Re: POTM Nomination: Re: Can Steven J produce the testable details

Martin Hutton wrote:
Good reply to Tony "Fish in Barrel Feet" Pagano:

Seconded.



On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 19:06:57 -0400, Steven J. <steven_j@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jun 29, 3:37 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:25:21 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
<steve...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

-- [snip]

>No, Tony, the point of evolutionary theory is that it is possible to
>go into a great deal more detail than "nature did it," with testable
>predictions about *how* "nature did it."

1. Nonsense. Random mutations coupled to natural selection explains
only a very narrow range of observations. That is, it explains minor
variations---back and forth---within (admittedly) fuzzy limits of
EXISTING characteristics.

You post this shortly after reports of how _E. coli_ in the lab has
evolved the ability to metabolize citrate, an ability hitherto unknown
among this strain. You post it weeks after reports of how Italian
wall lizards, transplanted to a new island home on Pod Mrcaru, evolved
cecal valves in their digestive tracts (again, a trait previously
unknown in this species). You post it, on the other hand, years after
reports of how random mutation coupled with natural selection have
produced bacteria able to digest nylon, or to resist -- or even feed
upon -- antibiotics unknown in nature. There is NO reason, empirical
or theoretical (as opposed to theological) to suppose that mutation
and natural selection can alter a population "only [within] a very
narrow range." Even Michael Behe's (demonstrably flawed) argument in
_The Edge of Evolution_ only proscribes certain types of
transformations, with no indication that, e.g. the changes needed to
produce lemurs and humans from a common ancestor require any sequence
of mutations that Behe finds problematical.

Oh, and strictly speaking, "nonsense" implies that my assertion is not
merely wrong, but self-contradictory or otherwise absurd on its face.
I think you should stick with the more modest "you err."

2. Secularists don't have a clue how novelty emerges or how it
progresses to maturity. Such events have NEVER been observed---NEVER.

Since you've never defined this quality "novelty," it's not clear what
would qualify as observing it, or as an explanation for it. However,
one can have a pretty good idea of how something happens without
observing it directly (and conversely, one can observe a thing and
have no clue how it is possible). In evolution, "novel" features (as
most people define the term) emerge as modifications of previously-
existing features, or as modifications of duplications of previously-
existing features.

3. The fossil record does not show the ubiquitous transformism that
neoDarwinism predicted. It shows without exception "sudden
appearance" and "STASIS."

The last time we had this discussion, it was painfully clear that you
did not know what "stasis" meant (Gould and Eldredge used the term to
indicate that, at least at the morphological level, a species had
undergone no evolution at all; you use it to describe entire sequences
of similar but clearly distinct species each showing microevolutionary
changes as they transition from one to another). Someone who talks
about the Pearson, _et al._ foram sequence as showing "stasis" is just
using words as magic charms, not to convey meaning or express
understanding.

Note that many of what you seem to regard as "novelties" (e.g. bird
bills, bird wings, and feathers) do not appear full-blown and without
precursors in the fossil record: one can trace intermediate forms in
various maniraptoran theropods. Usually *species*, even entire
genera, appear without clear precursors, but speciation has been
observed in the lab (i.e. the sort of change that is worst-documented
in the fossil record is precisely the kind that has been observed in
the present day among living populations), and the fossil record is
known to be incomplete and incompletely uncovered and described.

Note, by the way, that Darwin himself suggested that a typical lineage
would spend far more time NOT evolving (i.e. in stasis) than it did
changing. Ernst Mayr, one of the founders of modern "neo-Darwinism,"
expanded on this idea, laying the theoretical groundwork for
"punctuated equilibria," the idea that stasis was the normal state of
species and populations, and that evolution took place not slowly over
an entire species but relatively rapidly in isolated populations of
the species. So it would seem that "neoDarwinism" does not
necessarily predict "ubiquitous transformism" in the fossil record.

4. Genetics/Population Genetics have not found any observable
mechanisms that would progressively and coherently incorporate only
beneficial mutations while discarding all the unhelpful ones. All of
the known mechanisms either shuffle existing information or
dramatically attenuate all mutations. Populations in the wild tend
toward stasis not ubiquitous change.

If by "unhelpful," you mean "selectively neutral," there is neither
need nor reason to suppose that they are routinely discarded. If by
"unhelpful," you mean "harmful," the observable mechanism is called
"death before reproducing." Again, you're using words as though they
were magical incantations, that achieved affects even though neither
you nor your audience know their meaning. Selective breeding does
exactly what you describe: progressively incorporate beneficial
("beneficial" depending on the selective criteria) mutations while
discarding harmful ones. Natural selection -- differential survival
of variants in an environment without intelligent intervention --
accomplishes the same thing, although generally much more slowly.
Since mutations occur constantly, new variation appears to replace
variation that has been lost due to natural selection. Note that in a
stable environment, populations will already tend to be well-adapted,
and will be experiencing stabilizing rather than transformative
selection.

