Posted on 03/01/2017 7:40:29 PM PST by lasereye
When it comes to swindles, it would be hard to top Liz Carmichael. She spun a tale about obtaining proprietary secrets from her deceased NASA engineer husband that enabled her to start and become CEO of a totally bogus car company marketing the Dale. This fictitious 84 mpg, three-wheeled car bilked millions from investors in 1975…and all the while Liz was actually a man, Jerry Dean Michael, impeccably dressed like a woman. No investor ever saw the car factory or drove a Dale. Yet, “Liz” always talked with investors so matter-of-factly about “her” wholly imaginary industrial realm that they willingly visualized everything within their hopeful minds, where it took on a vivid life of its own.
An intellectual swindle rivaling this is the wholly imaginary fabrication called convergent evolution—the idea that the same traits evolved independently in completely different organisms. Like “Liz’s” investment pitch, evolutionists also write about it so matter-of-factly that it has taken on a genuine life of its own in all their willing minds. Why do they embrace convergent evolution so eagerly? Because it serves as a rescuing device for an important dogma of evolutionary theory. (A rescuing device is a completely fabricated conjecture devised to save someone’s theory from contrary evidence.)
Evolutionary theory holds that physical features shared by different creatures are strong evidence for evolution. To evolutionists, common traits are best explained by their descent from a common ancestor—not by a shared common design. Darwin taught:
All the…difficulties with classification are explained, if I do not greatly deceive myself, on the view that the natural system is founded in descent with modification: that the characters which the naturalists consider as showing true affinity between any two or more species, are those which have been inherited from a common parent…that community of descent is the hidden bond which naturalists have been unconsciously seeking, and not some unknown plan of creation.1
However, this highly revered tenet greatly needs rescuing because so many nonhereditary similarities contradict it. Convergent evolution is the fabricated conjecture evolutionists invoke to explain very similar characteristics between creatures that could not have been inherited from a common ancestor and that evolutionists will never accept as having been produced by an intelligently designed internal programming that is specified for common purposes.
Evolutionary literature often contracts convergent evolution down to its central idea and simply calls it convergence.
The Basic Notion of Convergence Is Imaginary
It is tempting to start an evaluation of convergent evolution by identifying all its problems. This is where a word of caution is necessary. Like other key elements of evolutionary theory, convergence is not an observable process but is rather “observed” only in someone’s mind as imaginary visualization. Convergence is another evolutionary mystical, mental construct.
We should not naively proceed into matter-of-fact discussions of convergence without questioning the basic premise that such a Darwinian process truly happened. If we don’t question it, we give convergence a life of its own—just like “Liz” got her investors to hand over their money for an imaginary product and thus perpetuated the misleading of other people. It is better to begin by rejecting the idea that convergence accurately explains any historical realities and then show that fanciful narratives about convergence amount to ad hoc, just-so stories.
A Magical Story Substitutes for Purposeful Internal Programming
In Why Evolution Is True, Jerry Coyne explains convergence by describing two similar-looking but unrelated cacti: “I have both types growing on my windowsill, and visitors can’t tell them apart without reading their tags.”2 He knows that common ancestry cannot explain their similarity, so he focuses on eliminating the explanation that their shared traits result from designed internal programming for common purposes. Switching from science to theology, Coyne asks:
Why would a creator put plants that are fundamentally different, but look so similar, in diverse areas of the world that seem ecologically identical? Wouldn’t it make more sense to put the same species of plants in areas with the same type of soil and climate?2
By answering his own question with a “I wouldn’t do it that way” reply, Coyne dismisses any consideration of design—a classic evolutionary tactic. He thus dodges thoughtful discussion of possible design-based explanations.
Coyne also substitutes what he believes is a “well-known”—i.e., matter-of-fact—scientific alternative in lieu of designed internal programming. Yet, he merely invokes a simple magical story that is not based on fact but only exists in his mind.
