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Darwin's Illusion

Jose Fly

Fisker of men
False, the only evidence would be credible scientific sources rejecting Noble’s assertions.
Well then, we'll just disagree. I tend to think the fact that not one single scientific entity has adopted or currently uses Noble's framework is a very good indication that the arguments he made years ago have had little to no impact. You apparently think the opposite.

No, it is the other way around. It’s their assertions that Noble agrees with. Noble cited these other scientists (Shapiro JA, Mattick JS , etc.) because he agrees with their assertions as explained above.

Noble is not the only scientist advocating a paradigm shift to replace Neo-Darwinism. You ignored Gerd B. Müller (#911) and all other leading specialists from a dozen countries interviewed in Suzan Mazur’s book “The Paradigm Shifters: Overthrowing 'the Hegemony of the Culture of Darwin.”

James A. Shapiro, Frantisek Baluska, Ricardo Flores, Nigel Goldenfeld, Eugene Koonin, Kalevi Kull, Eviatar Nevo, Peter Saunders, Stuart Newman, Luis P Villarreal, Carl Richard Woese and others.

All these scientists are against the Neo-Darwinizam /Modern Synthesis that advanced Darwin’s obsolete ideas into a dogma. They are all against the dogmatic constrictions suppressing the progress of science. See #911 and #1597
You're not keeping track of your own arguments and are now back to (mistakenly or dishonestly) equating the EES with Noble's arguments. Try and do better.

Really, why was his lecture cited numerous times by other scientists/publications and without any contrasting statements? None.
LOL...you really think "his paper has been cited" is the same as "his framework is used in actual research"?

Hilarious.

If your reasoning were true, then it would only demonstrate dogmatic resistance, not a scientific refutation. Do you understand?
Oh now this is just priceless. So the reason why no one is utilizing Noble's claims in their work is not because they rejected them, but because of a conspiracy?

Again....hilarious.

Again, if you want to prove his assertions wrong, you have to provide a credible scientific refutation, there is no other way but how can you provide it? It doesn’t exist.
I don't have to....his arguments have long since slipped into irrelevance. You may as well demand that I disprove phrenology.

t’s a speculation of function through the comparison of genetic counterparts in different organisms.
Um...what? It most certainly is not "speculation", it's direct and confirmed identification of function.

It’s a matter of interpretations through the utilization of different available software tools/ algorithms to process the sequences with varying levels of accuracy (SIFTER is only one model among many other inference algorithms).
Correct, and in 2013 SIFTER was honored as the best-performing sequence-based protein function prediction method in the Critical Assessment of Function Annotation.

So again, if evolutionary relatedness isn't true, why does a model that's based on it generate such useful results?

Regardless, the similarities of building blocks and its functions don’t mean these organisms evolved from each other.
An argument no one has made. Please pay attention.

False, what other methods?
Nope, see above link. When compared against a variety of other methods SIFTER was the superior method.

The article claims SIFTER (Statistical Inference of Function Through Evolutionary Relationships) to be the most accurate. Other articles claim otherwise.
Again....nope, see above link.

And again, genome sequence studies provided empirical evidence that disproved the assumptions of the ToE/MS.
Again, there's no way I'm taking your empty say-so over the work of professionals.

My point boils down to the accuracy of the process
Well then if you were approaching this objectively and rationally, you'd have to conclude that the framework of evolutionary relatedness does indeed provide very useful info and produces important results.

Again, scientific advances of multiple disciplines such as epigenetics, physiology, genomics, ecology, plasticity research, population genetics, network approaches, novelty research, behavioural biology, microbiology and systems biology didn’t emerge/progress due to the ToE
Sorry, but your baseless "Nuh uh" isn't at all meaningful or compelling.

Noble's assertions are summarizing the latest and necessary changes
You think his 9 year old paper that argues for a framework that no one has since employed constitutes "the latest"?

Hilarious.
 

Dan From Smithville

He who controls the spice controls the universe.
Staff member
Premium Member
Well then, we'll just disagree. I tend to think the fact that not one single scientific entity has adopted or currently uses Noble's framework is a very good indication that the arguments he made years ago have had little to no impact. You apparently think the opposite.


You're not keeping track of your own arguments and are now back to (mistakenly or dishonestly) equating the EES with Noble's arguments. Try and do better.


LOL...you really think "his paper has been cited" is the same as "his framework is used in actual research"?

Hilarious.


Oh now this is just priceless. So the reason why no one is utilizing Noble's claims in their work is not because they rejected them, but because of a conspiracy?

Again....hilarious.


I don't have to....his arguments have long since slipped into irrelevance. You may as well demand that I disprove phrenology.


Um...what? It most certainly is not "speculation", it's direct and confirmed identification of function.


Correct, and in 2013 SIFTER was honored as the best-performing sequence-based protein function prediction method in the Critical Assessment of Function Annotation.

So again, if evolutionary relatedness isn't true, why does a model that's based on it generate such useful results?


An argument no one has made. Please pay attention.


