Wholly Natrualistic Alternative To Neo-Darwinism?

[Patrick1000]

Punctuated Equilibrium was Eldredge's and Gould's way of trying to explain stasis

I second this. Every paleontologist I've spoken to (and considering my job, that's a pretty substantial number) fully agrees that paleontology does in fact offer evidence for how evolution occurs. In fact, punctuated equilibrium is a theory on how evolution occurs--the majority of the time, organisms are well-adapted to their environments, and most mutations are detrimental. That's discussing the differential survival of randomly varying traits right there--in other words, the fossil record provided direct evidence for the conventional biochemical mechanism of evolution.

Punctuated Equilibrium was Niles Eldredge's and Stephen Jay Gould's way of trying to explain stasis/stability in the fossil record, and in a sense, the gaps in the fossil record as well to some degree.

Fossils are not molecules by the way Dinwar. In my parts, we would call claiming that the fossil record substantiates the proposed molecular mechanism for evolution as conventionally presented a "wild groundless claim". Fossils are not molecules and vice versa. Were one to be able to demonstrate/show that the fossil record proves directly, provides material evidence for macroevolution ON A MOLECULAR BASIS, reptiles to birds, this person would become known as the greatest thinker, scientist or otherwise, of all time. Obviously, this has not occurred.

This is the problem with the mechanism as proposed Dinwar.

 

[Patrick1000]

Finally, God would be dead once and for all......

I second this. Every paleontologist I've spoken to (and considering my job, that's a pretty substantial number) fully agrees that paleontology does in fact offer evidence for how evolution occurs. In fact, punctuated equilibrium is a theory on how evolution occurs--the majority of the time, organisms are well-adapted to their environments, and most mutations are detrimental. That's discussing the differential survival of randomly varying traits right there--in other words, the fossil record provided direct evidence for the conventional biochemical mechanism of evolution.

Finally, God would be dead once and for all......

Just in case you didn't notice Dinwar, were the fossil record to actually provide solid proof that the conventional(UNDIRECTED, UNINTENTIONAL) biochemical mechanism of evolution was a FACT, God would POOF!, no longer be a possibility, let alone a fact, proven out of existence she would finally be, once and for all. The fossils, "proving" the molecular mechanism, would prove that God never was, as there never was INTENTION.

 

[Patrick1000]

That is true, about the genome ......

Patrick,
I too am amazed at the process. I'd like to share one way it "fits" into my head.

We accept that point mutations can cause changes in bacteria. From the bacteria's point of view, these are major, life-altering changes. But from our point of view, it's still just a blob on a slide. So it's easy to think that changes in a bacterium aren't really very dramatic or going anywhere interesting.

Then, I remember that I was once a single cell. That single cell and its DNA was then multiplied until you have me sitting here. Logically, a small, point mutation in that original cell could lead to important differences in the larger being.

Looking for an example, I find dwarfism. Achondroplasia accounts for some 70 - 80% of dwarfism (of which there are some 200 different causes). Achondroplasia comes about because of a difference in the fibroblast growth receptor 3. This amazing protein is huge, but a single mutation (either of two mutations will do it) replaces a glycine with an arginine. "Specifically, the amino acid glycine is replaced with the amino acid arginine at protein position 380" link: http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/gene/FGFR3

So, from that I know that very small, random changes can have very large final results. That, at least, needs to be in the mix when I think about the reptile to bird thing.

The other ingredient is time. Huge time. The kind of time that takes a stream to a river to the Grand Canyon. Here is your hot air balloon. Only now, it's taking a small trickle of water, pulled by gravity, and flying to one of the most dramatic natural features on the planet.

Saying that dwarfism explains speciation is false. But it does illustrate a couple of interesting things. The first is that very small differences in a genome can mean very big differences in what we see. The second is that the process entire is extremely complex and the chemical details are not visible to us and were not preserved over geologic time.

Is there a genetic "switch" that gets a different kind of heart? Could be, I don't know. Does there have to be a series of immeasurably small switches? Could be, I don't know. Maybe there's a combination. The point is that variation can, and does, leap to some very strange and new places -- and that's all that's really needed isn't it?

That is true, about the genome ......small changes can mean a lot, I agree, and your points generally are well made and so taken, good ones.

Sometimes I wonder if there might be some kind of internal mechanism for "self direction". Intelligent design proposes an "external agent" providing direction, but could there be something internal to the living system that directs it to become something else? A NON random mutation, internally, not externally driven.

 

[Mojo]

Finally, God would be dead once and for all......

Just in case you didn't notice Dinwar, were the fossil record to actually provide solid proof that the conventional(UNDIRECTED, UNINTENTIONAL) biochemical mechanism of evolution was a FACT, God would POOF!, no longer be a possibility, let alone a fact, proven out of existence she would finally be, once and for all. The fossils, "proving" the molecular mechanism, would prove that God never was, as there never was INTENTION.