Again one must ask: If animals were specially created, why would the creator produce on different continents fundamentally different animals that nevertheless look and act so much alike?...No creationist, whether of the Noah’s Ark variety or otherwise, has offered a credible explanation for why different types of animals have similar forms in different places. All they can do is invoke the inscrutable whims of the creator. But evolution does explain the pattern by invoking a well-known process called convergent evolution. It’s really quite simple. Species that live in similar habitats will experience similar selection pressures from their environment, so they may evolve similar adaptations, or converge, coming to look and behave very much alike even though they are unrelated.2
Another evolutionary authority, the late Ernst Mayr of Harvard, claimed convergence illustrates how evolution functions as a substitute “engineer”: “Convergence illustrates beautifully how selection is able to make use of the intrinsic variability of organisms to engineer adapted types for almost any kind of environmental niche.”3 Evolution is thus the “intrinsic variability,” or a creature’s normal heterozygosity, coupled with the natural process of struggling to live that fractionates the diverse alleles into various populations.
Casually Invoking Convergent Evolution Everywhere
Evolutionary literature projects engineering prowess and God-like volition onto unconscious nature and weaves an active nature-agent into its narratives.4 This helps the incredible accomplishments claimed for evolution appear more believable. Ascribing the ability for nature to repeatedly “converge” on the same trait in very diverse organisms—sometimes separated by many millions of years, even to identical genes—gives convergent evolution a seemingly omnipotent capability.
For evolutionists, convergence’s supreme power is both implicit and pervasive. A belief expressed in a study published in Nature “hints that evolution may be finding the same genetic solutions to a problem more often than previously thought” and “that convergent molecular evolution is much more widespread than previously recognized.”5
The litany of incredibly complicated biological traits to which convergent evolution is casually appended as the explanation is enormous. A few examples from evolutionary literature will highlight some of the capabilities ascribed to convergence.
For instance, the power of convergence is projected in extinct wildebeest-like mammals that had trumpet-like nasal passages remarkably like the nasal crests of hadrosaur dinosaurs—even though both were allegedly separated by millions of years. By casually explaining this anatomical similarity by convergence, evolutionists morph it into wondrous evidence for evolution.
The fossil record provides tangible, historical evidence for the mode and operation of evolution across deep time. Striking patterns of convergence are some of the strongest examples of these operations, whereby, over time, similar environmental and/or behavioral pressures precipitate similarity in form and function between disparately related taxa.6
The precision of convergence is seen in finding out that 59 swimming or flying animal species ranging from mollusks to insects, birds, bats, whales, and fish all use the same fluid motion mechanics. The tips of their wings, fins, etc. all bend at essentially the same point and flex 26 degrees. The research team pondered, “What factor(s) drive natural selection to converge on highly constrained bending kinematics across such a wide range of animal groups?”7 They speculated that nature molded these diverse organisms as it drove them independently through time in the quest for energy efficiency.
The scope of convergence is seen in multitudes of organisms evolving eyes. Evolutionists claim that similar environments constrained creatures to converge on comparably complex eyes—independently at least 40 times, and probably as many as 65 times.8
But even if claims of Darwinian convergence were not ad hoc stories, the concept still has serious problems.
Problem 1: Imagining Coincidence upon Coincidence
Developmental biologist Sean Carroll reports that a similar gene, Pax-6, “has been found to be associated with eye formation in animals with all sorts of eyes.” Convergence is normally the explanation of choice for these similarities. But Carroll rejects convergence as implausible since that account simply invokes “a remarkable coincidence in that the Pax-6 gene was called upon repeatedly to build eyes from scratch in these different groups of animals.”9 Instead of convergence, he embraces another imaginary account that is equally implausible. He believes these genes were remarkably “conserved” unchanged for 600 million years in organisms as diverse as flies and elephants—while other genes became so intensely mutated they caused the evolution of flies and elephants.
Carroll’s “remarkable coincidence” is exceedingly restrained. Similarities of marsupial and placental mammals are presented as another showpiece of convergence. Evolutionists believe that on Australia and the Americas, nearly identical environmental conditions—drought, flood, heat wave, Ice Age, famine, disease, food types, predators—were occurring over vast ages in nearly identical intensity, timing, sequence, and other factors to mold not just a gene but whole suites of physiological and anatomical features to coincidently arrive at remarkably similar body types for dogs, wolves, cats, anteaters, moles, mice, Coyne’s cacti, etc. Two intelligent design researchers sum up, “Without some form of design or teleological guidance, convergent evolution requires a piling of coincidences upon coincidences that strains credulity.”10
Problem 2: Convergent Evolution versus Darwin’s “Community of Descent”
Every occasion in which evolutionists must invoke convergence argues against similar features being strong evidence for evolution. When looking at similar features, which evolutionary explanation is legitimate—convergence or common descent? Or should both be taken as imaginary scenarios? Consider a report on unexpected genetic similarities for genes enabling echolocation in whales and bats.