5. One of the founders of population genetics (J.B.S. Haldane)
outlined a serious UNSOLVED problem----the cost of substitution when a
beneficial mutation occurs. This is another dramatic attenuator of
any change.

Haldane's dilemma makes a number of assumptions: that evolution takes
place in populations that are already well-suited to their
environment (i.e. the opposite assumption of punctuated equilibrium),
that all genetic changes are adaptive (i.e. the opposite assumption of
Kimura's theory that most evolutionary change, at the genetic level,
is neutral drift), and various other technical assumptions that are
also questionable in many circumstances. ReMine argued that Haldane's
calculations limited the number of beneficial mutations fixed since
the human-chimp last common ancestor to no more than 1,000, and
blithely regarded this as a disproof of evolution, without bothering
to even assert (much less provide evidence) that in fact there were
even 1,000 (much less a larger number) of adaptive differences between
the human and chimpanzee genome. So it is not clear why Haldane's
dilemma should be any sort of a problem for an evolutionary
explanation of biological diversity and complexity.

6. Natural Selection is a misleading misnomer. It is a term that
refers to "differential survival" in the wild. It is a stochastic
process; which is to say that there are so many variables in the wild
that it is no easier to predict which individuals in a population will
survive than it is to predict the weather. What is "beneficial" is
entirely situational. Populations already express a healthy variation
within its individuals so that it collectively survives in the varied
conditions with which it is faced.

Again, do you even understand the argument(s) you are presenting
here? To say that variables are so numerous that prediction is
difficult means that a process is "chaotic," not "stochastic;" our
inability to predict the outcome of a complex situation does not mean
that the situation is not largely, or even entirely, deterministic.
To say that what is "beneficial" is entirely situational is [a] to
tell me what I've told you on many occasions, and [b] to explain why
the same process can produce such diverse outcomes in nature. And the
point of a "healthy variation" is that some variants *don't* survive
in various environments; their variations are lost (and replaced by
similar or different variants by later mutations). So you've
constructed an argument that evolution must occur, and used it as an
argument that evolution cannot occur.

7. Abiogenesis is completely failed and stagnated.

Have you looked into the recent researches of Jack Szostak?
Abiogenesis research has been exploring a number of new (and new
versions of old) ideas in recent years. In any case, how the first
prokaryotes originated has very little bearing on the evidence that
you share common ancestry with gorillas and ginkos, and whether any
particular theory of abiogenesis holds water has very little to do
with whether mutation and natural selection can modify existing
structures in living things to produce "evolutionary novelties."

8. Finally Niles Eldredge has made clear over the years that
evolutionists not only DON'T know what causes novelty to emerge and
develop to maturity there is no consensus on the conception among
secularists. There are at least two major belief systems: the
Dawkinsian gradualists and the Gouldian Punc Eqers. And there is a
small

Again, you do not support your argument by repeatedly demonstrating
that you do not know what you're talking about. Phyletic gradualism
and punctuated equilibrium are different ideas about the tempo and
mode of evolution: whether species change constantly at a slower-than-
glacial pace, across their entire range, or whether evolution takes
place over centuries rather than millions of years in small areas.
It's not an argument over natural selection vs. some other mechanism
for adaptive change ("what causes novelty to emerge"). How fast and
how regularly a cause operates is not the same thing as what the cause
actually is.

But I'll call Steven J's bluff...please produce the EMPIRICALLY
testable details which show how novelty emerged in prehistory (and
should be emerging now), how novel structures progressed to maturity
in prehistory, and how this process overcomes all the attentuating
factors including Haldane's Dilemma. To save time for you a link to a
peer reviewed journal would suffice.

Let's see ... you don't know what you mean by "novelty" (neither do I,
but since you don't know, it won't do me any good to ask you), you
don't seem to understand that evolutionary change is supposed to be
contingent, not moving towards some predestined "maturity," you don't
know what Haldane's Dilemma is or what problems it really poses (and
granted, again, I'm no expert on the matter). So your question is
well-nigh meaningless, and any attempt to answer it (or some more
sensible set of questions in its place) would be beyond your
comprehension. So I shall not link to Lenski's _E. coli_ paper
recently published.

It is very difficult (for reasons you yourself, in your sole more or
less literate paragraph, have detailed) to say what selection
pressures operated in the prehistoric past, or whether the
transformation from theropod forelimb to bird's wing was driven purely
by natural selection or by some other sort of cause (e.g.
"structuralist" internal tendencies dictated by embryonic development
and physical constraints). One can, of course, test to see whether
natural selection operates in the present, or whether it can produce
traits that strike people as "novel" when they actually have some
testable concept of "novelty." My original point, of course, was that
one can much more easily test the whole idea that species are, in
fact, related by common descent, and test hypotheses about phylogeny
and about which structures were modified, in what ways, to produce
"novel" features. So I think you have misidentified my "bluff."

But thank you for responding.

T Pagano

-- [snip]

-- Steven J.





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