Monday, October 19, 2009

Stuart Newman and Evolution's Testability

What is evolution? Is it natural selection acting on random biological variation? Is it gradualism or punctuated equilibrium? Is it the slow accumulation of neutral changes that eventually become useful? No, these are all sub hypotheses of evolution. Evolution is the theory that naturalistic causes are sufficient to explain the origin of species.

The idea that the world must have arisen naturally became increasingly popular before and during the Enlightenment period a century before Darwin. Christian thinkers such as Malebranche, Cudworth, Burnet, Ray, Leibniz, Wolf and Kant argued for a naturalistic origins. These traditions grew and by Darwin's day were increasingly accepted in the Anglican broad church, and Victorian society in general.

For instance Henry Peter Brougham, Lord Chancellor of England and one of the most famous people in England when Darwin was a young man, argued for such a naturalistic origins. It is hardly a shocker that Darwin and Alfred Wallace would independently "discover" that, you guessed it, the species had arisen naturally. Funny how this new "discovery" just happened to scratch old itches.

Of course Darwin and Wallace didn't know quite how this could have happened, and so they were willing to negotiate the details. As Darwin once pointed out:

Whether the naturalist believes in the views given by Lamarck, by Geoffroy St. Hilaire, by the author of the ‘Vestiges,’ by Mr. Wallace or by myself, signifies extremely little in comparison with the admission that species have descended from other species, and have not been created immutable ...

Darwin and Wallace knew the species arose naturally because they knew the species did not arise supernaturally. Darwin did not provide incontrovertible evidence that naturalism worked, but rather that supernaturalism did not work. Their arguments against supernaturalism were, not surprisingly, straight out of that earlier Enlightenment period, but applied to biology. Yesterday's theology and philosophy had become today's science.

The greater god (it is beneath god's dignity to manually create the species), problem of evil (god wouldn't create this gritty world) and intellectual necessity (naturalism is needed for good science) were a few of the non scientific arguments that were shaping today's science.

The common thread, and key to evolution, was naturalism. This is why evolutionists refer to their idea as a fact and a theory. The "fact" is that the species arose from strictly naturalistic causes. The "theory" is how this is supposed to have happened--the details behind the fact.

And this is why evolution can sustain substantial empirical contradictions. Such contrary evidence doesn't falsify evolution, it merely falsifies sub hypotheses. A recent paper by evolutionist Stuart Newman demonstrates how well protected evolution is from the empirical evidence. Early in the paper Newman reiterates the need for naturalistic explanations for all things:

The program of advancing materialism against supernaturalism and superstition is clearly a necessary one.

This is not a call for atheism, but merely naturalistic explanations. But how can naturalism be advanced in the face of apparent scientific problems? After all:

when it comes to the innovation of entirely new structures (‘‘morphological novelties’’) such as segmentally organized bodies (seen in earthworms, insects, and vertebrates such as humans, but not jellyfish or molluscs), or the hands and feet of tetrapods (vertebrates with four limbs), Darwin’s mechanism comes up short. This is a reality that is increasingly acknowledged by biologists, particularly those working in the field of evolutionary developmental biology, or “EvoDevo.”

Contrary to the expectations of the Darwinian model, the fossil record is deficient in transitional forms between organisms distinguished from one another by the presence or absence of major innovations. Niles Eldredge and the late Stephen Jay Gould emphasized this point when they propounded their scenario of ‘‘punctuated equilibria’’ almost four decades ago. And although our current knowledge of the cellular and genetic mechanisms of the development of animal forms is relatively sophisticated, it is difficult to come up with plausible scenarios involving incremental changes in developmental processes that would take an organism from one adult form (e.g., an unsegmented worm) to one embodying an innovation (a segmented worm).

And these are not the only apparent problems with evolution:

Gregor Mendel, in performing his remarkable experiments on various plants, carefully picked traits to study whose different versions were uniquely tied to alternative states of specific genes. Much genetic research in the first half of the 20th century, using a similar strategy, also identified strict gene-trait correlations (particularly with regard to simple biochemical pathways) in other organisms. This led to a deep-seated conviction that the Mendelian mode of inheritance was essentially applicable to all traits in all organisms at all stages of their evolutionary histories. But even Mendel himself, who cautiously described his most famous findings as ‘‘the law valid for peas,’’ did not suggest this, and it is demonstrably not the case.