The discovery represents an unprecedented example of adaptive sequence convergence between two highly divergent groups….[Study author Stephen Rossiter said,] “It is generally assumed that most of these so-called convergent traits have arisen by different genes or different mutations. Our study shows that a complex trait—echolocation—has in fact evolved by identical genetic changes in bats and dolphins….We were surprised by…the sheer number of convergent changes in the coding DNA.”11
The same report stated:
If you draw a phylogenetic [relationship] tree of bats, whales, and a few other mammals based on similarities in the prestin [a hearing gene] sequence alone, the echolocating bats and whales come out together rather than with their rightful evolutionary cousins.11
Addressing this specific contradiction, Lee Spetner perceptively observes:
Convergent evolution is…an invention. It was invented solely to avoid addressing the failure of the phylogenetic tree to support Common Descent. There is no theoretical support for convergence, and whatever evidence has been given for it is the product of a circular argument.12
The blunder of evolutionary theory is that similar features are evidence for evolution…except when they aren’t.
Problem 3: Convergent Evolution Was “Stunningly” Wrong
What about the teaching of 40 independent evolutionary developments of various eyes? That manifested into another incredible evolutionary blunder. “This view was entirely incorrect,” Sean Carroll notes after citing genes called Hox genes that control eye development in sighted creatures. “The late Stephen Jay Gould…saw the discovery of Hox clusters…as overturning a major view of the Modern Synthesis [natural selection fractioning out genetic variability].” Carroll candidly continues, “Natural selection has not forged many eyes completely from scratch; there is a common genetic ingredient to making each eye type, as well as to the many types of appendages, hearts, etc.”13
A Better Organism-Focused, Design-Based Explanation
The general evolutionary view—that nature acts as an exercising agency to mold passive organisms into unlimited forms over time as they are docilely driven by environmental challenges called selective pressures—is bankrupt. No scientific paper has ever quantified a “selective pressure.” “Converged,” “conserved,” or other evolutionary words that project volition onto nature serve as rescuing devices. Convergence is not an observation demonstrated to flow from objectively discernible causes but is a declaration based on mental pictures—a metaphysical conjecture that substitutes for a total absence of explanation.
However, creationists have long explained similar traits in very diverse creatures as functioning toward similar purposes. They expected to find shared genetic programming to guide the traits’ development, an expectation confirmed in Hox genes, gene networks, and other mechanisms.14
In a recent rebuff to convergence, ICR geneticist Dr. Jeffrey Tomkins discussed how pythons and boas can each express—evidently quite quickly—some highly similar yet environmentally specific traits that enable them to fit and fill different niches.15
These findings tend to confirm design-based creationist theory that emphasizes active, problem-solving organisms that are capable of extraordinary self-adjustments to fill dynamic environments. Future research will likely confirm more details of how creatures can detect signals during development (and also afterward) and make self-adjustments to their own traits per internal algorithms. Sensors, algorithms, and other internal system elements enable them to actively and continuously track environmental changes—not be passively driven and molded by them.
Such extreme bioengineering magnifies the profound wisdom of nature’s true creative Agent, the Lord Jesus Christ (Psalm 104:24).
References
* Dr. Guliuzza is ICR’s National Representative. He earned his M.D. from the University of Minnesota, his Master of Public Health from Harvard University, and served in the U.S. Air Force as 28th Bomb Wing Flight Surgeon and Chief of Aerospace Medicine. Dr. Guliuzza is also a registered Professional Engineer.
lasereye: "Evos typically say that's not formally a part of evolution theory...so therefore that's not a problem."
Well... not necessarily a problem for basic evolution theory (descent with modifications plus natural selection), but a far more complex difficult problem.
A basic question is: when & how does interesting organic chemistry first become the simplest possible form of life?
Current hypotheses & models are, well, light-years beyond the 1952 Miller–Urey experiments, and while fascinating cannot be called confirmed theories.
So far, any abiogenic origin ideas can still be falsified and panspermia (non-Earth origins) cannot be ruled out.
Current hypotheses & models are, well, light-years beyond the 1952 Miller–Urey experiments, and while fascinating cannot be called confirmed theories. So far, any abiogenic origin ideas can still be falsified and panspermia (non-Earth origins) cannot be ruled out.