Is this the reason you don't like the idea?

 

[Patrick1000]

No, I am an atheist........

Is this the reason you don't like the idea?

No, I am an atheist........

It does point out how delicate this stuff all is, and it does go a long way to explain a great deal of the nuttiness around "evolution" in the culture at large, and I am talking about mainstream culture here, not fringe stuff like literal creationist culture.

Here in the United States, 75% of adults, so I have read, identify themselves as Christians. That is 175 million people, the vast majority of voters. In addition, there is a sizable minority of other theists; Jews, Muslims, that like Christians, belong to a faith characterized by the believers having a personal relationship with their God.

As such, the vast majority of Americans, with respect to their most fundamental views on who they are, would be classified as intelligent design advocates. To be a Christian is to view this world and oneself as a creation, AN INTENTIONAL CREATION. Were I a Christian, I would view myself as being made by God, AND! most importantly, God made me with a purpose. This was no whim, this world, and the people in it. This is what religion in our occidental tradition is all about.

Now, you have 175 million people in the US, self identified as intelligent design advocates. One then introduces "evolution", undirected, unintentional, purposeless, wholly natural evolution. Cognitive dissonance anyone? A bit of an understatement my friends, wouldn't you say???????........

 

[Sideroxylon]

That is true, about the genome ......small changes can mean a lot, I agree, and your points generally are well made and so taken, good ones.

Sometimes I wonder if there might be some kind of internal mechanism for "self direction". Intelligent design proposes an "external agent" providing direction, but could there be something internal to the living system that directs it to become something else? A NON random mutation, internally, not externally driven.

An external directing agent is not necessary to explain evolution and its resulting complexity. That is a redundant explanation. Surprising levels of complexity can emerge from the selection process working on random mutations as modeled here:

(2nd repost in this thread)

 

[Patrick1000]

These are merely suggestions ..........

An external directing agent is not necessary to explain evolution and its resulting complexity. That is a redundant explanation. Surprising levels of complexity can emerge from the selection process working on random mutations as modeled here:

(2nd repost in this thread)

These are merely suggestions ..........hypotheses, Sideroxylon. Assuming evolution did occur, it had a mechanism. The currently proposed mechanism seems woefully inadequate to many of us. An external director is one proposal made by some to deal with the inadequacies. This is intelligent design.

One of my own suggestions is to try and explore ways one might envision some type of self direction, self design by way of non random mutation.

I command my arm to move Sideroxylon, do I not? That is not chance. That is not random. I play the piano with intention.

Why must intention be externally grounded? Found in God? There is no reason for this necessarily.

There may be some wholly natural, heretofore unrecognized "biologic variable"(not related to God in any sense) generating, being responsible for, the dynamic of intention/direction/purpose in the development/evolution of living systems.

Could we have "non random mutations" without a God, without an external director?

Maybe

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

No, I am an atheist........

It does point out how delicate this stuff all is, and it does go a long way to explain a great deal of the nuttiness around "evolution" in the culture at large, and I am talking about mainstream culture here, not fringe stuff like literal creationist culture.

Here in the United States, 75% of adults, so I have read, identify themselves as Christians. That is 175 million people, the vast majority of voters. In addition, there is a sizable minority of other theists; Jews, Muslims, that like Christians, belong to a faith characterized by the believers having a personal relationship with their God.

As such, the vast majority of Americans, with respect to their most fundamental views on who they are, would be classified as intelligent design advocates. To be a Christian is to view this world and oneself as a creation, AN INTENTIONAL CREATION. Were I a Christian, I would view myself as being made by God, AND! most importantly, God made me with a purpose. This was no whim, this world, and the people in it. This is what religion in our occidental tradition is all about.

Now, you have 175 million people in the US, self identified as intelligent design advocates. One then introduces "evolution", undirected, unintentional, purposeless, wholly natural evolution. Cognitive dissonance anyone? A bit of an understatement my friends, wouldn't you say???????........

So? Science is not a democracy. Just because people do not like/understand the principles doesn't make them go away.

 

[Patrick1000]

By the way Mojo.......

Is this the reason you don't like the idea?

By the way Mojo.......in case you haven't noticed, I have no problem with "evolution". The thread is not about whether or not evolution occurred. It's occurrence is a given here. We are assuming the FACT of evolution, common ancestry, the connection of all living things over time.

The thread is about, "how did this happened?". What was evolution's mechanism? How were/are living things connected through time?

 

[Sideroxylon]

These are merely suggestions ..........hypotheses, Sideroxylon. Assuming evolution did occur, it had a mechanism. The currently proposed mechanism seems woefully inadequate to many of us. An external director is one proposal made by some to deal with the inadequacies. This is intelligent design.