The Mendelian paradigm deals with factors, or genes, that are associated with biological characters. As such, it focuses on the logic of intergenerational transmission of traits (the alternative forms of characters) rather than the mechanisms of character generation.

Unfortunately many evolutionists continue to insist that this failed paradigm is one of the most powerful ideas ever produced by science.

Evolution has led to many false expectations, and failures to inquire into important observations such as the incredible ability of organisms and populations to adjust to their environment:

Phenotypic plasticity, a relatively common property of developing organisms, which was appreciated by many 19th century biologists and which provided the basis for Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s (generally mischaracterized and not entirely incorrect) pre-Darwinian evolutionary concepts, is only now reentering biology after becoming an all-but-taboo subject within evolutionary theory during the 20th century.

Darwin’s theory, in holding that the competition between individuals marginally different from one another with respect to the small, inherited, morphological, physiological, or behavioral variations encountered in any natural population, has been sufficient to generate the entire array of biologically distinct types seen on the face of planet, avoided cases in which the same organism could take on different forms under different conditions. Indeed, a major impact of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was to marginalize the concept of phenotypic plasticity. Once the theory’s scientific hegemony was established, all phenomena that fit this description were consigned to a theoretical limbo.

Given scientific problems such as these, how can evolutionists promote their naturalistic agenda? For starters Newman encourages his fellow evolutionists to be more forthcoming about problems with their theory. A century ago physicists had the courage to acknowledge that the old ideas were not adequate, but:

The present-day neo-Darwinists provide a poor contrast to this, insofar as they persist in the hand-waving consignment of all problematic aspects of the origination of complex subcellular entities to the putative universal mechanism of random variation and natural selection. ... Unless the discourse around evolution is opened up to scientific perspectives beyond Darwinism, the education of generations to come is at risk of being sacrificed for the benefit of a dying theory.

While such truth in advertising is certainly laudable, note what is not on the table. For the evolutionist, sub hypotheses can be freely discarded but the core theory is not testable. After all, it is a fact, regardless of the science. Religion drives science and it matters.

33 comments:

  1. Excellent post. Remind me of the "paradigm shift" of Thomas Kuhn and the solution to the falsification paradox by Imre Lakatos.
    The issue that ID has, is that in order to challenge the TOE, it needs to be more "progressive", being able to predict more phenomenons.

    At the end of day, if we can defined the TOE as "Evolution is the theory that naturalistic causes are sufficient to explain the origin of species", then the ID can be defined as well in loose term such as "ID is the theory that non-naturalistic causes are sufficient to explain the origin of species". ID has as well a lot of "auxiliary hypotheses" that are protecting the core theory (for example that JunkDNA should not exist, animals are related somehow , etc..).
    Mannix99

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  2. Cornelius,
    you wrote "the "fact" is that species arose from strictly naturalistic causes." no, the fact is that species are descended with modification from other species. you might as well say the "fact" of gravity is that objects are attracted to one another through strictly naturalistic means. all modern science has naturalistic causes as a base assumption, no matter how much you and Biola may think that that man was specially created and shares no common ancestors with other organisms.

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  3. Cornelius,
    you also conveniently omitted the scientifically interesting parts of the article, namely about the effects of developmental processes in generating miorphological novelty. but i guess you're not interested in the science and care more about sociology, which i guess would explain why you're confined to writing books no one reads and writing posts for cobweb-strewn blogs..

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  4. "What is evolution? Is it natural selection acting on random biological variation?"

    Spot on.

    "No, these are all sub hypotheses of evolution. Evolution is the theory that naturalistic causes are sufficient to explain the origin of species."

    No, that's methodological naturalism. Evolution is the particular naturalistic cause in question. Such a shame that you fail even with the most basic of concepts.

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  5. @Khan:"you wrote "the "fact" is that species arose from strictly naturalistic causes." no, the fact is that species are descended with modification from other species"
    What's the difference?
    If we have to consider only naturalistic causes, then, all the species need to come from the same ancestors. Otherwise, it would means that life would have emerged several times which is even less likely than the current scenario.

