Monday, March 21, 2016

The Other Debate: Hunter Versus Ruse

Is Evolution Compelling?

I recently debated Professor Michael Ruse on the topic of evolution. A video of the debate will be available, but in the meantime here are my three statements, totaling 45 minutes.

18 comments:

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  2. Excellent presentation dr. Hunter!

    I especially enjoyed the part at 8.40:

    Now I don’t want you to leave tonight and think “Okay, there is this, you know, problem with the evolutionary tree, things aren’t quite working out ... maybe there is something new that evolutionists will discover ... otherwise evolution is a pretty good theory ... everything is working out, there is just this incongruence going on."
    No, this is the tip of the iceberg.

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    1. Well said, Carolus. It is indeed the tip of the iceberg. We owe a lot of credit to Dr. Stephen Meyer for his recent books "Signature in the Cell" and "Darwin's Doubt." Darwinists are tormented by those books for good reason.

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  3. I too really enjoyed the presentation - especially parts 2 and 3. I was just recently dialoging with Dominic Statham from creation ministries about this article he wrote called "Mistakes about Mistakes (http://creation.com/mutation-mistakes) In it he too talked about directed mutations or directed changes in the process of adaptation. That was the first time I had heard creationists recognize that some types of mutations are directed - the kind involved in adaptation if I understood him right. You talked about that too in your talk on adaptation.

    I'm assuming though that you do not believe these types of directed mutations could account for the evolution of life from a single cell into what we see today. Would that be accurate?

    So the ability to adapt to certain environmental changes to an extent is built into the organism, but there are limits to it. Is that an accurate understanding or do you believe directed mutations could account for all evolution of life from the first random cell all the way through to what we see in existence today?

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    1. Read my series of papers on the design of life, which provide a theory of frontloaded evolution:
      https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j22_2/j22_2_79-84.pdf
      https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j22_3/j22_3_68-76.pdf
      ‎https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j23_1/j23_1_99-106.pdf
      ‎https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j23_1/j23_1_107-114.pdf

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    2. So the ability to adapt to certain environmental changes to an extent is built into the organism, but there are limits to it.

      Well yes, I would assume so. But we knew very little about directed adaptation even a few decades ago, so I don't think there is a good understanding yet of what it is and isn't capable of.

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    3. ME: So the ability to adapt to certain environmental changes to an extent is built into the organism, but there are limits to it.

      Dr. Hunter: "Well yes, I would assume so. But we knew very little about directed adaptation even a few decades ago, so I don't think there is a good understanding yet of what it is and isn't capable of."

      Me: OK, thanks. So if we do not yet understand what it is and is not capable of, then are you saying there is a chance that it is capable of producing all the variety that we see in life today? Are you leaving that open as a possible evolutionary explanation of life? That would seem to go against the whole point of your talk that says the evidence isn't there - that the evidence mainly lies against the evolutionary paradigm.

      I read the first article Peer Torburg listed above so far and that was quite interesting.

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    4. are you saying there is a chance that it is capable of producing all the variety that we see in life today? Are you leaving that open as a possible evolutionary explanation of life?

      If you listen toward the end the video, I explain that this is *not* evolution, and it contradicts and falsifies evolution because such a directed adaptation capability for future, unforeseen environmental challenges, would not be selected for. So, no, this is not a possible evolutionary explanation.

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  4. Interesting and informative lecture.
    I wanted to know what your opinion is on circular RNA. As you may know, not much is currently known about circRNA. As with miRNA, circRNA (being a non-coding RNA) is thought to be involved in gene regulation.
    As you explained in your lecture miRNA seem to be unique per species so much so it is not as easy to develop an evolutionary classification system as is done with RNA and proteins for them.
    My question is whether this too, applies to circRNA.

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  5. Great presentation! Here is the quote that came to mind:
    “This [wild tobacco] plant’s genome has probably an order of magnitude more genes involved in environmental perception than most animals do. Most plants have to because they sit still and they have to really tune their physiology and biochemistry to what’s going on, and they need a very sophisticated system of perception and response.” -- Dr. Ian Baldwin, What Plants Talk About http://bit.ly/1pJNoy8

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  6. Interesting talk, and well presented Dr. Hunter; and nice to hear your ideas in person. Are you going to publish the transcript too? It would be good too see the slides or have the references you mention in the talk.

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    1. I really enjoyed the lecture. Well presented and great ideas. I would also be interested in references. As a physician, when I talk to other people about this I like to have the references ready to go. Thanks again for all you do. Reading Science's blind spot. Great!

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    2. Thanks much Robert. There will be another version, showing the slides, which have the references on them. Hopefully that will do the job.

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    3. I concur. No, I disagree. It wasn't well done. It was superb. That's better than excellent.

      I have enjoyed the enlightenment your blog has supplied for years (decades?). I have been wanting to see you in a pubic debate for a very long while. You didn't disappoint. I was good to see the science and good philosophy presented in public for a change.

      It was also great to hear you in person. You are more mild mannered in public than your razor sharp logic on your blog. That was a bit of a surprise.

      It looked like you were able to quote from memory. Is that correct? It didn't look like you were reading your notes. It was very impressive.

      I hope to hear more. thanks.

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    4. Thank you so much Peter. No, it wasn't completely from memory, I was using slides the whole time. There will be a better version of the video with the slides shown. Thanks again!

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  7. Very thoughtful, informative and effective presentation. Good job.

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