Nope, see above link. When compared against a variety of other methods SIFTER was the superior method.


Again....nope, see above link.


Again, there's no way I'm taking your empty say-so over the work of professionals.


Well then if you were approaching this objectively and rationally, you'd have to conclude that the framework of evolutionary relatedness does indeed provide very useful info and produces important results.


Sorry, but your baseless "Nuh uh" isn't at all meaningful or compelling.


You think his 9 year old paper that argues for a framework that no one has since employed constitutes "the latest"?

Hilarious.
Denis Noble says that alligators are ornery because they got all them teeth and no toothbrush.

Denis Noble always said, 'Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get. But it isn't gonna be directed mutation.
 

LIIA

Well-Known Member
Did a little side reading in the interim (what else are train rides for?).
But when you say '...not any evidence that beneficial mutations are chance events that emerge accidentally among other endless, useless or harmful mutations', it raised a question for me.

You do agree that there are useless or harmful mutations, correct? Are these also directed in your opinion?

Mutations/changes in the genetic code can lead to cancer and other genetic diseases. The cells work constantly to maintain the integrity of its genetic code and preserve the health of a species through several mechanisms of DNA repair (direct reversal of the damage, excision repair, and postreplication repair) that utilizes complex molecular machines to ensure the survival of a species by enabling parental DNA to be inherited as faithfully as possible by offspring and also continuously search for mistakes, errors or damage and make DNA repair. Replication errors are minimized when the DNA replication machinery “proofreads” its own synthesis, but sometimes mismatched base pairs escape proofreading.

DNA repair | biology | Britannica

Yes, there are useless/harmful mutations. DNA repair proteins are not a foolproof solution and cannot fix all mistakes. If damage or copying errors are not repaired, they cause a mutation/change in the DNA sequence. those are not directed changes but rather the errors that escaped the directions of DNA repair mechanisms.

Errors are the exception not the rule. The rule as Denis Noble and James A. Shapiro said “It is difficult (if not impossible) to find a genome change operator that is truly random in its action within the DNA of the cell where it works. All careful studies of mutagenesis find statistically significant non-random patterns of change” , “not only mutations are not random, but also proteins did not evolve via gradual accumulation of change.”

(353) Non-Random Directed Mutations Confirmed. - YouTube

James A. Shapiro, a biologist and expert in bacterial genetics said, “Research dating back to the 1930s has shown that genetic change is the result of cell-mediated processes, not simply accidents or damage to the DNA. This cell-active view of genome change applies to all scales of DNA sequence variation, from point mutations to large-scale genome rearrangements and whole genome duplications (WGDs). This conceptual change to active cell inscriptions controlling RW genome functions has profound implications for all areas of the life sciences.”

How life changes itself: the Read-Write (RW) genome - PubMed

How life changes itself: The Read–Write (RW) genome (uchicago.edu)

See # 1245

Darwin's Illusion | Page 63 | Religious Forums
 

LIIA

Well-Known Member
Well then, we'll just disagree. I tend to think the fact that not one single scientific entity has adopted or currently uses Noble's framework is a very good indication that the arguments he made years ago have had little to no impact. You apparently think the opposite.

You know this is not a scientific refutation, don’t you? Your disagreement or “what you tend to think" is meaningless. You need to provide credible scientific sources rejecting Noble’s assertions; there is no other way.

And what framework? Do you mean the EES? Yes, the EES is not agreed upon or adopted by scientific entities but that has nothing to do with the established empirical evidence across multiple disciplines that disproved the central assumptions of the MS. Why do you think no credible scientific refutation was ever published against Noble's assertions?

You cannot equate the EES with the refutation of the modern synthesis. The EES is not agreed upon but the reasons that disproved the central assumptions of the MS are already established by latest advances across multiple scientific disciplines.

The EES didn’t cause the refutation of the MS, The EES is an attempt to fill the void after the central assumptions of the MS were disproved. The EES is an outcome/response to the need for change not the cause for the change.

You're not keeping track of your own arguments and are now back to (mistakenly or dishonestly) equating the EES with Noble's arguments. Try and do better.

It’s the other way around; you are the one who is obviously equating the EES with the refutation of the MS as I explained above. Yet you blame it on me!!

As I said many times, I’m not concerned about the EES, my concern is the scientific advances that gave rise to the refutation of the MS central assumptions.

The assertion of Noble, Müller and other scientists against the Modern Synthesis are based on established scientific advances across multiple scientific disciplines. The EES is a proposed framework to incorporate/address these new advances. The EES neither give rise to these advances nor the disapproval of the MS.

LOL...you really think "his paper has been cited" is the same as "his framework is used in actual research"?

Hilarious.

Being cited numerous times means that his paper is an acknowledged scientific reference in scientific research, especially that there is no single published research with contrasting statements against his paper.

Again, we are not talking about the EES as a proposed framework to replace the MS; we are talking about the specific scientific reasons that disproved the central assumptions of the modern synthesis. These reasons are established scientific advances across multiple disciplines. You cannot equate the EES with the refutation of the modern synthesis.

