Darwinian Dissonance?

Really? So is it gradualism or punk-eek?… Punk-eek is what I recall you arguing for… But then, science allows you to be wrong and forgiven…

Think you'll remember if I tell you? How does this help you?

Help me? I don’t need any help…It’s up to you… Punk-eek?

Help me? I don’t need any help…It’s up to you… Punk-eek?

Why are you still confused/feigning confusion? How does your being an incurable amnesiac prove all of modern science wrong?

Remember me posting these?

Speciation by Punctuated Equilibrium.

Is This Common? Why?
It seems to have happened a lot. For example, we have been learning recently that the ocean has risen and fallen a great many times. Each time it happened, it would fragment any wide-ranging species into a bunch of little geographic areas. Later, when the ocean level changed back, the fragments would try to spread back into the main area. This would leave "punctuated equilibrium" in the fossil record.
All you need to know about Punctuated Equilibrium (almost).

Punctuated equilibrium is a valid scientific hypothesis, and when geological strata are complete with good temporal resolution and the fossil record is well-represented, the hypothesis is testable. PE, as construed by Eldredge and Gould, is founded upon the modern allopatric speciation model which lies well within mainstream population genetics. However, PE is not novel, and in large part PE originated with Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species (Darwin credits British paleontologist Hugh Falconer with first proposing that stasis is more predominant in the fossil record than periods of morphological change). Thus, in any meaningful sense of the word, the theory of Punctuated Equilibrium is resolutely "Darwinian."

And why am I bothering? Next thread you'll be back with your parallel line charts and pretending to know nothing nothing nothing. God should not be telling people to lie.

God should not be telling people to lie.

I, for one, always find it amusing to see what a petty, jealous, and ultimately insignificant god these people claim to worship. But then, they also claim to see a god in their own image, so perhaps it fits.

It's a little known story that Occam didn't invent Occam's razor. He just liked it so much that he bought the company.

Were evolution driven by a Brownian (or even a Levy) process, one would expect somthing like punk-eek to show up. Trivial example from Littlewood: random Fourier series tend to look flat with a few spikes here and there. If we add stochastic^© resonance to the system, it looks even more punk-eekish.

It's a little known story that Occam didn't invent Occam's razor. He just liked it so much that he bought the company.

LOL! (Trivia question: Was Victor Kiam related to Omar?)

"This is from Internet Infidels – an atheistic site. "

Are you sure "Internet Infidels" is an "atheistic site" and not an "agnostic site"?

There are a lot of features of Darwinism that seem highly religious:

---a body of doctrine.
---a priesthood.
---an ordination process.
---a body of hymnology (many of the common "phrases and praises" of faith are quoted here by Dernavich).
---an explanation of origins.
---an explanation of "purpose."
---and even a deity called "Process," Who, however impersonal according to doctrine, is nonetheless frequently praised, honored, and exulted over in personifying language.

For Vade - it doesn’t matter what Descartes WOULD have said. The principle is that the information to potentially create a human is there in a zygote, but not in an atom of lithium. And as far as Ockam’s Razor – what is the theory of evolution if not an endless stream of conjecture with still-unfulfilled information gaps?

And PatrickHenry – there is no consistent theory of evolution that is revealed by the fossil record, or any other data set. The pattern is that the theory is first assumed to be true, and is altered to fit any new knowledge that arises.

Which brings me to quote an essential passage from Stanley Jaki, from “the Limits of a Limitless Science.” I can’t say it any better, but I will attempt to edit it for brevity:

“Biochemistry, biophysics, microbiology and genetic research… certainly show the enormous extent of measurable parameters in life processes. But life itself still cannot be measured. Therefore, scientifically speaking, life does not exist. …There remains much more to the question, What is Life?, than can be dreamt of by biochemists or biophysicists who take the mechanistic outlook on life. Equally, biologists who espouse vitalism are dreaming when they imply that they can see experimentally purposiveness, this chief characteristic of life processes. Just as the mechanistic interpretation of life is a philosophy, so is vitalism. Both are bad philosophies, though in the opposite sense. In the former the claim is made that just because something (purposiveness) cannot be measured, it does not exist. In vitalism the claim is made that somehow purposiveness can be measured and therefore becomes part of experimental science.

“Contrary to the claim that DNA is the secret of life, life remains the secret of DNA. Microbiology has not found a quantitative answer to the apparently purposeful action in all living things, from cells to mammals. Microbiology has not found a quantitative answer to the question of free will. Brain research cannot answer the question, What is that experience, called ‘now,’ which is at the very center of consciousness? For even by finding the exact biochemical conditions that are connected with the personally felt consciousness of the ‘now,’ the question what is that ‘now’ remains to be answered. While brain research may establish the biochemical processes whenever a word is thought of, it cannot account for what it is for a word to have meaning.”