Not sure what you mean by "light-years beyond" here. My non-expert impression is that there was an expectation a few decades ago that the origin of life was about to be demonstrated--but it was completely dashed and the matter turned out to have intractable difficulties that were not previously anticipated. After this kind of correction by reality, it seems to me a bit premature to presume science is progressing toward showing abiogenisis to be feasible. While as far as I know, it might be, I think it rather fallacious to presume it. How about keeping an open enough mind to the possibility that the meta-physical framework might be different, and perhaps abiogensis is not the explanation of life? I suspect this is uncomfortable for many, but being rational is not always about comfort.
Two books I've read give a summary of recent work & discoveries in this area.
In these books Miller-Urey is mentioned, briefly, but the major reports are on work since then -- very interesting, imho.
Andy Pross: "What is Life? How Chemistry Becomes Biology"
Nick Lane: The Vital Question, Energy, Evolution and the Origins of Complex Life"
The description of the first book reads like hype about being on the verge of a breakthrough. Mentions the author is excited with anticipation....that an understanding of how it really happens is just starting to be bridged. I guess these light years are about to be bridged by his palpable excitement....for myself I will let for the results of his epic journey before I get excited.
They can't analyze the DNA of their last common ancestor unless they already know what their last common ancestor is (and have a living organism to analyze). This assumes evolution in the first place (as we ll as assuming what their last common ancestor is). In other words you once again assume evolution as your starting point. Having "determined" that their "last common ancestor" lacks the shared trait, "convergent evolution" is now the necessary assumption, which somehow becomes "science".
Assumptions are not science at all, which is basically the point of the whole article.
Similar features not present in a common ancestor can be said to result from "convergent evolution". Of course, you are free to reject its assumptions, but the science is consistent and confirmed innumerable times.
All you're doing is repeating the definition of convergent evolution, not providing evidence for it. What you're calling "the science" is, once again, assuming everything is the product of evolution. Therefore the "evidence" for convergent evolution is a direct result of circular reasoning.
You're perfectly illustrating Lee Spetner's statement.
If you draw a phylogenetic [relationship] tree of bats, whales, and a few other mammals based on similarities in the prestin [a hearing gene] sequence alone, the echolocating bats and whales come out together rather than with their rightful evolutionary cousins.11Addressing this specific contradiction, Lee Spetner perceptively observes:
Convergent evolution is…an invention. It was invented solely to avoid addressing the failure of the phylogenetic tree to support Common Descent. There is no theoretical support for convergence, and whatever evidence has been given for it is the product of a circular argument.12
If you mean there are no assumptions in the process of science, I have to disagree. While the idea of science is to test theories, in practical fact it is built on top of assumptions like just about all other human undertakings with the exception of specialized trains of philosophical reasoning like Renee Descarte undertook to find out what happens when you make no assumptions.
One can only really test assumptions on a particular level. In any modern experiment there are going to be a lot of things one depends on working including over arching theories, lab techniques, lab equipment, and so forth. For better or worse, Evolutionary scientists are getting grants to operate within the framework of evolution as a given and focus on details.
In what way is it informative? In providing actual evidence that doesn't assume evolution? If you think the answer is "yes" then you saw something that wasn't there.
I agree it’s necessary to make some assumptions, but assumptions that are created solely to protect a theory are not legitimate science, and shouldn’t be assigned any credibility by an objective individual. Evolution is essentially a gigantic pile of such assumptions.
Both books give up-to-date data on where things stand today, which imho are light years beyond the 1952 Miller-Urey experiment.
However, these are all still hypotheses, subject to falsification & revisions, certainly interesting but by no means conclusively confirmed.
Nonsense, since all of science is an "invention" -- that's what words like "hypothesis", "theory" or "analysis" imply: scientists inventing natural explanations for observed data.
"Convergent evolution" is a hypothesis / theory strongly confirmed by innumerable observations of extant species, the fossil record and DNA analyses.
Of course, as I posted before, if you reject the idea of evolution itself, then "convergent evolution" will make no sense to you.
But in terms of the science, it's consistent with all the evidence.
lasereye: "Having "determined" that their "last common ancestor" lacks the shared trait, "convergent evolution" is now the necessary assumption, which somehow becomes "science". "
No, not "somehow", like any scientific idea ever, it is first presented as a hypothesis which if confirmed is called a theory.