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  6. reg:

    Natural selection and random variation are only two of several mechanisms contemplated by evolutionists. The literature recognizes these, alone, are insufficient explanations within evolutionary theory.

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  7. Anonymous,
    separate creation doesn't have to be supernatural, despite what Cornelius says. he just says this to set up the laugh-out-loud ridiculous argument that because common ancestry has been deemed to be more likely than separate ancestry, then evolution addresses the supernatural and is therefore religious. no one takes this argument seriously except Cornelius himself. aside from the argument being ridiculous, COrnelius is also very bad at communication, almost as bad as he was at science.

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  8. It is not controversial that evolution entails metaphysical premises. See, for instance:

    http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2009/06/evolutions-religion-revealed.html

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  9. it's not controversial because you have a blog post saying it isn't. good argument. you need to step out of your own self-contained little world, Cornelius. in the real world no one confuses the pedagogical points that Gould or Miller use in popular press articles with the actual science of evolutionary biology. why don't you pick out a research article from the latest issue of Evolution and tell me where they use metaphysical arguments. then pick one out of, say, Advanced Materials and tell me why they don't use metaphysical arguments. (hint: they both use methodological naturalism)

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  10. Common Descent (from 1 or a handfull of initial organisms) is the only possible explanation for the history of life. Not because of the evidense per se, but because of the axiom of methodological naturalism.

    In other words, Common Descent cannot NOT be wrong given natural cause & effect.

    It doesn't matter if the evidence said otherwise, there is simply no other way it could have happened.

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  11. "it's not controversial because you have a blog post saying it isn't. good argument."

    Actually it is a PNAS paper by evolutionist Elliot Sober.

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  12. when I clicked the link it took me to your blog post, not the article by Sober. another thylacine-wolf moment, I guess.

    anyway, both you and Sober are thinking about things wrong. common ancestry is tested using the same methods as much of the rest of science, i.e. the hypothesis of common ancestry is tested against the null hypothesis of "not common ancestry." in the same way you might test the hypothesis of "gravity" vs the null hypothesis of "no gravity." just because some people think the null hypothesis of "no common ancestry" has metaphysical implications doesn't mean it does, anymore than "no gravity."

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  13. Dr. Hunter,

    Common Descent is a fact not because of inductive inference from evidence but because of DEDUCTIVE certainty.

    Given methodological naturalism
    Given the history of life

    Common descent is the only possible explanation.

    There is no doubt about this for me and other committed evolutionists who have actually taken the time to learn the history and philosophy of science. As an evolutionist and I am perfectly happy to admit common descent is certain for metaphysical reasons. I am committed to methodological naturalism and it leads me to commmon descent, not the evidence. There can be no other possibility. I repeat...THERE CAN BE NO OTHER SCIENTIFIC POSSIBILITY because science cannot tolerate supernatural cause and effect. Darwin did in fact come to methodiological naturalism for religious reasons. But that was then. I am committed to it because I am committed to testability. Only natural cause and effect mechanisms involving particles and/or forces are testable.

    My point is 1) So What? Something can be true due for axiomatic reasons AND true for inductive or adductive reason. Common descent is one of these things. 2) Not that I am defending you, but Khan and Shirakawa are an embarrassment to me. They just can't seem to pull their heads out of their asses enough to get that YES evolution is a FACT because it is deduced from METAPHYSICAL AXIOMS that are held to for reasons of testability. It would not matter if all the evidence was against common descent (but the opposite is true), it still MUST be true.

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  14. Anonymous,
    Old fashioned young earth creationism is supernatural, but also testable. it makes explicit predictions (e.g. 6,00 year old earth) that have all been tested and refuted. that doesn't make evolution any more likely to be correct, but it does make YEC unlikely to be correct. ID, on the other hand, makes no predictions and is therefore untestable.

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  15. What you are talking about is testing a description of nature not testing an explanatory mechanism. Exactly by what mechanism did this god create? It is as weak as ID.

    This gets you nowhere with Hunter anyway. Are you conceding that because life has a history and the Bible says that life has a history (albeit a very short one), science proves the Bible right? Any fairy tale description of natural events is bound to get a few things correct and it doesn't take science to see that, just simple reasoning. Science is about the mechanisms behind the natural events.

