then allowed to naturally evolve per non-obvious "laws" that are part of physics. Perhaps there might be a mental evolution too, that unconsciously informs the evolution of these forms. There's no explicit Design in evolution in this case ~ just a parallel evolution of mind and matter.

I think I've been working with a far looser definition of Intelligent Design, then. For me, it encompassed anything involving intelligence and design. But then I don't know precisely what the Discovery Institute means by it.

Morphic Resonance leans more towards the idea that previous iterations of a form inform newer forms, in what he calls a collective memory. He seems to rely on Jung's concept of a Collective Unconscious here quite heavily. So, while it doesn't conflict with Platonic Forms ~ it just focuses on a particular set of ideas.

Unfortunately, I've seen nothing from Farina or the Neo-Darwinist crowd that this is actually the reality, because we do not find transitional forms for any of the novel forms in the fossil record. At best... we have proclaimed "transitional forms" by Neo-Darwinists, many of which have been refuted by the Intelligent Design crowd as being either pure fantasy or so lacking in information that there is no actual case to be made.

Sometimes, for the worse, it's exposed to be just outright fraud, because the Neo-Darwinist wants there to be a transitional form in the absence of one. After all, if you can make people believe it, it becomes their reality. And there is indeed some exposed fraud in the Neo-Darwinist circles. But they will never acknowledge that ~ maybe they just don't want to believe that any of their own could be corrupt like that.

Why should this be necessarily the case? Why cannot we not have a combination? Why is just one or the other? I don't believe that this is the case, mind you... but it's a possibility to consider.

It could logically happen in a Deist universe... you have forms that are seeded, and are then allowed to naturally evolve per non-obvious "laws" that are part of physics. Perhaps there might be a mental evolution too, that unconsciously informs the evolution of these forms. There's no explicit Design in evolution in this case ~ just a parallel evolution of mind and matter.

I was basing my definition of ID in biology from what Meyer says, which AFAICTell involves specific interventions to get to diverse novel forms. So mechanistic evolution allows for variation within a particular form, but not significant shift to more novel complex structures.

I do agree that even if there is no specific intervention by any Designer in the case of evolution on this planet, there would still be the question of a Cosmic Fine Tuner and/or as you say the question of where the Laws of Nature come from. (I agree it's "laws" in quotes if we're just talking observed regularities.)

On the latter point Jeremy England, who did propose a way for existing physics to produce life, actually is an Orthodox Jew who feels the Laws of Nature are really a part of the harmony God has established:

It has to be acknowledged that Tanakh is not trying to keep you comfortable with the idea of natural law, it is trying to make you uncomfortable with the idea of fixed, natural laws. That’s at least one current within it. (There are other ones that are countercurrents. There is also the Psalmist’s idea of mah rabu ma’asecha Adonai kulam be-chochma asita [how many are the things you have made, O Lord; you have made them all with wisdom]—the idea that Hashem made everything in wisdom and it has all this natural order and regularity to it. So, there are these currents in tension with one another.) But papering over that tension and saying, “It’s easy, we don’t have to worry about it”—that can come at a cost.

But I staunchly reject that way of talking, because I think the laws of physics are human contrivances. And that might sound like a radical statement, but what I mean is that the world has things about it which are predictable, and we can propose to model it, but those models are our constructions. This doesn’t mean they are untrue, but we need to have more humility and say that we simply try to understand what is predictable about the world.

So strictly limiting ourselves to the question of Design in evolutionary biology I do think if we can see really good cases in the fossil record of how one form can, over millions of years, lead to novel forms of greater complexity then it makes sense to infer there was no intervention in the other cases where fossils aren't present or [even just] currently unknown.

Also - would appreciate if you could go more into some of those cases of fraud:

Do you mean scientists have pretended fossils exist that are not real, or that they have forced existing fossils to serve as illegitimate stand-ins for missing transitional forms? Both?

Also - would appreciate if you could go more into some of those cases of fraud:

Do you mean scientists have pretended fossils exist that are not real, or that they have forced existing fossils to serve as illegitimate stand-ins for missing transitional forms? Both?

Some examples:

https://evolutionnews.org/2015/04/haeckels_fraudu/

https://evolutionnews.org/2020/11/as-science-frauds-go-haeckel-beats-piltdown-man

https://evolutionnews.org/2023/06/fossil...her-fraud/

This might be true but can a layperson really examine these options and come to a conclusion as to which one is correct?

Absolutely, YES.

I think I've been working with a far looser definition of Intelligent Design, then. For me, it encompassed anything involving intelligence and design. But then I don't know precisely what the Discovery Institute means by it.


...

My understanding is that Discovery Institute folks consider "Intelligent Design" as the science of distinguishing the artifacts of intelligent design from natural objects. For example, most people would agree a stone arrow head is different from a flake of flint created in an avalanche. Intelligent Design involves systematically identifying how you can tell designed objects from natural objects and applying those methods. The philosophical underpinning is the same logic Darwin's mentor, Sir Charles Lyell contributed to geology: Assume causes known to be in operation today also operated in the past. Just as you can detect a large unseen mass by the gravitational effects it has on other objects in space, you can detect an unseen intelligence by effects that are known to be caused by intelligence: information, codes, irreducible complexity etc.

If you want to imply a looser definition you could write intelligent design without capitalizing the first letters of each word, but even so, it still might cause some confusion depending on the situation.

Absolutely, YES.

IIRC you believe the best view of evolution is the Third Way...I'll admit to being rather ignorant about how it differs from ID and RM+NS.

[What] do you think is the right course of study for a layperson to understand, if nothing else, the deficiencies in the standard RM+NS account?

(Thanks in advance!)

IIRC you believe the best view of evolution is the Third Way...I'll admit to being rather ignorant about how it differs from ID and RM+NS.

