Think you receive too much email? Charles Darwin and his friend Joseph Hooker exchanged over 1,400 messages (they called them letters back then). In all Darwin exchanged over 15,000 letters with his list (er, correspondents). Here's one from January 11, 1844 in which Darwin raised the specter of his new idea:At last gleams of light have come, & I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable.
It wasn't the first time Darwin revealed how significant the doctrine of immutability was in mid nineteenth century thought, and it demonstrates once again the importance of historical context.
To understand the evolution genre one must understand the history of thought behind it. In this case, one of the several metaphysical motivations for evolution was (and is) the claim that if God created the species they would be fixed. Indeed, divine creation would produce a static, unchanging world.
This thinking is often associated with the great eighteenth century Swedish botanist Carl Von Linne, or Linnaeus. At one time he advocated the fixity of species concept and later was troubled when he discovered hybrids—species that are produced by the crossing of two related species.
Linnaeus softened his doctrine of fixity of species, but this was inconsequential. His system with its conception of species became deeply rooted, and the nineteenth century began with the notion of species as immutable still strongly in place. This notion was increasingly being challenged but it was nonetheless a major obstacle for Darwin to overcome.
It was therefore highly significant when Darwin became persuaded that related populations of birds he saw at the Galapagos were actually different species. If there was the slightest foundation for this idea, Darwin had anticipated in a famous notebook entry, it "would undermine the stability of species."
Today's readers often fail to understand the significance. After all, what can be so important about some different birds on some islands? Certainly the birds did not suddenly reveal to Darwin how fishes could change to amphibians, or how amphibians could change to reptiles, or how reptiles could change to mammals. Rather, the revelation was that the idea of divine creation was suddenly becoming untenable. The crucible for Darwin was not an abundance of positive evidence for evolution but rather negative evidence against creation.
Evolutionist Ernst Mayr has pointed out that Darwin's conversion from creationist to evolutionist was due to three key scientific findings and later reinforced by several additional findings. These scientific findings were all findings against creation. In other words, the key evidence that swayed Darwin was not direct evidence for evolution but rather evidence against creation that indirectly argued for evolution.
And as Mayr further points out, the doctrine of fixity of species was a key barrier to overcome in order if the concept of evolution was to flourish:
Darwin called his great work On the Origin of Species, for he was fully conscious of the fact that the change from one species into another was the most fundamental problem of evolution. The fixed, essentialistic species was the fortress to be stormed and destroyed; once this had been accomplished, evolutionary thinking rushed through the breach like a flood through a break in a dike.
The pre-Darwinian metaphysic was that species were fixed and essentialistic. Evidence for small-scale change argued against the old view and in so doing became an important proof text for evolution.
This is the story behind Darwin's concerns. And it explains why today evolutionists casually claim their theory is a fact--after all, we have discovered adaptation. If there is change, then divine creation is false, and if creation is false then evolution, in one form or another, is true.
Metaphysical claims such as these mandate evolution. They underwrite the fact of evolution. The rest is just research problems on how evolution occurred—the theory of evolution.
The pre-Darwinian metaphysic was that species were fixed and essentialistic.
ReplyDeleteI see nothing metaphysical (transcendent) about the notion that species are immutable. It looks like an empirical hypothesis to me, suitably scientific and testable.
By the same token, hypothesizing the contrary, that species are mutable, is a testable, empirical proposition. Not metaphysics.
David
ReplyDeleteYes both propositions are empirically testable.
However, you miss the "underlying" metaphysics here. EVERY scientific hypothesis is based on some underlying assumptions about the world.
Based on ones personal assumptions we can end up with highly variant hypotheses on the same scientific questions.
The "fixed" concept is based on the metaphysical assumption that "God would have created fixed organisms"
-which of course is just foolish as we cannot know what God would or would not do in that area.