Oh now this is just priceless. So the reason why no one is utilizing Noble's claims in their work is not because they rejected them, but because of a conspiracy?

Again....hilarious.

Again, even if your claim is true, it’s not a scientific refutation against Noble’s paper.

If a scientific entity wants to reject a research paper by a prominent scientist such as Noble, which was published in a respectful scientific journal (The Experimental Physiology), then they have to publish a credible scientific refutation, (which never happened). Without publishing a legitimate scientific refutation, alleged rejection of his paper (if true) wouldn’t have any explanation other than " dogmatic resistance”. It wouldn’t have any other rational justification. Do you understand?

I don't have to....his arguments have long since slipped into irrelevance. You may as well demand that I disprove phrenology.

Nonsense, you have to, but you simply can’t.

It has been some time since Nobel published his assertions against the MS without any credible scientific rejection till now. Unless such credible rejection gets published, then the resistance evidently remains an unjustified dogmatic resistance.

It’s ridiculous to equate the latest 21st century science advances that disproved the MS to obsolete pseudoscience such as phrenology.
 

LIIA

Well-Known Member
Correct, and in 2013 SIFTER was honored as the best-performing sequence-based protein function prediction method in the Critical Assessment of Function Annotation.

So again, if evolutionary relatedness isn't true, why does a model that's based on it generate such useful results?

Your article is promoting the performance of SIFTER in comparison to other inference algorithms. Yet the same article said about the inference algorithms “Computational methods are widely used for automated annotation. Unfortunately, these predictions have littered the databases with erroneous information, for a variety of reasons including the propagation of errors and the systematic flaws in BLAST and related methods”.

SIFTER Protein Function Prediction (berkeley.edu)

Statistical inference of function is a matter of interpretation, even so SIFTER has been shown to outperform other methods such as BLAST but to put things in perspective, at 99% specificity, approximately 24.4% of the annotations are correct in SIFTER vs. 2.4% correct annotations in BLAST. Again, SIFTER is only one of many available inference algorithms with varying levels of accuracy.

2019, an article published by BMC addressing protein function prediction concluded the following, “We conclude that while predictions of the molecular function and biological process annotations have slightly improved over time, those of the cellular component have not. Term-centric prediction of experimental annotations remains equally challenging; although the performance of the top methods is significantly better than the expectations set by baseline methods in C. albicans and D. melanogaster, it leaves considerable room and need for improvement.”

The CAFA challenge reports improved protein function prediction and new functional annotations for hundreds of genes through experimental screens | Genome Biology | Full Text (biomedcentral.com)

An argument no one has made. Please pay attention.

Agreed, the similarities of building blocks and its functions don’t mean these organisms evolved from each other.

Nope, see above link. When compared against a variety of other methods SIFTER was the superior method.

Irrelevant, all other inference of function methods (such as BLAST) are based on evolutionary principles.

If the other methods are not based on evolutionary principles, then your comparison would make sense but you’re comparing to other methods adopting the same evolutionary principles and with varying levels of accuracy.

Again, there's no way I'm taking your empty say-so over the work of professionals.

My empty say-so? Didn’t I provide my sources multiple times? Here it is once again. See #781 and #1245

Physiology is rocking the foundations of evolutionary biology (wiley.com)

upload_2022-10-7_22-0-31.png


Shapiro JA (2011). Evolution: a View from the 21st Century . Pearson Education Inc., Upper Saddle River , NJ , USA .

Sorry, but your baseless "Nuh uh" isn't at all meaningful or compelling.

Seriously? Is it my baseless denial or yours? You started your post by a meaningless disagreement followed by multiple “nope”, "Nuh uh" and “hilarious”. Do you consider such nonsense denial comments to be a meaningful argument?

Again, below is my source confirming that the advances of these disciplines are the reasons that give rise to challenges against the classical model of evolution/MS.

Why an extended evolutionary synthesis is necessary (royalsocietypublishing.org)

upload_2022-10-7_22-1-28.png



You think his 9 year old paper that argues for a framework that no one has since employed constitutes "the latest"?

With respect to the established evidence against the MS, yes, Noble’s paper is the latest and will continue to be the latest till a scientific rejection or contrasting statements against it are published, which never happened yet.

Again, the EES or any future theory/myth that would be eventually agreed upon is not my concern. My concern is the established empirical evidence against the Modern Synthesis.
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Well then, we'll just disagree. I tend to think the fact that not one single scientific entity has adopted or currently uses Noble's framework is a very good indication that the arguments he made years ago have had little to no impact.
What on earth would constitute a "single scientific entity" or indeed Noble's framework? The man was a crucial figure in the development of systems biology and a major source for work across disciplines relating to conceptual reforms in biology and related fields. He's a leading research scientist and one of the more influential researchers in the life sciences of the latter 20th and 21st centuries. This is so tired. Coming back at an argument with "it's not used" isn't an argument even if it were true, and it isn't.