The convergent evolution hypothesis is confirmed by innumerable observations, making it a scientific theory.
That's how science works.
The absurdity of your argument here should be apparent to anybody who takes a minute to remember we are talking about something called "convergent evolution".
Of course, as the name says, its based on evolution, and it attempts to explain how distantly related populations can have similar features.
As such, it will make no sense to anybody who rejects evolution theory.
"Convergent evolution" is a hypothesis / theory strongly confirmed by innumerable observations of extant species, the fossil record and DNA analyses. The convergent evolution hypothesis is confirmed by innumerable observations, making it a scientific theory.
It is not confirmed by anything. What you are calling "confirmation" is the thing the theory is supposed to explain. The thing a theory explains cannot also be the thing that confirms the theory. That's circular reasoning, which is what evolutionists continually insist on using.
For example, if I propose a theory that trees came about from huge giants vomiting them out and then taking root, a good question would be "What's the evidence that confirms that remarkable theory?". If people took vidoes of giants doing that, it would be evidence. Using evolutionary "logic", I could reply "All those trees are powerful confirmation of the theory!".
Of course, as the name says, its based on evolution, and it attempts to explain how distantly related populations can have similar features. As such, it will make no sense to anybody who rejects evolution theory.
Actually evolution doesn't make sense, not just convergent evolution. But I understand perfectly what the claim is and why the claim is made. Any species is ASSUMED to be the result of evolution. The original evolution theory cannot account for things that they observe. Convergent Evolution accounts for it. Therefore Convergent Evolution is true. QED. There's literally nothing more to it than that. It's what's known as an ad hoc hypotheses. Evolution theory is almost entirely ad hoc.
In science and philosophy, an ad hoc hypothesis is a hypothesis added to a theory in order to save it from being falsified. Often, ad hoc hypothesizing is employed to compensate for anomalies not anticipated by the theory in its unmodified form. Scientists are often skeptical of theories that rely on frequent, unsupported adjustments to sustain them. This is because, if a theorist so chooses, there is no limit to the number of ad hoc hypotheses that they could add. Thus the theory becomes more and more complex, but is never falsified. This is often at a cost to the theory's predictive power, however.[1] Ad hoc hypotheses are often characteristic of pseudoscientific subjects.
Convergent Evolution is an absolutely perfect example of what this essay, "Protection of a theory" talks about.
Something that has lots of evidence is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. A number of people who set out to research the resurrection claim (and other parts of the New Testament) in order to refute it, concluded it was true and became Christians. Some wrote books about it.
This being Easter Sunday:
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
1 Corinthians 15
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’” Then they remembered his words.When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.
. . .While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.
He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”
Luke 24
From your words it sounds like you don't really understand what the term "convergent evolution" means.
Post #20 above shows some obvious examples -- mammal and marsupial species which while only distantly related appear very similar.
The evolution which brings them to that state is perfectly ordinary evolution (descent with modifications, natural selection).
The results are said to "converge" only because they look similar.
So, how is the evolution hypothesis (convergent or not) confirmed to make it a theory?
Thanks for asking.
Scientific hypotheses are confirmed, making them theories, by observing results a hypothesis predicted.
In the case of basic evolution, here is a partial list of confirmations which go back to Darwin.
But the total list of confirmations is much longer since evolution theories & timelines are built into our understandings of every physical science from A-astronomy to Z-zoology and most everything in between.
For one example, astronomical timelines correspond to geological timelines based on radiometric dating.
As for "convergent evolution", one more time: it simply means similar looking species with obviously different natural histories.
If you don't accept evolution theory, then you might call it "convergent creation" and still understand what's meant.
lasereye: "if I propose a theory that trees came about from huge giants vomiting them out and then taking root, a good question would be 'What's the evidence that confirms that remarkable theory?'....
...Using evolutionary "logic", I could reply 'All those trees are powerful confirmation of the theory!'. "
Of course that's just silly.
lasereye: "Actually evolution doesn't make sense, not just convergent evolution.
But I understand perfectly what the claim is and why the claim is made.
Any species is ASSUMED to be the result of evolution.
The original evolution theory cannot account for things that they observe.
Convergent Evolution accounts for it.
Therefore Convergent Evolution is true. QED.
There's literally nothing more to it than that.