The "mutable" metaphysic is one of the following:
* there is no god so both the stability and the mutability we observe in living things is just chance and necessity at work in nature
* God may have created the world but in such a way that its all just the natural outflow of physics and chemistry - evolution itself doesn't require any gods
There are far more atheist than theist Darwinists, so the first is the one we witness being claimed empirically most of the time.
Curiously, with no recognition, from Darwinists, of the underlying metaphysics most of the time!
I think this is twisting Mayr's words a bit.
ReplyDeleteRelating Darwin's personal journey and fight against the prevailing Dogma of the time to his interpretation of the data for evolution, and by abstraction, to modern evolutionary biology is quite the leap.
1) Mayr sees other reasons for Darwin's conversion-his horror at witnessing slavery, natural disasters, the loss of a child, and other family members with deist/agnostic/atheistic tendencies. (One long argument: Charles Darwin and the genesis of modern evolutionary thought)
2) Making a rational empirical argument is not metaphysical. It may conflict with metaphysical beliefs. For example, is non-geocentric astronomy metaphysical, or does it merely trouble those who hold certain religious/metaphysical beliefs? Is the scientific estimate of the age of the Earth metaphysical, or does it just impinge on the metaphysical beliefs of YECs?
David nails this in the first comment. Except for that the conclusion bothered the Victorian religious ideal, there is nothing metaphysical about this. That Darwin's personal scientific/religious journey gets included does not change this.
3)"If there is change, then divine creation is false, and if creation is false then evolution, in one form or another, is true."
Should be rephrased: If there is change, than immutability is false*. Evolution is the alternative hypothesis to explain the data.
* And, if your religion holds immutability to be the key signature of creation, it is in conflict with the data. If it doesn't, it is compatible with the data. Hence, Theistic Evolution, and all evolutionary biologists who are believers. I forget, does ID or anyone argue for the immutability of species these days? Seems like many religions have evolved a bit since Darwin's time.
And again, just because the empirical can conflict with the metaphysical doesn't mean it, itself, is metaphysical or religious in its claims or methodology.
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ReplyDeleteHitch: "The "fixed" concept is based on the metaphysical assumption that "God would have created fixed organisms"
ReplyDelete-which of course is just foolish as we cannot know what God would or would not do in that area"
This is a very common objection that is made when evolutionists critique ID or creationism. We are told that this is a metaphysical argument and that it is out of bound to critique how God would or wouldn't do something. After all God is God right and who are we to question His methods? As the bumper sticker says "If God said it, I Believe it!"
The problem though is that if we accept that there is a supernatural cause and that supernatural cause is the Christian God (both of which Cornelius accepts although has yet to provide a shred of positive evidence for) - then there is indeed ground to ask the question - "is what what we see in nature compatible and congruent with what we already know about the Christian God?". And how do we know about the Christian God - from the Bible of course. So I really don't buy all this hand-waving about not knowing what God would or wouldn't do. According to Christians, the Bible is God's revealed word and tells us a considerable deal about what and who this God is, and its methods. That's the whole purpose of it isn't it? It's supposed to be God's revelation to mankind.
To me this is where Christians (at least the more evangelical/fundamentalist type) want to have it both ways - on the one hand they want us to believe that the Bible is the authoritative word of God. They want to us to accept that all or most of it is based on actual historical events and is divinely inspired. For example, they will ardently defend their belief that Jesus was a real historical figure and that the events in the NT occurred just about as written.
However, when it comes to the creation story in the OT, there is considerable wiggle room in play. Even the most fiercely literal Christian allows for some "interpretation" that the creation account is not really literal, that it is allegorical etc. Yet at some point in Genesis that allegorical account magically turns into a historical account. But the uncomfortable fact is that however you look at that account it is completely at odds with what we observe in the natural world (not just in biology of course but in geology and cosmology too).
Cornelius can cry "metaphysics" all he wants, but it's a fallacious argument. The Christian God has already provided an origins account, and it is perfectly acceptable to ask if that account is congruent with what we observe. And of course it is not. And not amount of allegorical fantasizing or declaring "God cannot be questioned" can really alter that. Now if God wants to alter HIs original creation story with something that is more in line with modern science, I'm sure He is perfectly able to do so - but so far He seems oddly silent about the whole matter and would prefer us all to be in a state of confusion I guess.