You think his 9 year old paper that argues for a framework that no one has since employed constitutes "the latest"?
Just for fun, I went looking a bit for some papers that didn't just rely on Noble's work but built specifically on that paper (although most of the time that's not how scientific research works at all, nor references in a scientific paper either, in which it is typical to site sequentially work that is done over years by one or more individuals on a single research project or question or the like ). It didn't take long to find counterexamples for you. I mean, one recent paper literally opens with references to Noble and his work:

"In his recent article, Noble listed the four illusions of the Modern Synthesis (MS) that have been exposed by the development of science largely this century, some eighty years after their formulation (Noble, 2021a). They are: Natural Selection, Weissmann Barrier, Rejection of Darwin Gemmules, and Central Dogma. He ascribed these illusions to unintended errors of eminent scientists due to imprecise and misleading use of linguistic terms in interpreting evidence and theorizing about evolution. As a physiologist and a systems' biologist who is thinking deeply about evolution, he wants readers to change their view of how organisms work, away from MS's upward causality of “DNA brain” controlling every function of a cell, to a downward hierarchical causality of the wholeness of the cellular system, his principle of biological relativity. To uncover MS's illusions, he uses many arguments and concepts that the careful reader will find in this paper as well.

Noble's perspectives also reflect the general viewpoints promoted by the extended evolutionary synthesis (EES), the movement that was initiated in the 1950s by Wadington (1957), popularized in the 1980s by Gould and Eldredge (1993), and reconceptualized by Pigliucci (2007) and Muller (2007)."

Crkvenjakov, R., & Heng, H. H. (2021). Further illusions: On key evolutionary mechanisms that could never fit with Modern Synthesis. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology.
(see attached)

Not that this was it, of course:
"we ourselves and many others over the years have considered neo-Darwinism itself as being in need of major conceptual reform. While it unquestionably deserves respect as the over-arching foundation theory of biology it no longer reflects the actual state of affairs concerning the totality of life, its history and how it may have emerged and evolved both on Earth and throughout the Cosmos (Steele, 1979, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, 1981, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, 1982, Bateson et al., 2017, Noble, 2013, Noble, 2017, Noble, 2019)."
Steele, E. J., Gorczynski, R. M., Lindley, R. A., Liu, Y., Temple, R., Tokoro, G., ... & Wickramasinghe, N. C. (2019). Lamarck and panspermia-on the efficient spread of living systems throughout the cosmos. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 149, 10-32.

"Adaptive improvisation as a complement for natural selection at the single individual level
This principle of self-organization offers a conceptual process enabling adaptation to novel stressful conditions occurring during the lifetime of every single individual. As such, it addresses a critical limitation of natural selection and specifies an efficient new way in which physiology might contribute to evolutionary processes [50, 143, 144]."
[NOTE: 143 is Noble's paper in question, although he also authored or co-authored 50 and 144]
Soen, Y., Knafo, M., & Elgart, M. (2015). A principle of organization which facilitates broad Lamarckian-like adaptations by improvisation. Biology direct, 10(1), 1-17.

Noble's paper you dismiss along with others is even incorporated into cutting edge cancer research:
"Currently, as interest in identifying different organic codes increases (Barbieri, 1998, 2018), it is necessary to unify these codes under system inheritance (Heng and Heng, 2021). Such discussions will also promote a 21st century view of evolution (Shapiro, 2011, 2019; Noble, 2013, 2016).

Traditionally, most evolutionary researchers are not familiar with cancer evolution and consider cancer unsuitable for organismal evolutionary studies (Heng, 2015). Curiously, some well-respected scholars such as Huxley and Van Valen have long considered cancers as new biological species. In recent years, an increased number of evolutionary researchers have joined this exciting field (Ling et al., 2015; Roche et al., 2018; Sun et al., 2018; Somarelli et al., 2020). By showing how cancer can be used as a system to study evolutionary principles, we hope more evolutionary biologists will join its ranks. This was one of the main goals of our Cancer and Evolution Symposium (see Shapiro, Shapiro, and Noble, in this issue)." (emphases added)

Heng, J., & Heng, H. H. (2021). Two-phased evolution: Genome chaos-mediated information creation and maintenance. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 165, 29-42. (see attached}

Really, this is getting pathetic. It's the kind or argument I expect from creationists. Back-peddling, ad hominem attacks on a researcher, special pleading, and general denigration of any work presented as counter-evidence.
 

Attachments

  • Further illusions. On key evolutionary mechanisms that could never fit with Modern Synthesis.pdf
    375.5 KB · Views: 0
  • Two-phased evolution. Genome chaos-mediated information creation and maintenance.pdf
    3.1 MB · Views: 0

Dan From Smithville

He who controls the spice controls the universe.
Staff member
Premium Member
The original post that was the genesis of this thread was an attack on Darwin using erroneous claims, poor logic and a distinct ignorance of the subject of the attack and science in general. The notions on which this flawed attack on science were launched through an attack on a dead man were corrected along the way. The theory of evolution is not a theory on the origin of life. The creationist idea of spontaneous generation was long ago falsified and plays no part in the theory of evolution. Natural selection is not an entirely random process. Directed mutation has never been demonstrated and claims of such have been found to be unsupported by the evidence.