One of my own suggestions is to try and explore ways one might envision some type of self direction, self design by way of non random mutation.

I command my arm to move Sideroxylon, do I not? That is not chance. That is not random. I play the piano with intention.

Why must intention be externally grounded? Found in God? There is no reason for this necessarily.

There may be some wholly natural, heretofore unrecognized "biologic variable"(not related to God in any sense) generating, being responsible for, the dynamic of intention/direction/purpose in the development/evolution of living systems.

Could we have "non random mutations" without a God, without an external director?

Maybe

Evolution by natural selection has earned the lofty title of "theory" through its demonstrated powers of explanation and prediction. If you want to get an intelligent intervening agent into the game at the entry level title of "hypothesis" it will have to make some falsifiable predictions. What should we observe if an intervening intelligent agent has been at work? And here you need to come up with more than personal incredulity and come up with a novel prediction. Most importantly and most challenging is the question as to what we should not observe if an intelligent agent has been intervening. Without this the idea has zero predictive utility and has no function and nothing on which to argue its truth.

Did not that video I linked demonstrate that surprising complexity can arrive from computational models based on evolution? Wowbagger seems to know a fair bit about this topic but you appear to have ignored his offers to follow this line of discussion.

 

[Mojo]

By the way Mojo.......in case you haven't noticed, I have no problem with "evolution".

But you are arguing that evolution needs to be directed by something, and that undirected evolution "would prove that God never was, as there never was INTENTION"

Whether it makes the existence of gods more or less likely is irrelevant to the question of whether the current theoory is an adequate explanation.

 

[Mojo]

No, I am an atheist........

It does point out how delicate this stuff all is, and it does go a long way to explain a great deal of the nuttiness around "evolution" in the culture at large, and I am talking about mainstream culture here, not fringe stuff like literal creationist culture.

Here in the United States, 75% of adults, so I have read, identify themselves as Christians. That is 175 million people, the vast majority of voters. In addition, there is a sizable minority of other theists; Jews, Muslims, that like Christians, belong to a faith characterized by the believers having a personal relationship with their God.

As such, the vast majority of Americans, with respect to their most fundamental views on who they are, would be classified as intelligent design advocates. To be a Christian is to view this world and oneself as a creation, AN INTENTIONAL CREATION. Were I a Christian, I would view myself as being made by God, AND! most importantly, God made me with a purpose. This was no whim, this world, and the people in it. This is what religion in our occidental tradition is all about.

Now, you have 175 million people in the US, self identified as intelligent design advocates. One then introduces "evolution", undirected, unintentional, purposeless, wholly natural evolution. Cognitive dissonance anyone? A bit of an understatement my friends, wouldn't you say???????........

Now you're arguing that the current theory is undesirable because it is implausible to religious people. That is no more a valid argument againt the theory than your assertion that you, personally, don't believe it.

None of your invocations of God, "intention", or religious beliefs are relevant to the topic of this thread. Any "wholly naturalistic alternative" to the current theory would have no place for gods. That is what "wholly naturalistic" means.

 

[Dancing David]

That is true, about the genome ......small changes can mean a lot, I agree, and your points generally are well made and so taken, good ones.

Sometimes I wonder if there might be some kind of internal mechanism for "self direction". Intelligent design proposes an "external agent" providing direction, but could there be something internal to the living system that directs it to become something else? A NON random mutation, internally, not externally driven.

No, it is apparent that it is laregely haphazard. Thanks for showing one of your cards.

 

[Dancing David]

One of my own suggestions is to try and explore ways one might envision some type of self direction, self design by way of non random mutation.

Yup, that would explain why so much of biology is poorly designed, redundant and harfull.

I command my arm to move Sideroxylon, do I not? That is not chance. That is not random. I play the piano with intention.

Oh, so you didn't learn how to walk?

You were born able to play the piano?

 

[Mojo]

One of my own suggestions is to try and explore ways one might envision some type of self direction, self design by way of non random mutation.

This is what Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and Richard Owen thought. It was abandoned in the 19th century.

 

[marplots]

That is true, about the genome ......small changes can mean a lot, I agree, and your points generally are well made and so taken, good ones.

Sometimes I wonder if there might be some kind of internal mechanism for "self direction". Intelligent design proposes an "external agent" providing direction, but could there be something internal to the living system that directs it to become something else? A NON random mutation, internally, not externally driven.

Well, the lingo is going to get mushy a bit. I tend to link "mutation" with "random" as a matter of course. That said, if evolution is driving the bus (which I think we agree it is in at least some sense) then it might be advantageous to have a certain level of mutability (capacity for mutation). A kind of tendency toward one part of the edge of chaos.