TimCol62: This.
ReplyDeleteAttempts to answer the positive question "What would God/the designer do?" scientifically have not yet managed to progress beyond "Message Theory" and "front loading". Everything else seems to be "Not-God couldn't have done that. That leaves God." I, for one, am not much impressed.
RobertC:
ReplyDelete"Should be rephrased: If there is change, than immutability is false*."
That makes sense.
"Evolution is the alternative hypothesis to explain the data."
Why is that true?
I understand Dr. Hunter's point.
ReplyDeleteDarwin thought the suggestion that the species were mutable was akin to committing murder--taboo, forbidden. In such an atmosphere, the evidence that species could adapt to changing conditions was all that was needed to extrapolate from adaption (which fits well with the design hypothesis) to species-to-species conversion. THAT was "quite a leap" to use RobertC's assessment.
Timcol-"This is a very common objection that is made when evolutionists critique ID or creationism. We are told that this is a metaphysical argument and that it is out of bound to critique how God would or wouldn't do something. After all God is God right and who are we to question His methods? As the bumper sticker says "If God said it, I Believe it!"
ReplyDeleteInteresting and well laid out point. One thing I might say is that this is how evolutionists critique ID, Creationism, theistic evolution, or heck, as a research or education plan. Personal belief? Whatever. Heck, the head of the NIH has said as much--but not as a research plan or curriculum.
Robert: "Evolution is the alternative hypothesis to explain the data."
Cornelius: Why is that true?
Because it best explains multiple, independent lines of evidence.
Hitch,
ReplyDeleteHowever, you miss the "underlying" metaphysics here. EVERY scientific hypothesis is based on some underlying assumptions about the world.
Based on ones personal assumptions we can end up with highly variant hypotheses on the same scientific questions
Irrelevant. The history, the underlying assumptions, the personalities involved, etc., have no bearing on the epistemology - at this moment - of testable empirical hypotheses.
Dr Hunter:
ReplyDeleteIf there is change, then divine creation is false, and if creation is false then evolution, in one form or another, is true.
A pair of straw non-sequiturs that do no credit to their promulgator.
Hitch:
ReplyDeleteGod may have created the world but in such a way that it's all just the natural outflow of physics and chemistry - evolution itself doesn't require any gods.
I have seen forms of this statement many times and it never makes sense to me. The question that the ID folks are asking is can the laws of physics and chemistry and only the laws of physics and chemistry explain the history of life?
Einstein said "God does not play dice with the universe." It seems to me that is what God would be doing in this case, so the question that ID folks are asking does not go away.
You implicitly concede that species are in fact mutable -- that one can change into another. This raises the obvious questions, how far can this change go, and cannot one species change into more than one other species? If you raise those questions (and, as noted, if species are mutable you must raise those questions), then common descent with modification is going to suggest itself whether one intends to toss out creation or not. If it is reasonable, under metaphysical assumptions that allow for creation or design, to infer common ancestry (in the form of a typical seed-eating finch) of leaf-eating and blood-drinking finches of the Galapagos, why should it not be reasonable to infer that a primordial created chordate could give rise to everything from the amphioxus to, well, us? Why could not, indeed, a primordial created unicellular prokaryote give rise to bacteria and pine trees and blue whales?
ReplyDeleteThe nested hierarchy of life, including such genetic details as shared endogenous retroviruses and pseudogenes, all suggest that common ancestry goes far beyond the genus or family or even order level. Indeed, while species are fuzzy categories, all higher taxonomical levels are purely arbitrary; if species are mutable, then in principle even phyla and kingdoms can be mutable.