Science is not set in stone or predicated on the past existence of people elevated to godhood by the very individuals that seek to unseat them. Indeed, the ridiculous idea that attacking science of the past or scientists long dead somehow leads to the rejection of science in the present should be put to bed. Unfortunately that is not the chess that those rejecting science on doctrinal grounds play.

What this thread is all about in my opinion is one lengthy gap argument. Scientists don't have all the answers so my belief wins by default to fill the gap. Arguments among scientists reveal fatal flaws in science that should lead to the rejection of science that opposes doctrine, therefore my doctrine wins by default. What we really have here is interpretation and my interpretation based on things I cannot demonstrate is a better interpretation than demonstrable interpretations based on evidence or consensus review of the evidence.

I don't much care for gap arguments that really only serve the whims of people and not the ideals that the representatives of belief claim for their beliefs.

The existence of disagreement in science is not evidence that science is failed allowing any belief to take over and declare itself the winner. Where is the logic in that chess? Arguments over the interpretation of data does not mean that pseudoscience automatically becomes the undeniable answer. Where is the logic in that chess? Flooding debate and discussion with excruciatingly lengthy mantras of cherry-picked name dropping is not evidence against valid scientific explanations. Where is the logic in that chess? To continually claim without proper support, discussion and full recognition that the entire basis of the theory of evolution has been falsified when that is simply not true is clearly the sort of chess I have seen before and will again.

According to many famous, quotable scientists, the modern synthesis has been extended almost continually since it was formulated. Any extended synthesis of the theory of evolution is still science based on evidence and not pseudoscience based on belief. Attempts to employ scientific disagreement as a means to install a particular belief-based view are flawed on that fact.

If the installation of belief were to exist on that basis, then I think it is my beliefs that should be the winner and not yours. I think it is my view of a designer that is correct and not yours. How about that?

We would be right back where we started before there was a tool to help us understand the Works around us and the practical employment of evidence and reason over undemonstrable belief no matter how popular some might be. No single scientific entity exists on or promotes a framework based on whatever someone wants to believe is true. No science exists on that basis at all.
 
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gnostic

The Lost One
The notions on which this flawed attack on science were launched through an attack on a dead man were corrected along the way.
Yes, that’s what I see too.

Darwin was only a pioneer, but today’s biology have gone beyond the 19th century.

Attacks on Darwin, don’t debunk evolutionary biology of the last 30 years.

Evolution have been expanded, corrected & updated since then, and Darwinism published works are barely mentioned in today’s biology textbooks. Some authors may provide historical background that may or may not be covered in the chapters concerning Evolution’s history, but that’s not required reading.

Current biology textbooks, are only concerned with biology of today, and most only focused on extant species.

Most biology textbooks don’t even covered the subject on paleontology, or fossils of extinct species.

Being a biologist don’t mean you have to become a paleontologist too. Paleontology isn’t a required subject.

As to the origin of first life...

The theory of evolution is not a theory on the origin of life. The creationist idea of spontaneous generation was long ago falsified and plays no part in the theory of evolution.

...biology students don’t require to study Abiogenesis too, as Abiogenesis is still a hypothesis.

The only people working on Abiogenesis are qualified biology and biochemistry researchers...not something tackled by undergrad students of bachelor degrees. Students in master degree or pursuing PhDs may get involved in Abiogenesis, but not those just getting their bachelors. Even then, only fraction of them would go anywhere near Abiogenesis.

More than 90% of biology students would never have study fossils, and even more so (higher percentage) wouldn’t even touch Abiogenesis.
 

cladking

Well-Known Member
Evolution have been expanded, corrected & updated since then, and Darwinism published works are barely mentioned in today’s biology textbooks. Some authors may provide historical background that may or may not be covered in the chapters concerning Evolution’s history, but that’s not required reading.

It sounds like what you guys are saying is that Evolution is "Darwin's illusion".

Perhaps we're all in general agreement afterall.

Now if we could just come up with some better perspective than "species" for what creates so many widely diverse individuals. Hmmmmmm....
 

Dan From Smithville

He who controls the spice controls the universe.
Staff member
Premium Member
Yes, that’s what I see too.

Darwin was only a pioneer, but today’s biology have gone beyond the 19th century.

Attacks on Darwin, don’t debunk evolutionary biology of the last 30 years.

Evolution have been expanded, corrected & updated since then, and Darwinism published works are barely mentioned in today’s biology textbooks. Some authors may provide historical background that may or may not be covered in the chapters concerning Evolution’s history, but that’s not required reading.

Current biology textbooks, are only concerned with biology of today, and most only focused on extant species.

Most biology textbooks don’t even covered the subject on paleontology, or fossils of extinct species.

Being a biologist don’t mean you have to become a paleontologist too. Paleontology isn’t a required subject.

As to the origin of first life...



...biology students don’t require to study Abiogenesis too, as Abiogenesis is still a hypothesis.