“Faced with that inability, the scientists can take two attitudes. One rests upon the mistaken conviction that the scientific method is everything and whatever cannot be expressed in quantitative terms, is purely subjective, that is, illusory. Such was, for instance, the attitude of Einstein…. Clearly, it is better take another attitude and acknowledge that there are some basic limits to a limitless science. Those limits appear as soon as a question arises that cannot be put in a quantitative form and therefore cannot be given a quantitative answer to be tested in a laboratory.”

And later he writes:

“No branch of modern science, with one exception (evolutionary biology), is so fundamentally dependent on philosophy as is scientific cosmology, and in no other field of science is philosophy more ignored, and indeed scorned.

“In a scientific cosmology, insofar as it deals with various components of the universe, such as galaxies and globular clusters, philosophy can be safely ignored. The scientist merely has to assume, on a commonsense ground, that those objects do exist because they are observable. Only when it comes to the universe as such, do scientific cosmologists claim to know something about whose existence only a rigorously articulated philosophy, respectful of the universals, can demonstrate. But in evolutionary biology one comes across indispensable philosophical terms at almost every step. Concerning the species, it is something that cannot be observed. Yet it is something that has to exist if it is right to talk about the origin and transformation of species. One can get around this problem, which involves around the philosophical problem of knowing universals, by defining a species as the totality of all individuals that can interbreed. But when we go to the genus and to even higher units, up to families, orders, phyla, and kingdoms, that definition does not do. Again, only the great generalizing powers of the mind can enable the evolutionary biologist to see a continuous connection across the paleontological record, although, as recent findings show, it is more riddled with huge holes and discontinuities than ever suspected.

“Yet most evolutionary biologists have only contempt for philosophy, although it alone can justify their great unifying vision, which is more than science, strictly speaking. What they do is climb the rungs of an essentially philosophical ladder in order to see much farther than would be allowed, strictly speaking, by the data on hand. However, once at the top of the ladder, they haughtily kick it away. In doing so they follow the example set by Darwin. With Darwin they try to discredit philosophy with their science, although philosophy enabled them to raise their eyes to see heights where biological evolution can be seen, though only with the yes of the mind. No wonder that the present-day perplexity of some leading paleontologists evokes the fate of Humpty Dumpty.”

...and that second-to-last sentence should say "eyes of the mind," not "yes of the mind."

For Vade - it doesn’t matter what Descartes WOULD have said. The principle is that the information to potentially create a human is there in a zygote, but not in an atom of lithium.

You're clearly not deriving this from Descartes at all. Your efforts to involve him have "devolved" to become the standard-issue creationist Second Law of Thermo/conservation of information nonsense. The second law of thermodynamics says nothing about "ordering principles." Duane Gish might, but the second law does not.

And there simply is no conservation law for information. Other people explain this area better than I do , but Dembski and other ID-ists who try to pretend that there is a conservation law for information equivocate relentlessly between and among the informal and the technical senses of words such as "information," "complexity," and "order," not to mention between Shannon entropy and Kolmogorov-Chaitin entropy.

Creationist attempts to show that order never arises from disorder are routinely falsified by processes going on all around us: the formation of crystals, hurricanes, complex chemicals (the Miller experiment might come to mind), etc. In fact, we're back to the chaos theory links I gave you earlier. Complexity does indeed arise from initially simple conditions where the system as a whole is not in thermodynamic equilibrium. The Earth lives in the flow of energy from the sun to the cool vaccuum beyond. The day side gets warmed and the night side radiates it away. That almost-endless flow of energy allows a lot of cool things to happen and they do.

And as far as Ockam’s Razor – what is the theory of evolution if not an endless stream of conjecture with still-unfulfilled information gaps?

I didn't mean to let this slide. 29 Independent Lines of Evidence for Macroevolution. There is no serious scientific alternative out there to the idea that evolution from common descent via variation and natural selection is responsible for the diversity of life on Earth.

Lurking ...

Darwin predicted gradualism! What is Punk-Eek? It’s not gradualism…
Hey, guess what… the charts I posted show this…

Your materialistic science may allow for you to be wrong and forgiven but actual logic does not allow for this…
You claim:

· A universal beginning without a cause or reason
· The beginning of life without cause or reason
· Punk-Eek as an explanation for 50 new body plans in an extremely brief period of time
· Gradualism as an explanation for everything else
· And consciousness emerging from this mindlessness

Now you have refused to name this scientific principle/creator of all - so, lets go with this one:

Completely Ridiculous Anthropic Principle
A.K.A.
C.R.A.P.