Yes, Darwin himself, and many "Darwinists" since him, have speculated about and even investigated into ways life could arise without design. But inferring common ancestry from such things as the nested hierarchy of life, or shared endogenous retroviruses or pseudogenes, doesn't depend on some a priori assumption that design or creation is impossible or absurd: it depends on the assumption that since speciation, inheritance, mutation, and selection are demonstrable facts, it is reasonable to infer shared ancestry where it is readily explicable in terms of such facts.
Steven J.:
ReplyDelete===
But inferring common ancestry from such things as the nested hierarchy of life, or shared endogenous retroviruses or pseudogenes, doesn't depend on some a priori assumption that design or creation is impossible or absurd: it depends on the assumption that since speciation, inheritance, mutation, and selection are demonstrable facts, it is reasonable to infer shared ancestry where it is readily explicable in terms of such facts.
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Agreed. There certainly are, in principle, scientific arguments and reasoning for evolution. But of course there are tremendous scientific problems with evolution and, in any case, do not support the claim that evolution is a fact. Instead, the metaphysics drives the science into various fallacies, such as confirmation bias which we see next:
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The nested hierarchy of life, ...
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But the species do not fall into such a pattern. That is well known, but rather than admit to the failed prediction, evolutionists are in denial and continue to repeat the prediction as though it were true, as you do here.
"But the species do not fall into such a pattern. That is well known, but rather than admit to the failed prediction, evolutionists are in denial and continue to repeat the prediction as though it were true, as you do here."
ReplyDeleteWoeful and willful misinterpretation of the literature. Phylogenetic analysis occasionally is confused by horizontal gene transfer, and other factors, particularly in bacteria and archaea. In 'higher' organisms, it is fairly easy. Take your favorite gene and BLAST it, and you can have instant phylogeny. Anyone can do it.
Even the hardest microbial subjects are getting nailed down with better technique and more genome sequences:
En route to a genome-based classification of Archaea and Bacteria?
Syst Appl Microbiol. 2010 Apr 19.
"Given the considerable promise whole-genome sequencing offers for phylogeny and classification, it is surprising that microbial systematics and genomics have not yet been reconciled. This might be due to the intrinsic difficulties in inferring reasonable phylogenies from genomic sequences, particularly in the light of the significant amount of lateral gene transfer in prokaryotic genomes. However, recent studies indicate that the species tree and the hierarchical classification based on it are still meaningful concepts, and that state-of-the-art phylogenetic inference methods are able to provide reliable estimates of the species tree to the benefit of taxonomy. Conversely, we suspect that the current lack of completely sequenced genomes for many of the major lineages of prokaryotes and for most type strains is a major obstacle in progress towards a genome-based classification of microorganisms. We conclude that phylogeny-driven microbial genome sequencing projects such as the Genomic Encyclopaedia of Archaea and Bacteria (GEBA) project are likely to rectify this situation."
Can you provide a peer-reviewed paper saying no phylogeny, no nested hierarchy is detected in say, animals? I haven't seen one....
RobertC:
ReplyDelete===
"But the species do not fall into such a pattern. That is well known, ..."
Woeful and willful misinterpretation of the literature.
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No, the fact that the species do not fall into a hierarchical pattern is well documented in the literature as well.
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Phylogenetic analysis occasionally is confused by horizontal gene transfer, and other factors,
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Indeed. Data that fall into the expected evolutionary pattern are viewed as "normal" whereas the voluminous data that do not fall into the pattern are viewed as "outliers," "anomalous," caused by "confounding factors," and so forth.
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particularly in bacteria and archaea. In 'higher' organisms, it is fairly easy. Take your favorite gene and BLAST it, and you can have instant phylogeny. Anyone can do it.
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Gene phylogenies usually conflict with other gene phylogenies in addition to morphological phylogenies. Sometimes quite dramatically.
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Can you provide a peer-reviewed paper saying no phylogeny, no nested hierarchy is detected in say, animals? I haven't seen one....