The only people working on Abiogenesis are qualified biology and biochemistry researchers...not something tackled by undergrad students of bachelor degrees. Students in master degree or pursuing PhDs may get involved in Abiogenesis, but not those just getting their bachelors. Even then, only fraction of them would go anywhere near Abiogenesis.

More than 90% of biology students would never have study fossils, and even more so (higher percentage) wouldn’t even touch Abiogenesis.
I agree, there is a difference between the literacy of a subject and expertise in that subject. I certainly do not consider some random person on this forum with no clear understanding of science to be able to declare that a theory is defunct and for that to have any meaning or substance.

As a entomologist, I am not a qualified expert in the full scope of evolutionary biology to declare that the modern synthesis is dead and the extended synthesis is now the best explanation. Perhaps it is, but even among the experts only a small number have rallied to that end and among supporters there is disagreement over the extent of the extension.

In any event, it is still an explanation grounded in evidence, logic and reason. It is science and not a doorway for any belief or pseudoscience to transform magically into fact. Not an opening as a default win for any particular personal belief.
 

gnostic

The Lost One
It sounds like what you guys are saying is that Evolution is "Darwin's illusion".

Perhaps we're all in general agreement afterall.

Now if we could just come up with some better perspective than "species" for what creates so many widely diverse individuals. Hmmmmmm....
Except that the theory of evolution haven’t been debunked, not even with Natural Selection.

But today’s evolutionary biology include Genetic Drift, Gene Flow, Genetic Hitchhiking and Mutations, all still valid and tested mechanisms. None of these mechanisms have been refuted.

Natural Selection have even improved with modern knowledge of genetics and biochemistry.

You still don’t understand there are more to Evolution than just Darwin and his original model of Natural Selection.

When are you ever going to focus on today’s biology and not focusing so much on attacking a 19th century naturalist?

Biology have moved on. Why are creationists including yourself are so fixated on the the 19th century?

It seem double standard, that you never say anything about the 19th century electromagnetism, by Michael Faraday & James Clerk Maxwell, where electromagnetism have gone beyond the classical model, not only concerning in applications and technology of electromagnetism, but its fundamental relationships with modern quantum physics, which neither pioneers knew about.

Are you up-to-date with modern electromagnetism? Have you read anything on Quantum Electrodynamics?

The 2nd century BCE Archimedes was a great mathematics, astronomer and more importantly extraordinary inventor for his time, but should we attack Archimedes because he didn’t know anything about motorized engines for cars, ships and planes?

Do we attack Aristarchus of Samos (Archimedes’s older contemporary) for heliocentric planetary motion model, WITHOUT inventing a telescope?

Just because Darwin didn’t know some of the things that wasn’t known till the 20th and 21st centuries, but so did other pioneers, with Maxwell, Faraday, Galileo, Newton.

And even Albert Einstein and Max Planck and Georges Lemaître didn’t know many of the things that weren’t known during their lifetime.

You do understand sciences is progressive endeavors and often accumulated knowledge, and not about knowing every single things in the “first go”. Pioneers are pioneers, they are not prophets, fortune tellers or psychics.

Attacking someone who have been dead for not knowing some things, seemed highly illogical and seriously pathetic, imo.
 

gnostic

The Lost One
I agree, there is a difference between the literacy of a subject and expertise in that subject. I certainly do not consider some random person on this forum with no clear understanding of science to be able to declare that a theory is defunct and for that to have any meaning or substance.

As a entomologist, I am not a qualified expert in the full scope of evolutionary biology to declare that the modern synthesis is dead and the extended synthesis is now the best explanation. Perhaps it is, but even among the experts only a small number have rallied to that end and among supporters there is disagreement over the extent of the extension.

In any event, it is still an explanation grounded in evidence, logic and reason. It is science and not a doorway for any belief or pseudoscience to transform magically into fact. Not an opening as a default win for any particular personal belief.

My problem with most creationists is they think that we treat Charles Darwin is some gods or a prophet, hence they think of evolution as a religion.

I know of Darwin’ limitations and some of his errors, but he is no god, but attacking Darwin or calling evolution a religion, don’t refute Evolution at all.

Evolution can only be refuted by evidence, which they don’t have.

And you’re right, there are still not enough consensus for extended synthesis to completely replace the current model of evolution.
 

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Science is not set in stone or predicated on the past existence of people elevated to godhood by the very individuals that seek to unseat them. Indeed, the ridiculous idea that attacking science of the past or scientists long dead somehow leads to the rejection of science in the present should be put to bed.
Absolutely. It is one of the thing I find most baffling in "arguments" presented by proponents of ID/creationists. For a long time, I couldn't really understand even the motivation behind e.g., attacking Darwin or presenting evidence against a version of evolutionary biology that predated our understanding of basic cellular processes as if this somehow meant something about modern evolutionary theory. To me, it was like trying to argue against nuclear physics or quantum chemistry by showing how ancient Greek atomists were clearly wrong.
Some of it is due to parroting arguments read, of course, but I've read Behe and some of the other oft quoted creationists (or "ID proponents" as the rebranding campaign would have it), and this kind of strategy is at best only a part of the usual "argument". Rather, the "present counter-evidence to outdated notions and claims" strategy seems prevalent mostly online or in the published equivalent.