It's what's known as an ad hoc hypotheses.
Evolution theory is almost entirely ad hoc."
All those words are worse than silly, they're total mischaracterization and amount to nothing more than mocking, scoffing & scorning what you find inconvenient to other beliefs.
lasereye: "Convergent Evolution is an absolutely perfect example of what this essay, "Protection of a theory" talks about."
Nonsense, "convergent evolution" is simply the natural explanation for why species can look similar while obviously different.
See the examples in my post #20 above.
But also consider something called Japanese samurai crabs, called such because some look like angry samurai.
It's said that fishermen who catch those quickly throw them back and over centuries they appear more & more frequently.
So we might call that "convergent evolution" or even "convergent man-creation" between samurai and crabs, and we would not be totally wrong! ;-)
lasereye: "This being Easter Sunday: "
Happy Easter to you too!
From your words it sounds like you don't really understand what the term "convergent evolution" means. The evolution which brings them to that state is perfectly ordinary evolution (descent with modifications, natural selection).So, how is the evolution hypothesis (convergent or not) confirmed to make it a theory? Thanks for asking.
Scientific hypotheses are confirmed, making them theories, by observing results a hypothesis predicted.
It means two species having some virtually identical feature where neither inherited it from the other. They evolved independently. As the article above says. I didn't say anything about it being a different kind of evolution. Things having the same feature are evidence for one having evolved from the other according to original evolution theory. Now the theory has been modified, and it's a huge ad hoc modification, to say that things having the same feature are evidence for one having evolved from the other, except when it isn't. As the article above says. In other words ad hoc.
The convergent evolution theory came about after they realized things had virtually identical features that could not have inherited it from each other. Nobody predicted it beforehand. Therefore, observing things with the same features (that couldn't have inherited them from each other) did not confirm anything. It has not been confirmed by anything unless you're using circular reasoning where the observed thing confirms the theory concocted to explain the thing.
I see nothing in the list of (allegedly) confirmed predictions that relates to convergent evolution. You need to drop your claim that it's been confirmed by lots of observations.
That list contains the usual BS. For example,
Evolution predicts that features of living things will fit a hierarchical arrangement of relatedness. For example, arthropods all have chitinous exoskeleton, hemocoel, and jointed legs. Insects have all these plus head-thorax-abdomen body plan and 6 legs. Flies have all that plus two wings and halteres. Calypterate flies have all that plus a certain style of antennae, wing veins, and sutures on the face and back. You will never find the distinguishing features of calypterate flies on a non-fly, much less on a non-insect or non-arthropod.
That is not a prediction of evolution. It's something that can be seen as consistent with evolution. Furthermore, there's nothing in there that demonstrates that every single feature of every living thing fits some strict hierarchical arrangement. You think that's actually been demonstrated? It also seems that such a claim is contrary to convergent evolution, since if the same things evolve independently, there's absolutley no reason why "You will never find the distinguishing features of calypterate flies on a non-fly". The idea that if everything fits a strict hierarchical arrangement (which isn't demonstrated there anyway), it confirms evolution implies that all features found in different species were inherited from each other. But (if true) that's consistent with the original theory of evolution only, without the ad hoc convergent evolution added on.
And, even if they were all actually predicted, which I doubt, that's a classic example of another logical fallacy, confirmation bias, otherwise known as cherry picking. There are many many things that are contrary to and problematic for evolution theory. Darwin's original claim, that fossils would show gradual change, is false.
Darwin saved his gradual theory of evolution by claiming that intermediate fossils are not found because "[t]he geological record is extremely imperfect"1 and thus it just so happened that the intermediate links were not the ones fossilized. Gould noted in 1977 that Darwin's argument that the fossil record is imperfect "still persists as the favored escape of most paleontologists from the embarrassment of a record that seems to show so little of evolution directly."
lasereye: "Convergent Evolution is an absolutely perfect example of what this essay, "Protection of a theory" talks about."Nonsense, "convergent evolution" is simply the natural explanation for why species can look similar while obviously different.
My "Protection of a theory" link was to the wrong website. So you didn't read it. The contradiction between the alleged evolution prediction that life forms must all have strictly hierchical features, while we simultaneously have another idea, convergent evolution, which would predict they won't all have strictly hierchical features, is exactly what the essay talks about.
