Wholly Natrualistic Alternative To Neo-Darwinism?

[Patrick1000]

I am teasing you steenkh.......

I wonder if you have any idea of how often we have heard such claims, and they invariably fizzle out when presented at last.

So far your track record here has shown a faulty understanding of the current theory, and you have insisted on continuing to use old debunked books as your source of knowledge.

I may be a pessimist, but it is hard to believe that your next argument will be any better than the previous ones. Presumably you have still some way to go before you have emptied the creationist websites of arguments that you just think are irresistible, so you can continue to say "you ain't seen nothing yet" for a long time ...

I am/was "teasing" you guys steenkh.......Just using the football analogy, Joe Montana, for fun.. ....I really have no idea what I will be bringing up. Depends on what you guys post, time concerns and what not.....

 

[Dinwar]

Again, if you review my posts, you'll note I suggest that more than anything else this stuff may well be beyond the ken of human understanding. If I were to be asked to present my best account of all this, I would conclude with that very point. In my mind, if we cannot get "gravity right", if General Relativity cannot explain gravity(and it doesn't), then it is unlikely to assume phenomena infinitely more complex, those that account for life's becoming, and those that account for the changing of living systems over time, will ever be known. It actually seems rather silly I think more often than not, people making claims that they know how life came to be, biologic information materializing out of thin or thick primordial soup, how reptiles became JRandi posters.

To translate: I can't figure it out, and can't be bothered to learn what researchers think of it, therefore it can't be known.

This is yet more Creationist logic: if it's not known now, it'll never be known, and if I don't know it it's not known now.

Bill Gates I will presume for the moment is not a creationist, though I do not know that for a fact. He says when he looks at genetic code it strikes him just like super high level computer code, like something WRITTEN BY A PERSON only WAY MORE COMPLICATED. So he thinks it LOOKS LIKE it was WRITTEN ON PURPOSE, DIRECTED.

Bill Gates is a computer person, so OF COURSE he's going to view DNA as a computer code. He's not unbiased--that's the way he thinks. Ever hear the phrase "If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail"? And I seriously doubt Mr. Gates has spent a significant amount of time studying biology, so he's ignorant on the topic as well as biased.

So if it wasn't written from the "outside", could the code be in some way internally directed?

Sure. It's certainly a potential explanation. But until you present evidence it doesn't even rise to the level of a serious hypothesis--it's at the level of a guy smoking weed going "Dude, man, dude, what if--hear me out--what if DNA wrote itself?"

Hard to see exactly how that might take place, but at least consider the notion that living things might more than anything else be fundamentally AWARE. Say one takes that as his/her definition of life, something that is aware.

How? So magical all-permiating life-force?

When you can prove that viruses, which evolve, are aware, we can consider this notion. Until then, it's nonsense.

Long shot, but in some ways much better than what people work on now.

It's not even as good as what Darwin was working with. In fact, such ideas have come up in the past (and if you knew about the history of science you'd know that), and have been shown to be false. They were good, solid theories at the time--but we've moved on. Or at least, some of us have.

However, given the nature of the two subjects, they may be related, and very very tightly so. If we do ever learn how it was life began, or if we ever learn all of the details as to how living things change over time, we may find one subject, "evolution", sheds a great deal of light on the other, "life's origin", and vice versa.

Except that we DO know how things evolve over time, and we have several ideas on how live arose (I suggest reading "Life as we do not know it", by Peter Ward, since getting you to read actual peer-reviewed literature is like trying to pull a tooth from a saber-toothed cat). And we know that the processes are dramatically different. The very concept of "evolution" breaks down towards the beginning of life, and evolution as it occurs in Earth-like life doesn't work for other types of life that may have been competing with Earth-like life (using Ward's concept of Earth-like life here).

Each subject will help the curious in understanding what the other subject is all about.

No. Abiogenesis says nothing about what happens after life arises, and evolution presupposes both life and diversity. One happens, then the other. It didn't necessarily have to be that way, but that's how it worked on our planet.

 

[Patrick1000]

That is not my logic......

To translate: I can't figure it out, and can't be bothered to learn what researchers think of it, therefore it can't be known.

This is yet more Creationist logic: if it's not known now, it'll never be known, and if I don't know it it's not known now.

