Bob O'H
Posts: 2564
Joined: Oct. 2005
|
It's back! The Biologic Institute has another blog post. It starts BIG:
| Quote | It’s a big year for all things Darwin. This month, two centuries after his birth, we commemorate the man and his accomplishments. And in November, a century and a half after On the Origin of Species was published, we commemorate the beginnings of the theory by which we all know him.
But how exactly should we think of his theory? Is it to be remembered the way we remember the man—as an important part of the past? Or is it to be remembered as something more than that—as an intellectual seed that grew into something that thrives to this day? |
and then focusses in:
| Quote | | Many, of course, would like to think of Darwin’s theory in these flourishing terms. But the growth of something else makes this view increasingly hard to hold. We refer here to the seldom discussed but steadily expanding body of peer-reviewed scientific work that refuses to square with Darwinism. |
The "what peer reviewed literature?" question is becoming stale, so let's no bother. Next they get to the point:
| Quote | | Take a look at the recent Genetics paper by Rick Durrett and Deena Schmidt. [1] They’ve done the math to calculate how long it would take for Darwin’s mechanism to accomplish a particular kind of functional conversion. And their eagerness to “expose flaws in some of Michael Behe’s arguments” [1] shows that they think they’ve resuscitated Darwinism after Behe pronounced it dead. [2] |
So they're showing that something Behe said is wrong.
| Quote | Have they?
Maybe the answer depends on how vigorous a theory you were hoping for. Part of what ails Darwinism, in other words, may be that people have such high expectations of it.
If you think Darwinism explains how life acquired the great variety of forms we see around us (the grand vision that Darwin himself had) you’ll probably be disappointed with Durrett and Schmidt’s findings. |
Well, they were just responding to a point of Behe's.
| Quote | Darwin’s vision is chock-full of conversions of the most profound kind—all complex life forms originating from one or a few simple forms. Whereas the conversions that Durrett and Schmidt examine are nothing like that.
Theirs are conversions not from one body plan to another, or from one organ or tissue or cell type to another, or even from one protein molecule or gene to another, but rather from one binding site to another. These binding sites are DNA sequences about one hundredth the size of a gene that affect how a nearby gene is switched on and off. Conversion is accomplished by two point mutations occurring in succession: |
OK, so Behe writes a paper about the BIG, BOLD problem in the BIG, BOLD theory of evolution. Durrett and Schmidt write a response. And they're the ones not thinking big? I guess we can take it as a sign of how badly off ID is if they can only deal with small changes, within a gene. I mean that's just micro-evolution, which almost everyone accepts, right?
Well done, chaps. You've just argued that Behe is irrelevant.
--------------
It is fun to dip into the various threads to watch cluelessness at work in the hands of the confident exponent. - Soapy Sam (so say we all)
|