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  16. Khan,

    Answer this...I will make it very simple for you.

    Given methodological naturalism and the history of life, what other possible explanation is there besides common descent?

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  17. Anon:

    "Given methodological naturalism
    Given the history of life
    Common descent is the only possible explanation."

    What about multiple descent?



    "I am committed to methodological naturalism and it leads me to commmon descent, not the evidence. There can be no other possibility. I repeat...THERE CAN BE NO OTHER SCIENTIFIC POSSIBILITY because science cannot tolerate supernatural cause and effect."

    You are equivocating between (1) CD is true and (2) CD is the only acceptable scientific explanation.



    "Darwin did in fact come to methodiological naturalism for religious reasons. But that was then. I am committed to it because I am committed to testability. Only natural cause and effect mechanisms involving particles and/or forces are testable."

    So SETI is ... not scientific?



    "My point is 1) So What? Something can be true due for axiomatic reasons AND true for inductive or adductive reason. Common descent is one of these things."

    Sure, I have nothing against metaphysics. My problem is with hypocrisy. Unlike you, most evolutionists hold that any and all of their metaphysical mandates are strictly gratuitous. The problem is, when you remove the metaphysics then you remove the *fact* of evolution. Can't have it both ways, as evolutionists claim.




    " 2) Not that I am defending you, but Khan and Shirakawa are an embarrassment to me. They just can't seem to pull their heads out of ..."


    They are passionate about truth and they think that skeptics like me are all wrong. Yes they could use some charm lessons, but at least they are trying.



    May I suggest this blog post for you:

    http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2009/06/question-for-barbara-forrest.html

    You say you mandate method. So what do you forfeit, realism or completeness?

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  18. Wrong from the first paragraph: "Evolution is the theory that naturalistic causes are sufficient to explain the origin of species."

    No, science works on naturalistic causes to begin with. You might as well characterize geology's consideration of strata as "the theory that naturalistic causes are sufficient to explain the origin of strata" or cosmology's Big Bang as "the theory that naturalistic causes are sufficient to explain where our universe came from." You can see how it's a bit unfair, can't you? Ask an astrophysicist to show the sufficiency of the Big Bang, have them explain the singularity of the models. Demonstrating sufficiency with respect to historical questions is extremely difficult and not typically the goal of forensic science. Instead, testable hypotheses for how events occurred are used and built upon.

    Somehow, I always end up doing a short philosophy of science lecture... (this is a long blog post and I may have to make a long reply, so this is a separate comment).

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  19. Dr. Hunter,

    "What about multiple descent?"

    If by multiple descent you mean Darwin's idea from Origin of Species that all living things descend from a few lines of original life forms, then that is what I was referring to. Common Descent (notice the capitals) not common descent as in all from 1 thing. Whether it is from 1 or a small handful of original life forms, all life must have come from it/them in an unbroken chain of continuity given methodological naturalism.

    "So SETI is ... not scientific?"

    SETI is searching for natural signals ultimately produced by the natural, material/force composed anatomies of aliens. So yes, it is scientific. Regardless of physiology, matter in motion is sufficient to explain the signals. If you are trying to take this in a dualist direction, I am a monist. The mind is just an epiphenomenon.

    "They are passionate about truth and they think that skeptics like me are all wrong."

    They do think...but only in empirical terms. It appears they have never read about Descartes' rationalistic science. There are TWO approaches to science, rationalism and empiricism. Modern science is a mix of both with methodological naturalism & CD being rationalistic.

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  20. Shirakawasuna:

    "Wrong from the first paragraph: "Evolution is the theory that naturalistic causes are sufficient to explain the origin of species." No, science works on naturalistic causes to begin with."

    Why does that make it wrong? In fact, it is difficult to find naturalistic causes that evolution, in principle, excludes.

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  21. Well, in science everything goes. Just look at a peer-reviewed paper that claim that if the Large Hadron Colider is having so much problem it's because it's future prevent it to work.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6318034/Could-the-Large-Hadron-Collider-be-held-back-by-its-own-future.html
    Well, if this is science (and it is given the fact that it's published in a well respected scientific journal), then any definition of ID or TOE can be seen as "scientific".