Bill Gates is a computer person, so OF COURSE he's going to view DNA as a computer code. He's not unbiased--that's the way he thinks. Ever hear the phrase "If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail"? And I seriously doubt Mr. Gates has spent a significant amount of time studying biology, so he's ignorant on the topic as well as biased.

Sure. It's certainly a potential explanation. But until you present evidence it doesn't even rise to the level of a serious hypothesis--it's at the level of a guy smoking weed going "Dude, man, dude, what if--hear me out--what if DNA wrote itself?"

How? So magical all-permiating life-force?

When you can prove that viruses, which evolve, are aware, we can consider this notion. Until then, it's nonsense.

It's not even as good as what Darwin was working with. In fact, such ideas have come up in the past (and if you knew about the history of science you'd know that), and have been shown to be false. They were good, solid theories at the time--but we've moved on. Or at least, some of us have.

Except that we DO know how things evolve over time, and we have several ideas on how live arose (I suggest reading "Life as we do not know it", by Peter Ward, since getting you to read actual peer-reviewed literature is like trying to pull a tooth from a saber-toothed cat). And we know that the processes are dramatically different. The very concept of "evolution" breaks down towards the beginning of life, and evolution as it occurs in Earth-like life doesn't work for other types of life that may have been competing with Earth-like life (using Ward's concept of Earth-like life here).

No. Abiogenesis says nothing about what happens after life arises, and evolution presupposes both life and diversity. One happens, then the other. It didn't necessarily have to be that way, but that's how it worked on our planet.

That is not my logic......


Dinwar, let us be fair here. You are extraordinarily capable. That is my honest opinion of you. I very much respect your abilities and your views. Perhaps you would not say the same of me, but that is not my point here. You must be fair in our debate.

I did not say that I could not learn, nor did not want to learn, nor did not try. I said the problem might well be beyond the reach of our understanding, beyond the ken of human ability, the problem may be that difficult, that hard a nut to crack. I encourage you to review my posts where my personal philosophy is touched upon in this regard. I am/was very consistent in my stating that one should proceed and make every effort to understand, one should make every effort to learn.

How many JRandi posters are literate with regard to tensor calculus and its applications in General Relativity? 2,3,4,5? maybe......????? I am among them because when I was a teenager I wanted to understand General Relativity/gravity as well as I possibly could, and I began my studies knowing that the theory was "wrong" in the sense that it was not compatible with the language of quantum mechanics. I have studied life sciences with equal enthusiasm and have met with great success in my studies.

You are a great talent Dinwar, and I believe you are a fair person as well. I enjoy our debate. I would like to encourage you to consider carefully however making further comments of the type that you just did in the referenced post as the comments are not fair to me, however much you may disagree with my views.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

Why do you think that life's origin is in any way relevant to evolutionary theory?

This was not addressed to me, but while I understand that how we evolve is a different question from how it got started, they've always been pretty closely related in my mind.

In "The Ancestor's Tale", the conceit is traveling back in time and meeting common ancestors, starting with most recent, and continuing as far as science can currently take us.

Dawkins admits it gets pretty fuzzy at the end of the journey - or the beginning, depending how you look at it. But certainly at some point in our journey we'd be meeting up with some proto-RNA in some clay, or who knows what. But in any case, the search for the earliest common ancestor to all life on earth would smudge the line between evolution (how things went from that point on) and abiogenesis (what the first replicant was and how it got the ball rolling).

Like I said, I understand the difference, but to say the two topics are not relevant to each other is a bit of a stretch.

I think.

 

[Patrick1000]

I agree....

This was not addressed to me, but while I understand that how we evolve is a different question from how it got started, they've always been pretty closely related in my mind.

In "The Ancestor's Tale", the conceit is traveling back in time and meeting common ancestors, starting with most recent, and continuing as far as science can currently take us.

Dawkins admits it gets pretty fuzzy at the end of the journey - or the beginning, depending how you look at it. But certainly at some point in our journey we'd be meeting up with some proto-RNA in some clay, or who knows what. But in any case, the search for the earliest common ancestor to all life on earth would smudge the line between evolution (how things went from that point on) and abiogenesis (what the first replicant was and how it got the ball rolling).

Like I said, I understand the difference, but to say the two topics are not relevant to each other is a bit of a stretch.

I think.

I agree, and I typically link the topics in my mind unconsciously, reflexively to at least to some degree. That said, try playing around with the notion of the subjects representing sciences that treat separate types/kinds of events/occurrences. You may get some new insight and be able to help us all. Someone may stumble on something this way at any rate.