[What] do you think is the right course of study for a layperson to understand, if nothing else, the deficiencies in the standard RM+NS account?

(Thanks in advance!)

I think the best view is the perspective of the scientific method coupled with open-minded analysis.  Good data are as valuable as stone foundations.  An equivalent environment to our physical one, evolving with meaningful information.  It can be charted in "virtual" spaces. Informations actions are different kinds of events. Informational outcomes change real-world events of this environment in entirely different ways than those of physics.  

The "copy" command, so useful in information processes would be a violation of conservation of matter and energy if physical.  Yet, every actual observation is the execution of an informational "copy" command.  The result is a measurable increase in mutual information with the recipients.  This simple pragmatic fact may not be in the public consciousness, as clearly as an increase in energy from a force.

Here is a link to a recent publication by a Third Way member.  The politics here, is that RM + NS and ID are primarily philosophic ideas and not empirically tested in ongoing research as published by mainstream imprints.  On the other hand, a significant part of Third Way members is.  The politics is ---  Nature.com is not running with the NeoDarwinian paradigm anymore.  It has moved out of modern science, except as a previous understanding.  I don't think there is so much a political message, with the Third Way, as it is a collection of modern thinkers breaking with the past because of their research results.  Their motivation is from new data.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00054-x

 Book review by Eva Jablonka   https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/p...a-jablonka

 Evolution Evolving: The Developmental Origins of Adaptation and Biodiversity   Kevin Lala et al. Viking Books (2024)

It’s rare that researchers question theories that make up the backbone of whole fields. But in Evolution Evolving, Kevin Lala and four other eminent evolutionary biologists do just that. Their philosophically informed discussion challenges the textbook version of evolutionary theory, known as the modern synthesis, which has been regarded by many scientists as sacrosanct since its conception in the mid-twentieth century. This shift in thinking — which amounts to a new way of unifying the life sciences — is long overdue.

The modern synthesis contends that the only process that leads to evolutionary adaptations is the gradual natural selection of DNA mutations, which arise at random. Lala and colleagues argue that how an organism develops also plays a central part in evolution, not just natural selection.

My humble worldview is that bio-evolution needs to work on how mind is part of the activity that shapes living things.   I guess that would be the study of things like instinct as mental evolution.  Hmmm  I wonder who first promoted mental evolution?   

I think the best view is the perspective of the scientific method coupled with open-minded analysis.  Good data are as valuable as stone foundations.  An equivalent environment to our physical one, evolving with meaningful information.  It can be charted in "virtual" spaces. Informations actions are different kinds of events. Informational outcomes change real-world events of this environment in entirely different ways than those of physics.  

The "copy" command, so useful in information processes would be a violation of conservation of matter and energy if physical.  Yet, every actual observation is the execution of an informational "copy" command.  The result is a measurable increase in mutual information with the recipients.  This simple pragmatic fact may not be in the public consciousness, as clearly as an increase in energy from a force.

Here is a link to a recent publication by a Third Way member.  The politics here, is that RM + NS and ID are primarily philosophic ideas and not empirically tested in ongoing research as published by mainstream imprints.  On the other hand, a significant part of Third Way members is.  The politics is ---  Nature.com is not running with the NeoDarwinian paradigm anymore.  It has moved out of modern science, except as a previous understanding.  I don't think there is so much a political message, with the Third Way, as it is a collection of modern thinkers breaking with the past because of their research results.  Their motivation is from new data.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00054-x

 Book review by Eva Jablonka   https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/p...a-jablonka


My humble worldview is that bio-evolution needs to work on how mind is part of the activity that shapes living things.   I guess that would be the study of things like instinct as mental evolution.  Hmmm  I wonder who first promoted mental evolution?   

Before even remotely considering the Third Way thinking I would need there to be plausible rebuttals to all the major arguments for ID, including the actual fossil record especially the Cambrian Explosion, the ubiquitous presence in all living organisms of irreducible complexity, and the wait time problem. Do you know of some?

I think the best view is the perspective of the scientific method coupled with open-minded analysis.  Good data are as valuable as stone foundations.  An equivalent environment to our physical one, evolving with meaningful information.  It can be charted in "virtual" spaces. Informations actions are different kinds of events. Informational outcomes change real-world events of this environment in entirely different ways than those of physics.  

The "copy" command, so useful in information processes would be a violation of conservation of matter and energy if physical.  Yet, every actual observation is the execution of an informational "copy" command.  The result is a measurable increase in mutual information with the recipients.  This simple pragmatic fact may not be in the public consciousness, as clearly as an increase in energy from a force.

Here is a link to a recent publication by a Third Way member.  The politics here, is that RM + NS and ID are primarily philosophic ideas and not empirically tested in ongoing research as published by mainstream imprints.  On the other hand, a significant part of Third Way members is.  The politics is ---  Nature.com is not running with the NeoDarwinian paradigm anymore.  It has moved out of modern science, except as a previous understanding.  I don't think there is so much a political message, with the Third Way, as it is a collection of modern thinkers breaking with the past because of their research results.  Their motivation is from new data.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00054-x

 Book review by Eva Jablonka   https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/p...a-jablonka


My humble worldview is that bio-evolution needs to work on how mind is part of the activity that shapes living things.   I guess that would be the study of things like instinct as mental evolution.  Hmmm  I wonder who first promoted mental evolution?   

Thanks, I think I'll grab the book!

Might be of interest - the recent Sheldrake-Vernon dialogue on Forms. I am curious as to your thoughts on Micheal Levin's work as well as Andreas Wagner given both have referenced a possible need for Platonic Forms to explain evolution.

Is this something you feel is in alignment with your takes on Information? Or do you think Information Realism and Formative Causation are distinct/unrelated?