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  22. Incidentally, the article was published in "Capitalism Nature Socialism", described as an "environnmental sociology" and "socialism" publication. Personally, I think it was fairly poorly written: he took a detour through a lot of unnecessary history and framing because he's in love with the exaggerated claims of Stephen Jay Gould, getting things wrong surprisingly often (if I can spot them, there's a problem). One must understand what he's writing from that light.

    First, let's look at the initial paragraphs, conveniently skipped over by
    Dr. Hunter, who instead highlighted the criticisms/weaknesses of 'Darwinism' and neo-Darwinists: "The fact that organic evolution ocurred, and continues to occur, is as solid as any conclusion science has yet produced. To take issue with this, considering the interconnected biological, chemical, geological, and physical facts that enter into our knowledge of evolution, is to take issue with much of modern science."

    His next step is to get at the issue of why, then, there is such a large number of people who reject it. He lists as reasons the preexisting religious narratives to which people and institutions are attached and the fact that historical questions are removed from our everyday experiences, among scant others. He pulls out Dawkins as an "arch-Darwinist", if anyone doubts that he's bought Gould's (but not Eldridge's) over-the-top rhetoric.

    Now that the context is established and the point of the article secure, we can look at its usage here and the accuracy which can be derived from both.

    Dr. Hunter wrote, "Darwin and Wallace knew the species arose naturally because they knew the species did not arise supernaturally."

    Surprise, surprise, another undemonstrated claim about evolution (its history). We are apparently expected to pretend that the quote he used supports this, as if Darwin (and Wallace) did not draw their ideas from the evidence but from a denial of another position (project much?).

    "The common thread, and key to evolution, was naturalism. This is why evolutionists refer to their idea as a fact and a theory. The "fact" is that the species arose from strictly naturalistic causes. The "theory" is how this is supposed to have happened--the details behind the fact."

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  23. This is just dishonesty. The fact of evolution is that it's so well-demonstrated that in laymen's terms, it's fact. The theory is the scientific consideration of evolution, the explanations which have been most predictive and successful (Dr. Hunter got this mostly right). What he wrote next followed from this inaccurate portrayal... if anyone found it convincing, I'll be glad to explain what's wrong with it.

    Now we get into the Newman paper. As is his wont as a Gouldian, he is very specific about Darwin's mechanism, claiming that it is small changes to existing phenotypes (atomized) on which selection acts and then contrasting it with evo-devo, where 'big' changes can happen with a few mutations, affecting structure all over the organism. Aside from the fact that Darwin was too vague (and ignorant) to claim either as the way biology actually worked, there are hardly any 'ultra-Darwinists' around who reject the power of developmental biology *and* consider natural selection to come up short. It is more of a historical quibble (which can be argued) than an abandonment of mechanisms, which had already changed earlier. He continues making Gould's mistake: by using overblown rhetoric, he gives fodder to creationists (classic and ID alike). At least Gould had an excuse, wanting to stir up discussion to advance his ideas of pluralism. Newman has simply parroted that rhetoric, sans understanding. Dr. Hunter used one of these quotes, presumably to good effect with his audience: "[...]it is difficult to come up with plausible scenarios involving incremental changes in developmental processes that would take an organism from one adult form [...] to one embodying an innovation [...]." In the next paragraph, he implies that this is a problem for "Darwinian gradualism". These are all, again, Gouldian terms and one will misunderstand what this paper's about if they aren't familiar with Gould and his controversies. Incremental is not really what it sounds like: it is an attempt to refer to phyletic gradualism. Developmental changes are incremental, after all, even if they have big impacts: they are variations on a preexisting phenotype and can take only a small amount of genetic change. On the other hand, his intended point is accurate: developmental biology has revealed that large change can come from small tweaking, meaning that some 'big' and quick changes in the fossil record could be better explained by 'big' changes in development than smaller, gradual ones over a longer period of time.