 

[Dinwar]

Dinwar, let us be fair here. You are extraordinarily capable. That is my honest opinion of you. I very much respect your abilities and your views. Perhaps you would not say the same of me, but that is not my point here. You must be fair in our debate.

I did not say that I could not learn, nor did not want to learn, nor did not try. I said the problem might well be beyond the reach of our understanding, beyond the ken of human ability, the problem may be that difficult, that hard a nut to crack. I encourage you to review my posts where my personal philosophy is touched upon in this regard. I am/was very consistent in my stating that one should proceed and make every effort to understand, one should make every effort to learn.

How many JRandi posters are literate with regard to tensor calculus and its applications in General Relativity? 2,3,4,5? maybe......????? I am among them because when I was a teenager I wanted to understand General Relativity/gravity as well as I possibly could, and I began my studies knowing that the theory was "wrong" in the sense that it was not compatible with the language of quantum mechanics. I have studied life sciences with equal enthusiasm and have met with great success in my studies.

You are a great talent Dinwar, and I believe you are a fair person as well. I enjoy our debate. I would like to encourage you to consider carefully however making further comments of the type that you just did in the referenced post as the comments are not fair to me, however much you may disagree with my views.

First, let me say I'm not in any way fair. I follow the data, wherever they lead, and if that hurts your precious little feelings, too bad. Science isn't for the thin-skinned. And I really have no obligation to treat you as an equal. You obviously don't understand this idea nearly as well as I do, nor are you as honest as I am (no attack here, simply stating the facts that are clearly demonstrated in this thread). Frankly, until you've fallen down a few mountains and faced off against a few wild predators in your quest to understand biology, you're just an arm-chair philosopher in my opinion (for squishy biologists I'm willing to substitute working with highly toxic substances and potentially highly virulent diseases). And if you're not willing to read references when I quite literally hand them to you, you're not even that.

Second, this is nothing more than one long attack against me. You've yet again failed to address any of the arguments I make in my post. And yeah, I get that you've never said you're unwilling to learn. Your continued use of the completely debunked idea that we don't know the genetic changes from dinosaur to bird is proof that you do.

Please address my arguments. Or don't, I really don't care. But please stop trying to make this about me and my personality. That type of argument will get you nowhere.

As for your understanding of relativity, 1) I don't believe you, and 2) it's mostly irrelevant, and if anything is more of a detriment than a benefit. Physicists have this annoying tendency to think that their way of understanding the world is superior to any other--which is a real problem when dealing with emergent properties of physics. (And here I should point out that my marriage is proof of that--I'm married to someone who does understand relativity and quantum mechanics, so I have more than a little experience.) Remember what I said about Mr. Gates? You're coming into this will numerous biases and prejudices, none of which are applicable to the actual study of biology. To put it another way: I'd be more impressed if you were a certified professional accountant than if you were actually a physicist. At least CPAs have made significant contributions to the study of evolution. To my knowledge, physicists haven't.

Dawkins admits it gets pretty fuzzy at the end of the journey - or the beginning, depending how you look at it. But certainly at some point in our journey we'd be meeting up with some proto-RNA in some clay, or who knows what. But in any case, the search for the earliest common ancestor to all life on earth would smudge the line between evolution (how things went from that point on) and abiogenesis (what the first replicant was and how it got the ball rolling).

It gets more than fuzzy, as I understand it. The concept of "ancestrial species" breaks down in bacteria/archea--they can trade DNA between species, which messes with our concept of speciation. And abiogenesis happens before there's any DNA to exchange.

It's also not clear to me when the last common ancestor was around. My understanding is that the current thought is that the LCA was well after abiogenesis was more or less no longer a major factor--same as how the last common ancestor for humans isn't the first human, but someone well after our species arose.

 

[Patrick1000]

You did not hurt my feelings.....

First, let me say I'm not in any way fair. I follow the data, wherever they lead, and if that hurts your precious little feelings, too bad. Science isn't for the thin-skinned. And I really have no obligation to treat you as an equal. You obviously don't understand this idea nearly as well as I do, nor are you as honest as I am (no attack here, simply stating the facts that are clearly demonstrated in this thread). Frankly, until you've fallen down a few mountains and faced off against a few wild predators in your quest to understand biology, you're just an arm-chair philosopher in my opinion (for squishy biologists I'm willing to substitute working with highly toxic substances and potentially highly virulent diseases). And if you're not willing to read references when I quite literally hand them to you, you're not even that.