Lost in this process are the ad hoc explanations, X4, X5 etc. Rationally, they should be incorporated into theory T, where they might need their own confirmation, be subject to possible falsification, and be compared with one another for consistency. Instead, they are simply stashed away in a hidden place, to be pulled out and cited when convenient. The original theory T is left in pristine condition, and the "confirmatory" status of E4+ is applied to that unmodified version of T. This amounts to a sophisticated form of intellectual dishonesty.
First, convergence is not talking about the same features, rather about similar looking features in distantly related species.
Further, the similarities have to be unexpected since, for example, every large land animal has a heart & lungs and those are not considered "convergent".
But various forms of wings on birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and even fish -- those are considered "convergent".
Second, natural science has been "ad hoc" from Day One, it's fundamental to what science is -- observations, hypotheses, confirmations, theories, mathematical "laws", etc., all a mish-mash often contradictory sometimes falsified ever-growing more detailed & complex.
Over time ideas become clarified, explanations more consistent, but science, unlike our religion, never was and never will be "once and forever".
lasereye: "The convergent evolution theory came about after they realized things had virtually identical features that could not have inherited it from each other.
Nobody predicted it beforehand."
No, not "virtually identical" but rather similar in form or function.
Compare: a human heart is virtually identical to a chimpanzee's, but that is not convergent evolution since all evidence points to common ancestors with the same virtually identical heart.
But various forms of wings on birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians & fish, those are classified convergent, similar features on very distantly related creatures.
lasereye: "Therefore, observing things with the same features (that couldn't have inherited them from each other) did not confirm anything.
It has not been confirmed by anything unless you're using circular reasoning where the observed thing confirms the theory concocted to explain the thing."
It sounds like you've become obsessed with this notion of "circular thinking" and fixated by misunderstandings.
Indeed, if we can return to that Japanese samurai crab, you are like people seeing in the crab something which isn't there: the face of an angry samurai.
In fact, there's no samurai on that crab and no circular in scientific reasoning.
You just need to back up and reexamine your own thinking here.
lasereye: "I see nothing in the list of (allegedly) confirmed predictions that relates to convergent evolution.
You need to drop your claim that it's been confirmed by lots of observations."
But convergent evolution is a subset of general evolution, and anything confirming one will also help confirm the other.
Convergent evolution simply says that sometimes different species can evolve similar features, and why that should drive you to the point of silliness I can't imagine.
lasereye quoting from the link: "Evolution predicts that features of living things will fit a hierarchical arrangement of relatedness."
lasereye responding: "That is not a prediction of evolution.
It's something that can be seen as consistent with evolution."
First, that word, hierarchiacal, makes it a prediction, since it's an idea we impose on nature, whether accurately or not.
Confirmed observations (aka "facts") tell us if the prediction is accurate.
Second, once again: "convergent evolution" refers to similar features (not identical features) on distantly related species.
Such features sometimes caused confusion in the minds of biologists (i.e., Darwin himself) trying to determine how closely or distantly related those species were.
But recent decades of DNA analyses have brought great clarity to questions previously much in doubt.
This clarity wiped out whole genera and created new species, sub-species and breeds where none existed before.
It shows us the difference between distantly related species with similar features versus closely related species with recent common ancestors.
And DNA analyses further confirms what the fossil record and extant species morphology already suggested.
So I'm baffled as to where you get your claim of "no confirmations".
lasereye: "And, even if they were all actually predicted, which I doubt, that's a classic example of another logical fallacy, confirmation bias, otherwise known as cherry picking. "
Your perjorative "cherry picking" implies there is contrary evidence which would falsify the evolution hypothesis.
But in fact, there is none -- zero, zip, nada falsifying evidence.
So there's no "cherry picking", and the evidence confirming evolution theory is literally mountainous -- billions of individual fossils collected, covering hundreds of thousands of species, including innumerable "transition forms" which our anti-evolution FRiends can never quite see.
lasereye: "Darwin's original claim, that fossils would show gradual change, is false."
Again, in the past 150 years billions of individual fossils covering hundreds of thousands of species with countless "transitional" or "intermediate" forms.