“Although many people are content with the worldview of Naturalism, many others have concluded that it is self-contradictory and inconsistent, it does not fit many facts of science and human experience, and it is not lived out by those who hold it. In several ways it fails the truth tests we've outlined.
“The first proposition we've listed for naturalism states that "Matter/Energy is all there is for eternity,..." and if this is true, then the totality of man is only matter. If there is some degree of consciousness and thought in the brain of man, than thinking is still only a result of matter's properties. Why would these "thoughts" produced by matter (the chemical brain of man) correspond to the truth of reality? Matter has no known interest in truth. Why should chemicals be able to distinguish illusion from reality, since there is no rational and purposive cause for the existence of man or his mind,? ...Of course, naturalists may appeal to scientific inquiry and the laws of logical thought. But this begs the question, because it is the chemical brain which is "thinking" and using the scientific method and the laws of thought ...all of which might still be an illusion, and not reality. C.S.Lewis quotes Prof. Haldane as saying, "If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motion of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true . . . and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms" ("Miracles", p.18). This may be like the motion of atoms to create "thoughts" in a computer ...what is to determine whether those computer "thoughts" are true or not? If naturalism is right, and matter is all there is, then even our "thoughts" about thinking and the brain and everything else may be nothing but illusion.
“Epistemology is the study of the basis and validity of knowledge, ----and it is because of its inability to know anything for sure, that the worldview of naturalism is self-contradictory, and fails the first truth test. Naturalism logically creates an epistemological vacuum, in which man can never know anything for sure. Informed and consistent naturalism results in epistemological nihilism.
“The philosophical naturalist (who is consistent) cannot know anything for sure, and yet the first proposition of naturalism makes statements as if they know that "matter is all there is" and that "no supernatural God exists". So, even though the philosophical naturalist does not know that his thinking bears any relationship to reality, still he often audaciously declares that he knows so much that he can categorically rule out the existence of something spiritual. The inconsistency and illogic in such assertions are obvious. “When a man is done philosophizing about the nature of his worldview, can he live it out, and does he actually practice it in his daily life? ...If not, then the actions of his life reveal his true inner conviction of the untruth of that worldview ...it is not livable, therefore, that worldview fails the third truth-test.

Again Vade, Deal with it!

Posted by VadeRetro to Heartlander
On Religion 04/29/2002 5:54:33 PM PDT #2,154 of 2,891

Was there intelligent design behind your brain?

I don't think so.

Post Reply

Well the Dr. is back in Vade…
Take your medication and join your club…

R_x

Get A CLUe!

-Dr. Heartlander

Darwin predicted gradualism!

Wrong. Already refuted on this thread. You're now reduced to coming back dumb as a stump on the same thread. Your amnesia has reached gore3000 proportions. But, to prevent going totally in circles, let me borrow from this nice compilation Ichneumon has made:

He didn't invent it [punctuated equilibrium], Darwin did, and it's no fairy tale:
I further believe that these slow, intermittent results accord well with what geology tells us of the rate and manner at which the inhabitants of the world have changed." (Darwin, Ch. 4, "Natural Selection," pp. 140-141)
But I must here remark that I do not suppose that the process ever goes on so regularly as is represented in the diagram, though in itself made somewhat irregular, nor that it goes on continuously; it is far more probable that each form remains for long periods unaltered, and then again undergoes modification. (Darwin, Ch. 4, "Natural Selection," pp. 152)
"It is a more important consideration ... that the period during which each species underwent modification, though long as measured by years, was probably short in comparison with that during which it remained without undergoing any change." (Darwin, Ch. 10, "On the imperfection of the geological record," p. 428)
"Widely ranging species vary most, and varieties are often at first local, -- both causes rendering the discovery of intermediate links less likely. Local varieties will not spread into other and distant regions until they are considerably modified and improved; and when they do spread, if discovered in a geological formation, they will appear as if suddenly created there, and will be simply classed as new species. [Charles Darwin, Origin of Species 1st Edition 1859, p.439]
[All quotes from Darwin's 1859 "On the Origin of Species"]
This is classic Punctuated Equilibrium -- from Charles Darwin in 1859.

By the way, unless your name is R. Totten, you have without attribution mangled and retitled (C.R.A.P.) someone else's article. This appears to be absolutely standard creation scholarship. Once again apparently the righteousness of your cause excuses anything.

Hee hee.

I wonder why he capitalizes ACLU - is this a clue to his real beliefs?

Same reason you capitalize 666. Very revealing.