What clued me into a possible explanation is how many would-be stalwart proponents of science "countered" such crude tactics. It's almost exclusively in such discussions that I've encountered the long-suffering explanation that "in science, a theory is..." followed by some primary school textbook formulation of The Scientific Method Myth.
And I realized that, often enough, parties on both sides shared a lot of the same misconceptions. And why not? It's so ingrained in so much of scientific education (up to and including university level courses) that it takes some time for practicing scientists to realize it doesn't describe what they do in the slightest.
But for those who don't actually do scientific research, this version of "science" tends to be how they conceive of it. And in this educational myth of the nature of scientific method, scientific research and practice consists mainly of formulating hypothesis in order to disprove (or at least test) them until one finds a hypothesis one cannot disprove. Then, after more testing by other scientists, this hypothesis somehow becomes "theory" (probably at the International Society of Scientists' Elite Task Force Committee that is held after the Global Scientists Symposia presentation where scientists are given the opportunity to submit hypotheses they believe have been tested enough to warrant the rank of "Theory" by the SoS's Elite Task Force Committee).
In this "science education" narrative, everything from testing hypotheses to the role of theory in scientific research all constitute relatively isolated, disparate components of a given scientific discipline. Since a given hypothesis (which, after all, is supposed to mature into a full-grown theory on a diet of experimental data) is basically fixed, so are theories. And therefore, a scientific theory somehow exists as an abstract statement that is supposed to be supported by extensive testing and is more or less stagnant and unchanging unless it is eventually rejected and/or replaced.
So, too often, both creationists and proponents of "science" whose background consists entirely on elementary science education and popular science sensationalism have a similar view of the status and nature of scientific theories. And they are wholly and completely wrong.
And it's incredibly tiring. Theories are continually evolving, and the vast majority of scientific research is dedicated to this process. Nor is their some sort of universal type of scientific "theory". In reality, the term as used scientific literature can refer to anything from a guess to something that encompasses entire fields and is the foundation for huge swathes of scientific research (and is therefore supported, extended, and continually tested/researched by the work of scientists who successfully use the theory to formulate and test hypotheses or otherwise engage in theoretical or experimental science).
Evolutionary theory is a prime example. Whole fields are built upon it, and it is used as a successful framework in everything from the foundations of many medical sciences to theoretical computer science. It is ludicrous to suppose that attacking "Darwin" or some version of "Darwinism" means anything at all. The same may be said of attacking the "modern synthesis". It was formulated during the heyday of eugenics, it was never mean to be some sort of "theory of everything" in biology, and claims by various biologists and other scientists and philosophers that it is badly in need of a conceptual reform are all claims made within evolutionary theory, and many well-known proponents are very tired of having their works cherry-picked in order to support ideologies like creationism they are radically opposed to (Massimo Pigliucci comes to mind, as I was around him once when he went off on this).

The existence of disagreement in science is not evidence that science is failed allowing any belief to take over and declare itself the winner.
That's true, but it can mist the point. Agreement over a theory is seldom all or nothing in science. Most of the cutting edge research and many competing research programs work to settle questions or disagreements about certain aspects of a given theory or framework. It could be something like whether the neural code should be understood in terms of rate coding vs. temporal coding (a problem that is somewhat unresolved but mostly increasingly irrelevant as it becomes clearer that it may be neither or both and that probably something of both but in a more complicated formulation). Using creationist rhetorical strategies, one would try to "disprove" neuroscience by showing the evidence temporal coding proponents have marshalled over the rate coding paradigm. But both camps, as is almost invariably the case, are firmly situated in neuroscience and agree on much more than they disagree with.
Or, to turn to physics, there were at least two crises in the formulation of modern physics during the attempt to obtain a relativistic (covariant) formulation of quantum mechanincs. The first was resolved by the proper understanding of the Klein-Gordon and Dirac equations in terms of a field theory and (the now somewhat anachronistic) second quantization scheme as well as the successful regularization and renormalization procedures (then largely separate from one another) that made QED so incredibly successful and gave it such unbelievable accuracy. Then, when the field theory approach was extended to atomic and nuclear physics (in particular to the parton models, and nuclear forces beyond that of electromagnetism), it seemed to fail. For a time, a fair number of physicists developed an approach first championed by Heisenberg that became known as the S-matrix bootstrap program or just the S-matrix theory. This was a kind of radical democratic take on nuclear and subatomic interactions that eschewed field theory, and many a well-known physicist worked on it or something like it to explain experimental data while remaining field theorists dwindled in number and in successes. That changed with the advent of the quark model and what essentially became the standard model we know today. The S-matrix remains as a useful calculational tool in field theory and beyond. It was the approach to the S-matrix and the attempt to accept it as somehow fundamental over and against field theory that was abandoned.
At no time, however, did physicists give up on physics, or relativity, or quantum theory, or any number of other things one could claim was "disproved" using creationist logic.