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As I pointed out, evolutionists will always describe failures as anomalies, outliers, confusions etc. (as you did above), not as genuine contradictions. Regardless of how contradictory the data, they are described in evolutionary terms. But that doesn't change the data. You can find plenty of papers giving the evidence. For instance, you can go here for a few samples:
http://www.darwinspredictions.com/#_4.3_Genomes_of
http://www.darwinspredictions.com/#_4.2_Genomes_of
Deny, deny, deny.
ReplyDeleteI'll repeat:
Can you provide a peer-reviewed paper saying no phylogeny, no nested hierarchy is detected in say, animals? I haven't seen one....
Cornelius Hunter, you state that living species don't fall into a nested hierarchy. I note that Carolus Linnaeus (who doesn't seem to have been afflicted with evolutionary biases) seems to have thought otherwise. At least you should note that the basic pattern was noted before common descent was suggested as a mechanism for it.
ReplyDeleteYou cite a number of exceptions. Presumably, the interrelationships among prokaryotes and eukaryotes (the roots of the tree of life) are an example, but these are explicable (like the stricter nested hierarchy among multicellular organisms in terms of how heredity is observed to work in these species. Bacteria routinely exchange genes across what we would regard as species, genus, and higher taxonomical lines; this is obviously going to confuse phylogeny, but it no more invalidates the basic nested hierarchical pattern in organisms than the capacity to borrow words and grammatical features between distantly related languages invalidates the idea that English is a Germanic, not a Romance, Slavic, or Algonquin language.
You cite in your two URLs a number of cases where some genetic elements are highly conserved between widely-separated groups, and others where novel genes are unique to one species within a group of closely related species. I pretend to no explanation for the former, but it is not a violation of the nested hierarchy. As for the latter, known sorts of mutations, such as frameshifts, duplications and subsequent mutations of existing genes, can generate novel genes quickly. This sort of "anomaly" is easily explicable in terms of known microevolutionary mechanisms.
That genetic and phenotypic changes do not map perfectly onto one another is also well-known. I'm not sure what you refer to when you speak of different genetic phylogenies giving different results. Obviously, if three species (say, humans, chimpanzees, and mountain gorillas), and humans are (let us suppose) more closely related to chimps than to gorillas, there will be cases where humans and gorillas inherit an unaltered version of the gene, whereas a mutation occurs and becomes fixed in the chimp line (whether by random drift or selection for some function) after it splits off from the human lineage. This will lead to cases where comparisons of a single gene give results that contradict those of comparisons of some other gene -- but for reasons perfectly consistent with common ancestry. These are not properly anomalies at all.
RobertC:
ReplyDelete====
Deny, deny, deny.
I'll repeat:
Can you provide a peer-reviewed paper saying no phylogeny, no nested hierarchy is detected in say, animals? I haven't seen one....
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Ah yes, the fingers in the ears defense.
Robert:
ReplyDelete"I'll repeat:
Can you provide a peer-reviewed paper saying no phylogeny, no nested hierarchy is detected in say, animals? I haven't seen one....
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Cornelius:
Ah yes, the fingers in the ears defense. "
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Robert: Quite the opposite, I'm asking you to enlighten me. Considering I reference papers, who conclude:
"However, recent studies indicate that the species tree and the hierarchical classification based on it are still meaningful concepts, and that state-of-the-art phylogenetic inference methods are able to provide reliable estimates of the species tree to the benefit of taxonomy."
even for the TOUGHEST of cases, I'm not sure who has closed themselves off to the science-me, or you.
CH says:No, the fact that the species do not fall into a hierarchical pattern is well documented in the literature as well...Data that fall into the expected evolutionary pattern are viewed as "normal" whereas the voluminous data that do not fall into the pattern are viewed as "outliers," "anomalous," caused by "confounding factors," and so forth.
ReplyDeleteYou say this every other day, more or less. Yet where, specifically, is this 'voluminous' data? If we are talking molecular phylogenies, there has been great progress in resolving various trees.