    Of course, a difficulty in coming up with "plausible scenarios" in evolutionary history is a fallacious line of thought. Biology has repeatedly taught us that our imaginations are often not sufficient to dictate what is mundane to a natural process, particularly one as dynamic as natural selection. Newman is nonspecific about how difficult it is, particularly in comparison to smaller changes, so I'll leave it there.

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  24. The next part quoted by Dr. Hunter is on Gregor Mendel, wherein Newman attempts to imply that (again per Gould) current/past thinking is outmoded and inaccurate, this time by saying that all traits in all organisms were/are considered to be Mendelian. It's amazing how such distortions come about, but it's just another bit of ahistorical invention with scanty evidence that presents a very nice story for his overall point. Phenotypic plasticity (among other things) is not a new concept, it's only a new name.

    Dr. Hunter uses it like this: "Unfortunately many evolutionists continue to insist that this failed paradigm is one of the most powerful ideas ever produced by science."

    Interesting. It seems like Dr. Hunter wants to criticize Mendelian inheritance in general rather than how it's depicted in the Newman paper. I have trouble seeing how he could say this otherwise: it's not a failed paradigm and it is extremely powerful. It connected heredity to phenotype in a particulate fashion. Crosses are still done in a similar fashion to determine how hereditary a trait is and how its alleles interact. In fact, it provided significant mechanistic support for Darwin's ideas on natural selection, which had been criticized earlier using models of blending inheritance.

    Hoo boy, the Newman paper again descends into undemonstrated rhetoric depicting an inaccurate orthodoxy vs. his new awesome pluralism. Noticing a pattern? There's a fine line between contrarianism and denialism and Dr. Newman is getting awfully close to the tactics of the latter.

    In comes Dr. Hunter: "Given scientific problems such as these, how can evolutionists promote their naturalistic agenda?"

    Wow, really? Just to be clear, here, Dr. Hunter is taking a paper by an "evolutionist" (a pluralist) who is attempting to frame up an 'outdated orthodoxy' vs 'new awesome accuracy', which surely in his opinion strengthens evolution immensley, and frame it as "scientific problems" for evolution. It's interesting how he takes *only* the parts which support his ideas (or implicitly do) and rejects those which don't (Newman's opinion on evolution, the very first sentence). This is in, remember, a paper intended to explain why people are rejecting naturalistic explanations. How ironic.

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  25. Dr. Hunter wrote, "Why does that make it wrong? In fact, it is difficult to find naturalistic causes that evolution, in principle, excludes."

    It makes it wrong because your definition could be applied to every forensic science (with a subject change) and along those same lines misses the actual idea and point of evolutionary theory. Somehow you imply that I didn't explain how you're wrong, so I'll just quote myself where you left off.

    "You might as well characterize geology's consideration of strata as "the theory that naturalistic causes are sufficient to explain the origin of strata" or cosmology's Big Bang as "the theory that naturalistic causes are sufficient to explain where our universe came from." You can see how it's a bit unfair, can't you? Ask an astrophysicist to show the sufficiency of the Big Bang, have them explain the singularity of the models. Demonstrating sufficiency with respect to historical questions is extremely difficult and not typically the goal of forensic science. Instead, testable hypotheses for how events occurred are used and built upon."

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  26. The Anon who is "embarassed" (LOL) hasn't the slightest clue about science and doesn't know how words like 'possible' work... assuming commitment to methodological naturalism, one can come up with all kinds of alternative hypotheses for species generation. We could start with Lamarckian ideas but instead of a branching pattern (speciation) each arose from independent events of abiogenesis and ascended the classic ladder due to canalization in certain environments. Such an idea simply lacks evidence (and conflicts with evidence), it is not supernatural in any sense.

    I wonder if said Anon is a double Poe...

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  27. Shirakawasuna,

    What you have just described is ansychronous multiple descent which is the same as Dawrin's Common Descent. Given 1 or a small handfull of initial organisms (even temporally distict), any life descending from them must be connected by *oh my gosh!* an unbroken chain of continuity. What you have described is COMMON DESCENT you moron. Pull your head out and go read On the Origin of Species by you know..that Darwin guy..maybe you have heard of him. eeesh.

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  28. Shirakawasuna:

    "Somehow you imply that I didn't explain how you're wrong"

    That's because you didn't. You replied with absurd and irrelevant comments about geology and the strata and cosmology's and the big bang. These are not analogous to evolution. If evidence against the big bang became convincing then the big bang would be discarded.

