Ostrich wings, Intelligent design. Goofed up?

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

random, accidental, unguided, unpredictable, chance, I think we agree on the substance here if not the semantics?

But to say that something is accidental means that it wasn't intended to happen. Yes, nothing in nature happens on purpose, but evolution is a very simple example of cause and effect. It's random in the sense that nothing is planned.

Well that was Darwin's approach, you look at small variations in species and extrapolate that back to cover all natural history.

It's a little like extrapolating Newtonian laws to try to explain the physics of the entire Universe as they did in Darwin's day, his theory of evolution was a natural product of a Victorian age understanding of nature in this sense.

Extrapolation is tempting, but scales matter, things do work differently at different scales..

Darwin's initial approach might not have been perfect, but we've had over 150 odd years of scientific discoveries to show that, even though Darwin was not perfectly spot on, he was right in the end, Victorian era understanding or not.

You're not extrapolating anything. You're just showing your own incredulity in the matte.

Why do you continue to refuse to accept that evolution is, if it's not correct, it's at least the best supported and best understood description for how life as we see it today got to what it is now?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Such things didn't exist yet. (Well, Darwin didn't know that Mendel had started genetics.)

What Darwin did was to envision a path that broke down the "impossibility" claim regardless of the path or the mechanism of variation generation.

Well yes, though even in that day, one could recognize that the 'possibility' of the theory would depend entirely on the mechanism of change.
Without which there is no evolution.

Origin of Species (by means of natural selection) focusses entirely on natural selection, not any means of originating anything.

So I'd say that's a bit of a logical flaw right from the cover page, which was critiqued at the time:
The real question is not about the survival of the fittest, but the arrival of the fittest. That's still a mystery today.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Origin of Species (by means of natural selection) focusses entirely on natural selection, not any means of originating anything.

So I'd say that's a bit of a logical flaw right from the cover page, which was critiqued at the time:
The real question is not about the survival of the fittest, but the arrival of the fittest. That's still a mystery today.

The title should give a clue as to what it's about and what it's not about.

The origin of life is not what evolution is about. Evolution occurs after life has started, not the start of life.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

But to say that something is accidental means that it wasn't intended to happen. Yes, nothing in nature happens on purpose, but evolution is a very simple example of cause and effect. It's random in the sense that nothing is planned.

I take your point, 'accidental' can have slightly different meanings depending on context, but I think the intent is the same here- random, Darwin used the word 'chance'

Darwin's initial approach might not have been perfect, but we've had over 150 odd years of scientific discoveries to show that, even though Darwin was not perfectly spot on, he was right in the end, Victorian era understanding or not.

You're not extrapolating anything. You're just showing your own incredulity in the matte.

Why do you continue to refuse to accept that evolution is, if it's not correct, it's at least the best supported and best understood description for how life as we see it today got to what it is now?

His explicit methodology was to 'look for mechanisms currently in operation today' Same as Newtonian/ classical physics. Of course we try to explain the natural world with mechanisms we understand.

"150 odd years of scientific discoveries to show that, even though Darwin was not perfectly spot on, he was right in the end"

well that's certainly debatable!

I suspect Darwin may have been a skeptic himself at this point, he was quite open about his theory lacking empirical evidence, and that the evidence would depend on future fossil finds that would smooth the record out to fit the theory of gradual change.

"We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time" David Raup

 

[Guy Threepwood]

The title should give a clue as to what it's about and what it's not about.

The origin of life is not what evolution is about. Evolution occurs after life has started, not the start of life.

Well yes, that's why it was titled 'Origin of Species' not 'Origin of Life'

He didn't really attempt to address the latter, partly because the problem of abiogenesis was of course assumed to be a lot simpler then.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Why do you continue to refuse to accept that evolution is, if it's not correct, it's at least the best supported and best understood description for how life as we see it today got to what it is now?

I don't think it is. Darwin used the mechanisms he understood in his day, I don't fault him for that.

i.e. it was a better explanation 150 years ago, even 50 years ago, before we knew as much about genetics and the fuller picture of the fossil record.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Well yes, that's why it was titled 'Origin of Species' not 'Origin of Life'

He didn't really attempt to address the latter, partly because the problem of abiogenesis was of course assumed to be a lot simpler then.

He didn't address it because that's not the book was about.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

I don't think it is. Darwin used the mechanisms he understood in his day, I don't fault him for that.

i.e. it was a better explanation 150 years ago, even 50 years ago, before we knew as much about genetics and the fuller picture of the fossil record.

Except that it is, because there is nothing that can challenge it as a theory. 'God did it' is no answer and has zero evidence to back it up.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

I take your point, 'accidental' can have slightly different meanings depending on context, but I think the intent is the same here- random, Darwin used the word 'chance'


His explicit methodology was to 'look for mechanisms currently in operation today' Same as Newtonian/ classical physics. Of course we try to explain the natural world with mechanisms we understand.

"150 odd years of scientific discoveries to show that, even though Darwin was not perfectly spot on, he was right in the end"

well that's certainly debatable!

I suspect Darwin may have been a skeptic himself at this point, he was quite open about his theory lacking empirical evidence, and that the evidence would depend on future fossil finds that would smooth the record out to fit the theory of gradual change.

"We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time" David Raup

If nothing else, the quote from Raup bothers me, because it feels like the best example of a quote mine... and it is.

From Conflicts between Darwin and Paleontology", Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin Jan. 1979, Vol. 50 No. 1 p. 22-29:

"Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information -- what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appear to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin's problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which does show change but one that can hardly be looked upon as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection."
(Bolding is mine for emphasis)

He also wrote:

"We must distinguish between the fact of evolution -- defined as change in organisms over time -- and the explanation of this change. Darwin's contribution, through his theory of natural selection, was to suggest how the evolutionary change took place. The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be."