As more data are added (either more spp. or more sequence data per species), the phylogenies are becoming better resolved, (e.g. Thomson & Shaffer, 2010). Computing power is a serious bottleneck here, and compromises are often necessary, yet nonetheless the problems are resolving as the database increases. If the nested hierarchy of life was not true, this pattern would not be observed. This is why conflicts in phylogenetics are treated as anomalies or outliers not because of preconceived ideas.
abimer:
ReplyDelete"Computing power is a serious bottleneck here"
How will more computing power help with ORFans?
Steven J.:
ReplyDelete===
You cite a number of exceptions. Presumably, the interrelationships among prokaryotes and eukaryotes (the roots of the tree of life) are an example, but these are explicable
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Agreed. I didn't say evolution's many falsifications are not explicable. If one is sufficiently committed one can overcome any number of falsifications (eg, Flew's gardener).
"How will more computing power help with ORFans?"
ReplyDeleteI don't believe I claimed it would - after all that sentence followed a reference to resolving the vertebrate tree of life.
Steven J.:
ReplyDelete===
You cite in your two URLs a number of cases where some genetic elements are highly conserved between widely-separated groups, and others where novel genes are unique to one species within a group of closely related species. I pretend to no explanation for the former, but it is not a violation of the nested hierarchy. As for the latter, known sorts of mutations, such as frameshifts, duplications and subsequent mutations of existing genes, can generate novel genes quickly. This sort of "anomaly" is easily explicable in terms of known microevolutionary mechanisms.
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Right, as I mentioned, if we are sufficiently motivated we can explain any falsified prediction. If the many falsified predictions of evolution were "easily explicable" then I (and millions of other people) would be evolutionists. But they are not easily explicable (except to evolutionists), and this is the problem. For instance, in this case, you use frameshifts, duplications and subsequent mutations to generate novel genes, and so conclude that ORFans are easily explicable in terms of known microevolutionary mechanisms. But from a scientific perspective this is simply not the case. Evolutionists know this, and so when ORFans were first discovered they expected them to be resolved as more genomes were constructed. They did not explain ORFans as a consequence of known microevolutionary mechanisms because that would have been unrealistic. But now that the many new genomes did not cooperate, evolutionists still have no good explanation. But of course they have no doubt about evolutionist and claim it to be a fact. The evidence doesn't matter.
Years ago an evolutionist countered this by saying that evolution would absolutely be falsified if we discovered highly similar DNA sequences, which are functionally unconstrained, in distant species. Well that is precisely what was discovered in UCEs. But of course he and the rest are still evolutionists.
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That genetic and phenotypic changes do not map perfectly onto one another is also well-known. I'm not sure what you refer to when you speak of different genetic phylogenies giving different results. Obviously, if three species (say, humans, chimpanzees, and mountain gorillas), and humans are (let us suppose) more closely related to chimps than to gorillas, there will be cases where humans and gorillas inherit an unaltered version of the gene, whereas a mutation occurs and becomes fixed in the chimp line (whether by random drift or selection for some function) after it splits off from the human lineage. This will lead to cases where comparisons of a single gene give results that contradict those of comparisons of some other gene -- but for reasons perfectly consistent with common ancestry. These are not properly anomalies at all.
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Sure, but we're nowhere close to such simple problems. phylogenetic incongruities are greater than the genetic "noise" floor you describe.
Steven J.:
ReplyDelete===
You implicitly concede that species are in fact mutable -- that one can change into another. This raises the obvious questions, how far can this change go, and cannot one species change into more than one other species? If you raise those questions (and, as noted, if species are mutable you must raise those questions), then common descent with modification is going to suggest itself whether one intends to toss out creation or not.