    OTH, if evidence against natural selection, or gradualism, etc, became even more convincing, then evolution would not be discarded. It would merely incorporate another naturalistic explanation.

    There are naturalistic explanations that the big bang cannot tolerate. Not so with evolution. The only thing it cannot tolerate is super natural explanations.

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  29. Cornelius,
    are you saying the big bang, geology, etc. can tolerate supernatural explanations?
    and yes, there are naturalistic explanations that evolution can't tolerate. do we really have to go over the many ways evolution can be falsified once again? here's a hint: a photoshopped image of a thylacine and a wolf from a children's coloring book won't do it.

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  30. excuse me, i meant a photoshopped image of a wolf used to represent both a thylacine and a wolf. that is the intelligent design of "convergent evolution" (via pixelate and rotate) in Cornelius' world.

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  31. Khan:

    "a photoshopped image of a thylacine and a wolf from a children's coloring book won't do it."

    A lie and denial together. This is what evolutionists bring to the table.

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  32. Anon, multiple descent for each separate species is not Darwin's common descent by a long shot and is what I described... in such a situation, species are not created through splitting populations, they aren't created at all, they already were and changed over time.

    Dr. Hunter: "That's because you didn't. You replied with absurd and irrelevant comments about geology and the strata and cosmology's and the big bang. These are not analogous to evolution. If evidence against the big bang became convincing then the big bang would be discarded.

    OTH, if evidence against natural selection, or gradualism, etc, became even more convincing, then evolution would not be discarded. It would merely incorporate another naturalistic explanation.

    There are naturalistic explanations that the big bang cannot tolerate. Not so with evolution. The only thing it cannot tolerate is super natural explanations."

    You say this, despite me often closing with 'rabbits in the precambrian'. Why not bring up specific weaknesses and show the difference? The Big Bang does indeed have falsifying aspects, as does evolution. It's also quite well-demonstrated that such an expansion occurred, so conflicting evidence would surely be incorporated just as it is in any well-established theory: refining the picture, retaining large elements. A complete rejection of the Big Bang would entail a large amount of new and conflicting evidence, just as would be the case in evolution. "Not analagous" indeed.

    So, what evidence against evolution would you like to use? Is it wholly hypothetical, as seems to be implied here, or are you jumping on a Gould bandwagon and quickly falling off, thinking it's a challenge to evolution? Those who characterize punctuated equilibrium or 'ultradarwinism' vs pluralists as anything but a refinement in the relative importance of evolutionary forces have seriously missed the point. Keep in mind, if you do manage to list some specific evidences, you would be wise to avoid those with analogies in other forensic sciences; many of your "challenges" seem to be general attacks on forensic science framed as if evolution is the only one.

    Finally, you assert that if selection or gradualism (a tricky word) failed, evolution would not be discarded, but other *naturalistic* explanations found. Aside from the fact that non-selective forces have always been incorporated into evolution and gradualism (in the phyletic sense) is hardly necessary nor proper (lol) for evolution at all times, what is your criticism here, exactly? Evolution is a theory, a general explanation incorporating a number of mechanisms and sub-topics. Invalidation of one doesn't destroy the whole thing as a decent amount of the sub-topics are independent. The same applies to the Big Bang: showing, for example, that there was a compression of something else universe-like before it would not invalidate the 'Bang', only the general cosmological model. Gould, clearly greatly admired by the writer you cited in this post, wrote a very pedantic but fairly accurate summary of evolutionary theory's structure in his insanely large overview of evolution. But I'm getting off-topic. I noticed that you inserted *naturalistic* in there, and as fighting naturalism is a common cause in ID, I'd ask how this particular challenge is unique to evolution? If the Big Bang is challenged, are scientists going to be finding non-natural (supernatural) explanations and use them?

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  33. Yeah, get it right Khan. It's the lazy usage of a thylacine photoshop: http://austringer.net/wp/wp-content/photos/cgh_thylacine.jpg , not a wolf, taken from a children's coloring book released by PBS. Such is the serious academic work behind ID presentations...

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