These "arguments" just completely fail to capture the nature of science, scientific research, and scientific knowledge.
 

LIIA

Well-Known Member
The original post that was the genesis of this thread was an attack on Darwin using erroneous claims, poor logic and a distinct ignorance of the subject of the attack and science in general. The notions on which this flawed attack on science were launched through an attack on a dead man were corrected along the way. The theory of evolution is not a theory on the origin of life. The creationist idea of spontaneous generation was long ago falsified and plays no part in the theory of evolution. Natural selection is not an entirely random process. Directed mutation has never been demonstrated and claims of such have been found to be unsupported by the evidence.

Science is not set in stone or predicated on the past existence of people elevated to godhood by the very individuals that seek to unseat them. Indeed, the ridiculous idea that attacking science of the past or scientists long dead somehow leads to the rejection of science in the present should be put to bed. Unfortunately that is not the chess that those rejecting science on doctrinal grounds play.

What this thread is all about in my opinion is one lengthy gap argument. Scientists don't have all the answers so my belief wins by default to fill the gap. Arguments among scientists reveal fatal flaws in science that should lead to the rejection of science that opposes doctrine, therefore my doctrine wins by default. What we really have here is interpretation and my interpretation based on things I cannot demonstrate is a better interpretation than demonstrable interpretations based on evidence or consensus review of the evidence.

I don't much care for gap arguments that really only serve the whims of people and not the ideals that the representatives of belief claim for their beliefs.

The existence of disagreement in science is not evidence that science is failed allowing any belief to take over and declare itself the winner. Where is the logic in that chess? Arguments over the interpretation of data does not mean that pseudoscience automatically becomes the undeniable answer. Where is the logic in that chess? Flooding debate and discussion with excruciatingly lengthy mantras of cherry-picked name dropping is not evidence against valid scientific explanations. Where is the logic in that chess? To continually claim without proper support, discussion and full recognition that the entire basis of the theory of evolution has been falsified when that is simply not true is clearly the sort of chess I have seen before and will again.

According to many famous, quotable scientists, the modern synthesis has been extended almost continually since it was formulated. Any extended synthesis of the theory of evolution is still science based on evidence and not pseudoscience based on belief. Attempts to employ scientific disagreement as a means to install a particular belief-based view are flawed on that fact.

If the installation of belief were to exist on that basis, then I think it is my beliefs that should be the winner and not yours. I think it is my view of a designer that is correct and not yours. How about that?

We would be right back where we started before there was a tool to help us understand the Works around us and the practical employment of evidence and reason over undemonstrable belief no matter how popular some might be. No single scientific entity exists on or promotes a framework based on whatever someone wants to believe is true. No science exists on that basis at all.

Why repeating a collection of irrelevant points that have been discussed/refuted multiple times? Is it to confuse/steer the uninformed readers away from the core discussion about the Neo-Darwinism /Modern Synthesis being false?
 

LIIA

Well-Known Member
It sounds like what you guys are saying is that Evolution is "Darwin's illusion".

Perhaps we're all in general agreement afterall.

Evolutionists on the thread keep trying to make the discussion appear to be about “Darwin's Illusion” to make it look like irrelevant discussion. Yes, Darwin has his illusion but it's not really about Darwin. The core discussion has been about the Neo-Darwinism /Modern Synthesis, the mainstream evolutionary theory today being false.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
Why repeating a collection of irrelevant points that have been discussed/refuted multiple times? Is it to confuse/steer the uninformed readers away from the core discussion about the Neo-Darwinism /Modern Synthesis being false?

- True.
- False.
- Neither because it is depended on different unproven assumptions.

There are 3 positions and not just 2 to the informed readers, which would seem to mean that there are only 2 positions, is the uniformed one.
I can play that game to.
 

LIIA

Well-Known Member
- True.
- False.
- Neither because it is depended on different unproven assumptions.

There are 3 positions and not just 2 to the informed readers, which would seem to mean that there are only 2 positions, is the uniformed one.
I can play that game to.

Isn’t your third option=false?

Your positions are possibilities that may be considered in the absence of evidence but in the presence of evidence, a conclusion can be made. It’s no longer a matter of possibilities.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
Isn’t your third option=false?

Your positions are possibilities that may be considered in the absence of evidence but in the presence of evidence, a conclusion can be made. It’s no longer a matter of possibilities.

No, my third option is that it depends on what you consider evidence versus other versions of what is considered evidence.
You operate with a dichotomy. I operate with cognitive relativism. I have read to many books on different understanding of evidence to accept yours as only true or false.
 

LIIA

Well-Known Member
No, my third option is that it depends on what you consider evidence versus other versions of what is considered evidence.
You operate with a dichotomy. I operate with cognitive relativism. I have read to many books on different understanding of evidence to accept yours as only true or false.

It sounds like you have options but no conclusion.
 
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