So Raup is not saying what you say he is saying.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

He didn't address it because that's not the book was about.

Agreed, I mean outside of that particular work, it was obviously something he pondered, they were aware of the cell- but with no idea of its contents. They imagined it to be something akin to an organic soup that lent itself to reproduction by some presumably simple chemical process.

But we can't entirely disassociate the two, since the working of the cell are also fundamental to it's capacity for change/evolution.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Agreed, I mean outside of that particular work, it was obviously something he pondered, they were aware of the cell- but with no idea of its contents. They imagined it to be something akin to an organic soup that lent itself to reproduction by some presumably simple chemical process.

But we can't entirely disassociate the two, since the working of the cell are also fundamental to it's capacity for change/evolution.

It's quite easy to disassociate the two. Evolution does not hinge on abiogenesis or creation, since we have the evidence that evolution as we know it to have occurred. The act of the first cell of life coming into being is not something that evolution is concerned with, since all the theory of evolution needs is for life to have started.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

If nothing else, the quote from Raup bothers me, because it feels like the best example of a quote mine... and it is.

From Conflicts between Darwin and Paleontology", Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin Jan. 1979, Vol. 50 No. 1 p. 22-29:

"Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information -- what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appear to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin's problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which does show change but one that can hardly be looked upon as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection."
(Bolding is mine for emphasis)

He also wrote:

"We must distinguish between the fact of evolution -- defined as change in organisms over time -- and the explanation of this change. Darwin's contribution, through his theory of natural selection, was to suggest how the evolutionary change took place. The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be."

So Raup is not saying what you say he is saying.

Well exactly.. that's the point I was making and he expands on it here. I've used this whole quote and other parts of it to make the same point.

i.e. I'm not saying what you're saying I'm saying Raup is saying!

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Well exactly.. that's the point I was making and he expands on it here. I've used this whole quote and other parts of it to make the same point.

i.e. I'm not saying what you're saying I'm saying Raup is saying! :;

Except that he's not agreeing with you at all. Which is the reason why, even though Darwin is given the credit for starting the groundwork for the theory of evolution, his ideas are not considered THE theory of evolution.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

It's quite easy to disassociate the two. Evolution does not hinge on abiogenesis or creation, since we have the evidence that evolution as we know it to have occurred. The act of the first cell of life coming into being is not something that evolution is concerned with, since all the theory of evolution needs is for life to have started.

So evolution is entirely dependent upon life having somehow started in the first place and in a very particular way that facilitates variation and adaptation and everything that the theory depends upon, that's a fairly important association is it not?

But I take your point, Darwinian evolution is about what happened thereafter.

But by this distinction, it's technically already conceded to be inadequate. It is generally recognized that the first Eukaryotes arising from a Darwinian process is so improbable, that it was more likely endosymbiosis.

i.e. its no longer a question of whether Darwinism can account for all life since conception, rather, how far short does it fall?

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

So evolution is entirely dependent upon life having somehow started in the first place and in a very particular way that facilitates variation and adaptation and everything that the theory depends upon, that's a fairly important association is it not?

But I take your point, Darwinian evolution is about what happened thereafter.

But by this distinction, it's technically already conceded to be inadequate. It is generally recognized that the first Eukaryotes arising from a Darwinian process is so improbable, that it was more likely endosymbiosis.

i.e. its no longer a question of whether Darwinism can account for all life since conception, rather, how far short does it fall?

So's Law - When a response begins with "So..." the likiness that a strawman will follow approaches 100%.

Your comment is 100% a strawman.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Except that he's not agreeing with you at all. Which is the reason why, even though Darwin is given the credit for starting the groundwork for the theory of evolution, his ideas are not considered THE theory of evolution.

.. he agrees with me regarding that particular point (among others) the record did not smooth out the staccato nature of the fossil record as Darwin and followers had predicted.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

.. he agrees with me regarding that particular point (among others) the record did not smooth out the staccato nature of the fossil record as Darwin and followers had predicted.

Except that even Darwin himself did not say it would be smooth. Even Darwin said that the fossil record was incomplete, and he was right. Not every animal that dies fossilizes and not even fossil survives the various forces of nature. Not one single person would suggest that the fossil record would be smooth.

You're arguing a strawman.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

So's Law - When a response begins with "So..." the likiness that a strawman will follow approaches 100%.

Your comment is 100% a strawman.

Your response started with So..

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

You're response started with So..

I'd probably get banned for the language that I would originally use in response to that comment, because you cannot be that dumb to think you have a point with that.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Except that even Darwin himself did not say it would be smooth. Even Darwin said that the fossil record was incomplete, and he was right. Not every animal that dies fossilizes and not even fossil survives the various forces of nature. Not one single person would suggest that the fossil record would be smooth.

You're arguing a strawman.

Darwin explicitly recognized the apparent sudden appearances in the record like the Cambrian, to be highly problematic, even fatal to his theory. And so also explicitly predicted that these sudden events would turn out to be mere artifacts of an incomplete record, that would be filled in and smoothed out as more fossils were found.

But the record became increasingly more sharply delineated into explosive radiation events as new fossils were discovered.

This incongruity is widely accepted to the point that Darwinism splintered into the gradualist and punctuated equilibrium camps. This is really not all that controversial- it's not a death blow to Darwinism in itself, but it's certainly widely recognized (including by Raup) that the record did not smooth out as Darwinists had hoped.