Posted on 10/20/2009 8:22:18 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Oct 16, 2009 — It’s called “a fresh theoretical framework” but it undermines the popular conception of natural selection. It’s called a “dense and deep work on the foundations of evolutionary biology” but it criticizes as simplistic and false the ideas of Richard Dawkins, one of the most outspoken proponents of natural selection as “the greatest show on earth.” It produces a new scheme for how natural selection works, but raises more questions than it answers. What is it? It’s a new book by Harvard philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith, Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection (Oxford, 2009), reviewed mostly positively by Jay Odenbaugh in Science.1
Odenbaugh is in the philosophy department of Lewis and Clark College, Oregon. Get ready to jettison your “classical” concepts of fitness, selection and reproductive success. Unload your simplistic ideas of gene selection, individual selection and group selection. Prepare to see Richard Dawkins demoted from his status as a leading spokesman for modern Darwinism. In his first paragraph, Odenbaugh clears the deck to get ready for the “fresh” ideas of Godfrey-Smith: ...
(Excerpt) Read more at creationsafaris.com ...
As I suspected.. multiple personality disorder.
Why don’t you post the New Scientist cover?
From your comment, I take it that you believe in evolution?
If that is the case - answer this one simple question:
If we evolved from an earlier, more primitive creature, all the way back to that very first one celled organism, how did that one celled organism first gain ‘life’. ‘Life’, even amoeba, jellyfish, zebra and man does not spring forth from ‘non-life’. A rock does not over millennia turn into a frog. ‘Life’ had to begin - somehow, someway, sometime.
I don’t take suggestions or orders from lying imposters, that’s why.
Ah, but the lying fraud is YOU: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2365755/posts?page=220#220.
The evolutionary theory does not address the origin of life. It only shows how life has changed since its inception.
Your very question shows your lack of knowledge regarding science.
And then Dawkins comes along and purports the idea of alien seeding or some such nonsense. And that the universe gives the *illusion* of design.
Was life put here or not? Does it look like design or not?
The guy can't even be consistent with himself.
He's nothing but a loose cannon for atheists and evos. He has no credibility.
How would you test for this supposed design?
Beep!
Nature isn’t a scientific journal?????
Science and Nature are the holy grails of getting a scientific paper published.
These two journal have had some of the greatest scientific discoveries published. DNA structure, the yeast genome (first eukaryote sequenced), the human genome sequence, discoveries on the other planets and the cosmos, extrasolar planets, etc.
Nature isn’t a scientific journal?????
Science and Nature are the holy grails of getting a scientific paper published.
These two journal have had some of the greatest scientific discoveries published. DNA structure, the yeast genome (first eukaryote sequenced), the human genome sequence, discoveries on the other planets and the cosmos, extrasolar planets, etc.
Then it isn't really much of a scientific theory, is it?
When evidence comes along that doesn't fit, we simply adjust the theory, again, rather than declare it disproved.
All fixed up! There, that's better!
I am willing to accept that the above is technically correct.
Almost correct...it doesn't actually "show" save in part, but does attempt to explain or model how it is best understood that the changes take place.
Yet if it is fully true that "evolutionary theory does not address the origin of life" then how can one so vociferously argue, from the standpoint of evolutionary theory, concerning such matters as the *origins of life*, unless part & parcel of the underlying assumptions connected with the Theory is that it [life] sprung up in much the same way that it has supposedly progressed --- by "random"?
Go ahead, keep stepping in it...
I do not for one second expect you to be able to SEE the inconsistency which I hint at, above, much less admit to it.
For now, I see your statements [generally] as a useful foil. Thank you for all your help.
I am not so confident that a credible naturalistic explanation for the origin of information found in DNA that can build a cell and support its biological systems will ever be found. But keep looking. On the other hand, we do know one way in which complex, specific information can come about — an intelligent agent. We see the origin of this kind of information all the time in our everyday experience. But this “known” mechanism is forbidden, by consensus, as a possible explanation for the original information in life forms.
“Are you allowed to question the origin of that “intelligent agent?” “
Not sure I understand your question. I would say that everything is open to question. But whether we know the origin of the intelligence or not does not bear on whether it is a possible explanation. You don’t have to know the origin of intelligence to see its effect.
Do you think that since this is entirely possible, and even logical, that it should be taught as a possible, logical explanation in the classroom?
Firstly, I resort to crediting an intelligent agent as a possible cause based on what intelligent agents have demonstrated they can do - generate information.
It is no more necessary that the origin of the intelligent agent be known to accept it as a possibility than to accept the big bang when we have no idea how it came about either. Or accept evolution as the theory of how life changes and species arise when we do not know how the first life/species arose.
5+ billion years does not mean much without a credible mechanism.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.