Things that are too fixed wouldn't be able to respond. Things that are too wafflely would move out of a niche. My guess is that this has been looked at by evolutionary biology as a meta principle. You'd take X number of generations and divide it by Y number of changes (or the other way round) to get a handy, mutability number.

But then, the cool trick would be to have a meta-meta where the meta changes in response to environmental cues. Faster evolution when stressed and slower when not. That last actually sounds familiar. Is it part of punctuated equilibrium?

 

[Patrick1000]

True, well said......

So? Science is not a democracy. Just because people do not like/understand the principles doesn't make them go away.

True, well said......and because "science" is not a democracy, we are not obligated to buy into people's complete and utter bull simply because the majority of mainstream scientists in a particular field, evolutionary biology, say something is the case.

To argue that the mechanism of evolution as conventionally presented explains our being here, yours and mine, is far fetched to say the least. I've never bought in to such ridiculous nonsense and never will.

And furthermore, thoughtful Christians and others believing that their's is a personal relationship with God, should demand evolution be taught differently in school's. At least the point about its intentionless, purposeless, undirected aspect, its lack of motivation, should be strongly referenced as being in direct opposition to Christian beliefs.

If this is not done, then continuing to teach "evolution" in schools(high school level) as is done now, will continue to violate our laws against the separation of church and state. Evolution's present day teaching is an argument for atheism. This needs to be acknowledged so that ironically enough, evolution can legitimately be taught. And, it needs to be acknowledged right in the classroom, because where else are you going to do it?

 

[catsmate]

Finally, God would be dead once and for all......

Just in case you didn't notice Dinwar, were the fossil record to actually provide solid proof that the conventional(UNDIRECTED, UNINTENTIONAL) biochemical mechanism of evolution was a FACT, God would POOF!, no longer be a possibility, let alone a fact, proven out of existence she would finally be, once and for all. The fossils, "proving" the molecular mechanism, would prove that God never was, as there never was INTENTION.

You underestimate the poor deluded fools who need to believe in a god, they'll ignore any evidence, deny any truth, ignore any science when it conflicts their need to believe.

 

[Dancing David]

To argue that the mechanism of evolution as conventionally presented explains our being here, yours and mine, is far fetched to say the least. I've never bought in to such ridiculous nonsense and never will.

Strawman

And furthermore, thoughtful Christians and others believing that their's is a personal relationship with God, should demand evolution be taught differently in school's. At least the point about its intentionless, purposeless, undirected aspect, its lack of motivation, should be strongly referenced as being in direct opposition to Christian beliefs.

Why?

Religion has no place in science, nor does belief in fairies.

If this is not done, then continuing to teach "evolution" in schools(high school level) as is done now, will continue to violate our laws against the separation of church and state.

********, no more than teaching the BBE is a religion.

Evolution's present day teaching is an argument for atheism.

No

This needs to be acknowledged so that ironically enough, evolution can legitimately be taught. And, it needs to be acknowledged right in the classroom, because where else are you going to do it?

Why? Collecting stamps in not a hobby. Teaching the theory of natural selection is not a religion.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

True, well said......and because "science" is not a democracy, we are not obligated to buy into people's complete and utter bull simply because the majority of mainstream scientists in a particular field, evolutionary biology, say something is the case.

To argue that the mechanism of evolution as conventionally presented explains our being here, yours and mine, is far fetched to say the least. I've never bought in to such ridiculous nonsense and never will.

And furthermore, thoughtful Christians and others believing that their's is a personal relationship with God, should demand evolution be taught differently in school's. At least the point about its intentionless, purposeless, undirected aspect, its lack of motivation, should be strongly referenced as being in direct opposition to Christian beliefs.

If this is not done, then continuing to teach "evolution" in schools(high school level) as is done now, will continue to violate our laws against the separation of church and state. Evolution's present day teaching is an argument for atheism. This needs to be acknowledged so that ironically enough, evolution can legitimately be taught. And, it needs to be acknowledged right in the classroom, because where else are you going to do it?

Cut the stupid arm waving. Some random, uneducated poster on the Internet does not stand up against real science practiced by real scientists. Your speculations are amusing though jejune. Have you read anything at the url I quoted? You seem willing to respond to posts by everyone else but not this one:

You say - "I don't believe in Evolution by Natural Selection so something else must be at work". Responders here have said -- "Small random genetic changes, selected for over long periods of time account for what we see in the World today. Nothing else is required".

If you really want to understand, try reading Understanding Evolution.

Quote:
Understanding Evolution is a non-commercial, education website, teaching the science and history of evolutionary biology. This site is here to help you understand what evolution is, how it works, how it factors into your life, how research in evolutionary biology is performed, and how ideas in this area have changed over time.

Credits: This site is a collaborative project of the University of California Museum of Paleontology and the National Center for Science Education.

Start here, to see the history and support for speciation in particular:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolib...0_0/history_18

Why are these people wrong?