Second, this is nothing more than one long attack against me. You've yet again failed to address any of the arguments I make in my post. And yeah, I get that you've never said you're unwilling to learn. Your continued use of the completely debunked idea that we don't know the genetic changes from dinosaur to bird is proof that you do.

Please address my arguments. Or don't, I really don't care. But please stop trying to make this about me and my personality. That type of argument will get you nowhere.

As for your understanding of relativity, 1) I don't believe you, and 2) it's mostly irrelevant, and if anything is more of a detriment than a benefit. Physicists have this annoying tendency to think that their way of understanding the world is superior to any other--which is a real problem when dealing with emergent properties of physics. (And here I should point out that my marriage is proof of that--I'm married to someone who does understand relativity and quantum mechanics, so I have more than a little experience.) Remember what I said about Mr. Gates? You're coming into this will numerous biases and prejudices, none of which are applicable to the actual study of biology. To put it another way: I'd be more impressed if you were a certified professional accountant than if you were actually a physicist. At least CPAs have made significant contributions to the study of evolution. To my knowledge, physicists haven't.

It gets more than fuzzy, as I understand it. The concept of "ancestrial species" breaks down in bacteria/archea--they can trade DNA between species, which messes with our concept of speciation. And abiogenesis happens before there's any DNA to exchange.

It's also not clear to me when the last common ancestor was around. My understanding is that the current thought is that the LCA was well after abiogenesis was more or less no longer a major factor--same as how the last common ancestor for humans isn't the first human, but someone well after our species arose.

You did not hurt my feelings.....But you did misrepresent my view. I am very pro trying to figure things out. I'll leave it at that and drop the subject.

 

[Complexity]

I see that Patrick1000 is emulating one of our better-known posters in another respect...

yrreg likes to add titles to each of his posts as well.

 

[Complexity]

Patrick1000 - I've seen the garbage you're peddling done far better with zero effect.

Enjoy your little game.

You have been obvious from the beginning.

You will accomplish nothing.

 

[Patrick1000]

I add titles so that I may keep track of them.......

I see that Patrick1000 is emulating one of our better-known posters in another respect...

yrreg likes to add titles to each of his posts as well.

I add titles so that I may keep track of them.......If there are 1000 posts in a thread, how does one find the one he/she is looking for? With a title..... Make sense?

 

[Mojo]

I did not say that I could not learn, nor did not want to learn, nor did not try. I said the problem might well be beyond the reach of our understanding, beyond the ken of human ability, the problem may be that difficult, that hard a nut to crack.

As I said, you were Going Nuclear:

Suppose Mike is involved in a debate about the truth of his own particular New Age belief system. Things are not going well for him. Mike’s arguments are being picked apart, and, worse still, his opponents have come up with several devastating objections that he can’t deal with. How might Mike get himself out of this bind?

One possibility is to adopt the strategy I call Going Nuclear. Going Nuclear is an attempt to unleash an argument that lays waste to every position, bringing them all down to the same level of “reasonableness”. Mike might try to force a draw by detonating a philosophical argument that achieves what during the Cold War was called “mutually assured destruction”, in which both sides in the conflict are annihilated.

If it's "beyond the ken of human ability" then, even if this means that your own ideas are not valid, neither are anyone else's.

 

[Reality Check]

You totally missed the points here Patrick1000.....

You totally missed the point here Reality Check.....
...
It seems that you had been under the impression that I thought the haemoglobin case actually was a counter-example. On the contrary, I would suggest to micro biologist Michael Denton and any other anti-evolutionists that the facts with respect to haemoglobin are consistent with those of evolution's mechanism as conventionally presented.

Thank you for clarifying your position that you accept that haemoglobin is evidence for evolution. This of course is only one of the many pieces of evidence for evoution.
Can I assume that you accept them as well?


However my points were that:
Firstly "doubling" is at least a dumb term and maybe a straw man argument because it does not appear in evolutionary theory. Gene duplication is the correct term and the mutation & natural selection part of this evolutionary mechanism should be mentioned.
Secondly you stated

There is no clear lineage.

