08.18.08
Behe’s bottom line
Interesting comment from Olorin
These points are well-taken, but I fear that truly observing natural selection is equally problematical. We have never observed how NS produced human consciousness, say, a task that is massively difficult. And I fear that standard Darwinism, ID apart, has missed a lot indeed: check out http://eonic-effect.net
Olorin said,
August 18, 2008 at 10:44 am · Edit
Scripsit Nemo: “Much of the new research is suppressed or rarely discussed in public,…”
Thus claims the ID creationist crowd. So where is it? Even if it doesn’t get published in a peer-reviewed journal, or described in a vanity book, or presented at a conference, there is always the internet. It’s very difficult to suppress anything on the internet. Anyone with a small PC and a few bucks can set up a web site and publish anything they like. SO WHERE IS IT?
Answer: there isn’t any. When Michael Behe testified at the Kitzmiller v Dover trial, being under oath, he admitted that there are no observations, no experiments, no calculations from data that constitute any evidence for intelligent design. Other ID proponents in other venues can claim that there is, because they are not under oath to tell the truth, and can’t be cross-examined to prevent evading criticism.
Believe thee me, anyone who comes up with solid positive evidence for intelligent design won’t worry about publication. He’ll be too busy packing his bags to pick up his Nobel prize. That’s what happens to people who overthrow theories with EVIDENCE. They get invitations to Stockholm.
Olorin said,
August 19, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Nemo: “We have never observed how NS produced human consciousness, say, a task that is massively difficult.”
Difficulty is one reason we have not observed NS producing human intelligence. We have never observed the formation of a black hole for the same reason. The other reason we have not observed the rise of human consciousness is that, at he time, we were not conscious that it was happening. [1]
On a more tractable level, however, NS has been observed within the past month or so. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105:7899-7906 ( June 10, 2008) reports a 20-year experiment. You have to be patient to observe NS; it doesn’t just pop out before your eyes in seconds or minutes as design would do. On a longer scale, we have archaeological samples of teosinte turning into maize over a period of a couple thousand years; the mutations have even been mapped. We have watched bacteria evolve the ability to eat nylon and PCBs over the past 70 years.[2] You don’t even have to go back in time. Walk (or drive!) the San Joaquin Valley in Western US to observe “ring species” change successively along the path sufficiently that the salamanders at each end can no longer interbreed with each other.[3]
Creationists also use the word “evolution” in different senses, like blind men describing an elephant, and define the whole ionly in therms od their particular piece.. Darwin proposed a basic model or mechanism: heritable variation with natural selection. What is “natural” selection? Some people mean by this term only selection by the environment. Some include sexual selection, others do not. Sexual selection obviously exists; you can check it out on your next date. Some include group selection, a concept that some feel does not yet have enough supporting evidence. As to mutation, no one any more supposes that it is “random”:in the sense of quantum mechanics. “Random” has always meant that favorable an unfavorable mutations are mixed unpredictably.[3] Time frequency of mutations can vary; environmental stress seems to whip up mutation rates. Recent work in epigenetics has shown that not all evolution need occur via mutations.[4] So evolution shifts within the original paradigm, and even overthrows it at times—all within mainstream science.
Creationism and its stealth step-child intelligent design have always been “gap” arguments: arguments from personal incredulity. When someone proposes a model for design, or for any other paradigm-busting theory, you can bet your bippy that real scientists will be all over it looking for evidence, doing research, designing experiments and tests.[5]
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[1] As an IBM AI researcher once said, “If the human brain was so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t.”
[2] If you think bacteria evolution is just one little bug turning into another little bug, remember that there are bacteria that are as different from each other as humans are from oak trees.
[3] Neutral mutations comprise a recently evolved field of study. They have been found to spread to a remarkable degree.
[3] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/05/2/l_052_05.html for a short description. For a discussion of ring species in terms of creationism, see http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/evolution/blfaq_evolution_evidence05.htm
[4] Environmentally induced DNA methylkation is heritable in some cases. This is a Lamarckin idea. Lamarck, of course, was antithetical to Darwin’s theory. (Is this like your referenced “eonics” concept?)
[5] Don’t even need a new paradigm. Already, several groups of biologists are looking for life forms that might not have a common ancestor with the ones we know about. A recent issue of Scientific American has an article describing the work of one such group.
nemo said,
August 19, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Previous comment now at
http://darwiniana.com/2008/08/19/observing-ns/