And perhaps no prehistoric species have been more carefully studied for gradual change than these:
All told, remains of about 6,000 individuals, pre-human and early human found, including hundreds of Neanderthals demonstrating beyond reasonable dispute "gradual", "transitional" and "intermediate" forms.
lasereye: "The contradiction between the alleged evolution prediction that life forms must all have strictly hierchical features, while we simultaneously have another idea, convergent evolution, which would predict they won't all have strictly hierchical features, is exactly what the essay talks about. "
But your allegation here is false if you claim some inherent contradiction between evolution generally and convergent evolution.
There is no contradiction, logically or any other way, if you simply recall that we are talking here about features which only seem similar -- like samurai and samurai crabs.
There are no examples in nature -- none, zero, nada examples -- of advanced creatures (i.e., mammals, birds) only distantly related and yet whose form & features are identical.
lasereye: "Lost in this process are the ad hoc explanations, X4, X5 etc.
Rationally, they should be incorporated into theory T, where they might need their own confirmation, be subject to possible falsification,"
I think you grossly misunderstand science.
My guess: as a religious person you naturally equate science to religious beliefs, such as the divinely inspired Bible, written one time and forever true.
But science is not like that, never was, never will be.
Everything but everything in science started out as ad hoc observations and explanations, some made sense, many contradictory, others eventually falsified.
That's what science is, it's how science works.
That's why I say science is the opposite of religion because in science there is no permanent truth, no belief, no faith and certainly nothing supernatural.
Natural science strictly defined is all tentative, conditional, only grudgingly accepted for now pending further evidence or better ideas which might falsify it.
But many of science's soundest theories have been around for centuries now, confirmed innumerable times and used every day to design, power and direct our machines.
These ideas are not expected to ever be falsified and our lives depend on them working consistently.
One such theory is evolution which now permeates most every other scientific field and as such is confirmed daily.
Evolution theory in the past 150 years has never been seriously falsified, despite devoted efforts of anti-evolutionists like lasereye to misrepresent & confuse.
You keep saying "distantly related". That's not part of the definition. It means the features evolved independently. Period. It has nothing to do with "distantly related" (whatever that means exactly). You don't seem to understand what the definition of convergent evolution is.
For example, from the above article:
Jerry Coyne explains convergence by describing two similar-looking but unrelated cacti: “I have both types growing on my windowsill, and visitors can’t tell them apart without reading their tags.”
You are pretending to possess some encylopedic knowledge of all the species in all of nature. You're getting kind of ridiculous actually.
Furthermore different species that are supposed to have evolved one from the other (as evidenced by their shared features) don't generally have absolutely identical features. Only similar. That is regarded as evidence for evolution. I don't think they ever have absolutely identical features. But perhaps you with your *cough* encylopedic knowledge of all the species in all of nature know of some you can let me know.
You don't understand either the standard theory of evolution or the ad hoc convergent evolution theory.
My guess: as a religious person you naturally equate science to religious beliefs, such as the divinely inspired Bible, written one time and forever true. But science is not like that, never was, never will be. Everything but everything in science started out as ad hoc observations and explanations, some made sense, many contradictory, others eventually falsified. That's what science is, it's how science works. That's why I say science is the opposite of religion because in science there is no permanent truth, no belief, no faith and certainly nothing supernatural. Natural science strictly defined is all tentative, conditional, only grudgingly accepted for now pending further evidence or better ideas which might falsify it. But many of science's soundest theories have been around for centuries now, confirmed innumerable times and used every day to design, power and direct our machines. These ideas are not expected to ever be falsified and our lives depend on them working consistently. One such theory is evolution which now permeates most every other scientific field and as such is confirmed daily.
You don't seem to understand what an ad hoc theory or assumption is, even though I've already explained it and provided links. It's a modification to the original theory in order to prevent it from being falsified. If you think all accepted scientific theories have layers of ad hoc modifications then you have no idea what you're talking about. In fact you don't seem to have any idea what you're talking about but you pretend to.
The rest of that is some irrelevant generalizations about science in general and which don't apply to evolution and which evos inevitably end up resorting to. Evolution does not "permeate" every other scientific field. Totally absurd.
Evolution theory in the past 150 years has never been seriously falsified, despite devoted efforts of anti-evolutionists like lasereye to misrepresent & confuse.
In order for something to be falsified some condition has to be clearly defined whose discovery would falsify it. Evolution generally lacks that. Although according to Darwin, the failure to discover gradual change in the fossil record would falsify his theory and it hasn't been found. That was taken care of by an ad hoc assumption about how the fossils never formed.
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