Re: Dawkins and natural selection contradicts himself
- From: Woland <jerrydeon@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2008 10:31:35 -0800 (PST)
On Feb 29, 4:23 pm, backspace <sawireless2...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Wo...
"..One of the most famous arguments of the creationist theory of the
universe is the eighteenth-century theologian William Paley's: Just as
a watch is too complicated and too functional to have sprung into
existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far
greater complexity, be purposefully designed. But as Richard Dawkins,
professor of zoology at Oxford University, demonstrates in this
brilliant and eloquent riposte to the Argument from Design, the
analogy is false. Natural selection, the unconscious, automatic, blind
yet essentially non-random process that Darwin discovered, has no
purpose in mind. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in
nature, it is the blind watchmaker..."
"....Natural selection, the unconscious, automatic, blind yet
essentially non-random process that Darwin discovered, has no purpose
in mind..."
Dr.Dawkins if NS is blind why is it not stupid ?
Those of you who have read the book, did Dawkins actually manage to
define this mystery "something" that is blind but not stupid I presume
for which NS is the label.
We are forever told about the theory of evolution and natural
selection, but we are never told what is the theory and what is the
mechanism for which these terms are a label. Confusing the issues even
further is how interchangeably authors use "evolution" and "natural
selection" it is as though the terms aren't really integral to
understanding the yet to be defined concept as we discussed herehttp://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/2b0113e...
It is as though it doesn't matter what terms you use "natural
preservation", "SoF", "evolution", "natural selection" it doesn't shed
any light on the actual cause/effect process that we wish to
understand: What caused the universe? Did it make itself or did God
make it and in what way is this question a separate issue from the cow
whale transition and who says so.
"...Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of
random...."
Darwin never said so in OoS, who are you interpreting? Derive for me
this "thing" you label non-random NS in the light of what PZ Myers
said
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/berlinski_i_cant_believe_...
".. We are not dealing with "Darwin's theory" any more.."
"..It is idiotic to criticize modern biology on the basis of one's
misunderstanding of a preliminary proposal published in 1859...."
Of course we are not dealing with Darwin's "theory" because there
never was one and it seems Myers realizes this. Yet, you will notice
that he never told us what was this "preliminary proposal" which
Darwin labeled a "theory" nor did Myers hyperlink to a separate page
defining for us the "thing" for which natural selection or theory or
whatever you label this "thing" is in actual reality. We just keep
being told that either Darwin never had a theory or that today we have
a better theory, yet nobody can tell me what is this theory and who
derived it.
I don't understand most of anything you say but I thought I'd go
through this for you from 'first principles', chime in (not literally,
I probably couldn't hear the chime from where ever you are; I'm using
the phrase 'chime in' in a figurative way) where you disagree or don't
understand. I hope others will also show me where I may be wrong or
confused. This is going to be very very very basic and with little
detail into actual mechanics etc.
1) Life exists on Earth. (You can start quibbling here about how we
define 'life' and whatnot but I'm going to use the old "I knows it
when I sees it definition.")
2) All life on Earth uses DNA for protein synthesis. (I'm not going
into details here, we can if you like later but others are certainly
better suited to this as I spend most of my time studying what certain
conglomerates of protein do and think at the macro level)
3) Mutations sometimes occur in DNA. (i.e. one or more of the the
bases in a given strand of DNA are changed. This could be an addition,
a deletion, a change from one base to another etc)
4) Sometimes these mutations have an affect on protein synthesis.
(This is only when it is a mutation in an area of the DNA that is
active in protein synthesis or regulation, some DNA just doesn't
appear to be an active player)
5) We can lump mutations into three categories:
(a) neutral(i.e. it has no affect on the survivability of the organism
and/or its offspring
(b) beneficial (i.e. it increases the chances of an organism surviving
and/or producing offspring
(c) deleterious (I.e. it decreases the chances of an organism
surviving and/or producing offspring).
6) Whether a given mutation is beneficial or deleterious is dependent
upon what environment the organism inhabits. (e.g. a bacterium that
has a mutation to digest nylon before nylon exists does not really
gain anything, but acquiring that trait once nylon does exist allows
the bacterium to take advantage of a new food source)
7) Organisms with mutations (we'll call them 'traits' now) that are
beneficial (see above) have a greater chance of surviving and passing
those traits to successive generations.
8) The preservation of beneficial traits and the destruction of
deleterious traits is observed on Earth.
9) Today we call this 'natural selection'.
10) A long time ago this guy named Darwin noticed this pattern. He
didn't Know how traits were passed along, he offered a hypothesis
involving 'pangenes' and 'gemmules'. There was someone else, Mendel
who really liked peas. He discovered that the inheritance of traits
followed predictable rules, but he didn't know about the role of DNA
either.DNA itself was first seen in 1869 by this Swiss guy, Miescher,
he didn't know what it did though. Real, absolute confirmation of the
fact that DNA was responsible for inheritance didn't happen until 1953
but the hypothesis that it was involved goes back (I think) as early
as the 1920's.
Any questions?
.
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