Re: PZ Myers on Evolution without Natural Selection

backspace wrote:
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2008/03/eyeing_the_evolutionary_past.php

"...For a long time, one of the hypotheses to explain all these eyes
was that they evolved independently, multiple times within the animal
kingdom...."

Nowhere in the article did Myers used the word "selection" , he never
gave us any mechanism for this morphological changes which he labeled
"evolved" or "evolution". A word that essentially is undefined and
thus the article is incomplete , it hangs in the air.

Or perhaps natural selection was irrelevant to the point Myers was trying to make. We can in fact know quite a bit about evolution without thinking for a minute about natural selection. We can know what happened without having a clue about why it happened.

What was the mechanism that was responsible for the eye changes. Lets
presume he refered to some definition of natural selection that
directed this eye evolution, would this selection now be in the
pattern or design sense. Remember natural selection and evolution as
Pivar pounted out is not the same thing, thus says he because he never
defined for us which version of "evolution" and "natural selection" he
was refering to .

Myers never discusses the mechanism responsible for the "eye changes". Why should he? If you notice that a house was painted, do you have to describe who painted it? Precisely because natural selection and evolution are not the same thing, it's possible to discuss one without discussing the other.

For example Harshman told us
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/2feef56c7bedd98c/#

"...Nor have you demonstrated that there's anything wrong with either
the term or the concept (which, notice, are not the same thing
anyway)..."

For example of what? This has nothing to do with anything that comes before in your post.

backspace:
You have also not motivated
your intent with "non-random NS" and neither has Dawkins and you
refuse to spell out why are you using the same phrase as Darwin if it
is not clear wether Darwin had a random or non-random intent with NS.

Harshman:
"Motivated"? It *is* clear that Darwin had a non-random intent. This
would be obvious to anyone who had read the Origin seeking comprehension instead of, as you do, isolated phrases that could be used to perpetuate confusion. It isn't that you are not even wrong; you are wrong, and perversely so.

As true now as it was originally.

.

Relevant Pages

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