This is wrong in two ways:

• The taint of creationism by using the vague word 'clear', i.e. the implication that you think that every step in the evolution has to be specified.
• The fact is that there is a lineage.

Thirdly, you asked

Why two different chains alpha and beta to form adult haemoglobin? Why myoglobin at all?

and the answer is obvious: gene duplication followed by mutation and natural selection as you have already accepted !

The nasty alternative is this is the creationist/Ddiot delusion that something decided the evolution and that is is possible to ask that thing why it did its magic !

 

[Patrick1000]

There is a TON of evidence for evolution Reality check......

Thank you for clarifying your position that you accept that haemoglobin is evidence for evolution. This of course is only one of the many pieces of evidence for evoution.
Can I assume that you accept them as well?


However my points were that:
Firstly "doubling" is at least a dumb term and maybe a straw man argument because it does not appear in evolutionary theory. Gene duplication is the correct term and the mutation & natural selection part of this evolutionary mechanism should be mentioned.
Secondly you stated

This is wrong in two ways:

• The taint of creationism by using the vague word 'clear', i.e. the implication that you think that every step in the evolution has to be specified.
• The fact is that there is a lineage.

Thirdly, you asked

and the answer is obvious: gene duplication followed by mutation and natural selection as you have already accepted !

The nasty alternative is this is the creationist/Ddiot delusion that something decided the evolution and that is is possible to ask that thing why it did its magic !

There is a TON of evidence for evolution Reality check......and that includes the haemoglobin example. Zero argument from me there.

 

[Captain Obvious]

I see that Patrick1000 is emulating one of our better-known posters in another respect...

yrreg likes to add titles to each of his posts as well.

Patrick1000 - I've seen the garbage you're peddling done far better with zero effect.

Enjoy your little game.

You have been obvious from the beginning.

You will accomplish nothing.

Are you, by any chance, HAL from Kubrick's 2001?

 

[not_so_new]

I did not say that I could not learn, nor did not want to learn, nor did not try. I said the problem might well be beyond the reach of our understanding, beyond the ken of human ability, the problem may be that difficult, that hard a nut to crack. I encourage you to review my posts where my personal philosophy is touched upon in this regard. I am/was very consistent in my stating that one should proceed and make every effort to understand, one should make every effort to learn.

You see, there.. RIGHT THERE, is where the problem comes from and why people are so frustrated with your line of thinking.

You say you are willing to learn Patrick yet the "problems" you point to in this garbage pile of a thread are not "beyond the reach of our understanding" or "beyond the ken of human ability."

The problems you point to have been addressed time and again by science and have even been referenced multiple times in this very thread so they are only problems in your mind.

Either you are telling an untruth above when you said you were willing to learn (paraphrasing) or the simple fact is you are unable to learn.

There are no problems beyond the reach of our understanding here. We understand the theory pretty well at this point, some either wish to ignore the evidence or simply fail to grasp the implications of said evidence. You seem like a pretty smart guy Patrick so I have to assume you fall into the former group not the latter.

 

[Complexity]

Are you, by any chance, HAL from Kubrick's 2001?

Not than I'm aware.

You do know, I hope, that I would love to pass/fail a Turing test just to mess with your mind.

(note the use of a contraction and a euphanism - does this help? are you sure?)

((a mind is a terrible thing to play with))

 

[Mojo]

You see, there.. RIGHT THERE, is where the problem comes from and why people are so frustrated with your line of thinking.

You say you are willing to learn Patrick yet the "problems" you point to in this garbage pile of a thread are not "beyond the reach of our understanding" or "beyond the ken of human ability."

The argument is very similar to the "irreducible complexity" argument for ID, which is that if a structure can't be explained by mutation plus natural selection it must be designed. This relies on assuming that an explanation within mutation plus natural selection is "beyond the ken of human ability" and therefore not attempting to explain it within these terms.

 

[Reality Check]

There is a TON of evidence for evolution Patrick1000......

There is a TON of evidence for evolution Reality check......and that includes the haemoglobin example. Zero argument from me there.

So we (and the scientific comunity) agree!
There is a TON of evidence evolution and there is no problem at all with species changing and new species evolving.

 

[Complexity]

Well, I'm glad this thread can be closed.

Patrick1000 has conceded the point to the good guys.

 

[Reality Check]

Let us hope that the creationist "micro-evolution cannot lead to macro-evolution" fallacy is not the next thing to raise its ugly head.