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Sure, except that we have science to reckon with. In Darwin's day it was the science of breeding. Darwin's response to Goethe and his Law of Compensation was, of course, pathetic:
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If under changed conditions of life a structure, before useful, becomes less useful, its diminution will be favoured, for it will profit the individual not to have its nutriment wasted in building up a useless structure. I can thus only understand a fact with which I was much struck when examining cirripedes, and of which many analogous instances could be given: namely, that when a cirripede is parasitic within another cirripede and is thus protected, it loses more or less completely its own shell or carapace. This is the case with the male Ibla, and in a truly extraordinary manner with the Proteolepas: for the carapace in all other cirripedes consists of the three highly-important anterior segments of the head enormously developed, and furnished with great nerves and muscles; but in the parasitic and protected Proteolepas, the whole anterior part of the head is reduced to the merest rudiment attached to the bases of the prehensile antennae. Now the saving of a large and complex structure, when rendered superfluous, would be a decided advantage to each successive individual of the species; for in the struggle for life to which every animal is exposed, each would have a better chance of supporting itself, by less nutriment being wasted.
Thus, I believe, natural selection will tend in the long run to reduce any part of the organisation, as soon as it becomes, through changed habits, superfluous, without by any means caus-ing some other part to be largely developed in a corresponding degree. And, conversely, that natural selection may perfectly well succeed in largely developing an organ without requiring as a necessary compensation the reduction of some adjoining part. -- Ch. 5, Origins, 6th Ed.
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Today we have modern genetics, presenting equally difficult problems. On top of all this, the mutability we observe arises from a complex molecular machine, with built-in adaptation mechanisms.
Steven J.:
ReplyDelete====
Yes, Darwin himself, and many "Darwinists" since him, have speculated about and even investigated into ways life could arise without design. But inferring common ancestry from such things as the nested hierarchy of life, or shared endogenous retroviruses or pseudogenes, doesn't depend on some a priori assumption that design or creation is impossible or absurd: it depends on the assumption that since speciation, inheritance, mutation, and selection are demonstrable facts, it is reasonable to infer shared ancestry where it is readily explicable in terms of such facts.
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Sure, there is plenty of empirical evidence for evolution (mostly circumstantial), sans metaphysics. But there are tremendous problems that overshadow the positive evidence. Of course there is nothing wrong with investigating evolutionary type ideas the theories, with an objective evaluation of the scientific evidence in mind. Knowing full well what the science says, folks can investigate evolution, saying "there's some positive evidence here, we'd like to continue to study this, even if there are problems."
But of course that is not the situation. What we have is a religious tradition driving science, misrepresenting the data, and proclaiming evolution to be an undeniable, objective fact. It is a complete joke, and evolutionists are guilty of making a mockery of science.
Note that none of this is to say evolution is necessarily false. It would be strange if evolution were 100% true as it is preached today, given the evidence. But it could be, or perhaps portions of it could be. But that's another question. The problem we have today is not that folks are investigating evolution. The problem is that religion is driving science to absurd claims and misrepresentations.
Cornelius says: "Sure, but we're nowhere close to such simple problems. phylogenetic incongruities are greater than the genetic "noise" floor you describe."
ReplyDeleteYes, they also reflect the imperfections of the methods employed - both in terms of optimising tree topology and in terms of the models of evolution that estimate genetic distances. And incomplete taxon sampling, the effects of outgrouping and noise from limited genetic data all have negative effects. If species are too close or the genes used too conserved, a small number of changes can have an inordinate effect on the tree. In the reverse scenario, substitution can reach saturation and destroy phylogenetic signal.
All things considered, the congruency is rather good.
"... Indeed, divine creation would produce a static, unchanging world."
ReplyDeleteWhich is just plain ignorant.
To believe that the Creation *must* (or even can) be perfect is to believe that the Creation is identical to the Creator.
Dr Hunter:
ReplyDeleteYears ago an evolutionist countered this by saying that evolution would absolutely be falsified if we discovered highly similar DNA sequences, which are functionally unconstrained, in distant species. Well that is precisely what was discovered in UCEs. But of course he and the rest are still evolutionists.
Who was that evolutionist? When and where did he/she make that prediction? What exactly was said, and what was the context? Citation, please.
(The thing is, I would like to see how the putative prediction relates to your foregoing claims.)