Daniel Smith
Posts: 970
Joined: Sep. 2007
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| Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,Oct. 28 2008,14:17) | | Quote (Daniel Smith @ Oct. 28 2008,13:12) | | Quote (Erasmus @ FCD,Oct. 28 2008,10:02) | Don't project, Portia.
| Quote | | These "crackpots" (Berg, Schindewolf, Grasse, Goldschmidt, Bateson, Davison, Denton, Behe) have cataloged thousands of cases where empirical research has provided evidence that, A) life on earth was a planned event, and B) evolution is determined by law. |
What Law? Please tell us what exactly the law is. Enquiring minds need to know. I think you are bluffing. Or lying. Or perhaps you haven't considered the veracity of that which you say. All tantalizing possibilities, wouldn't you say?
Of course if we address your second splatter of hyperbole, then the question arises "How could one provide evidence of a planned event with no evidence of a planner or a plan?" What is the plan Dan? Take it to Stan, who gives it to the man, who puts it in a tan van? I don't think you even believe the stuff you write. |
Are you saying it is impossible to deduce that an event or an object was planned if we cannot first show evidence for a "planner"? Can't an artifact be both evidence of planning and evidence for a planner? I'll give an example: lets say you are exploring an alien planet and find no evidence for life anywhere, no bones, no fossils, nothing. You do find however complex structures that would require extensive knowledge of engineering and physics to build. Could we postulate that A) these structures were planned? and B) that there must've been some sort of planner?
As for laws; I'd suggest reading up on nomogenesis. | Quote | nomogenesis An evolutionary model holding that the direction of evolution operates to some degree by rules or laws, independently of natural selection. For a long time it was regarded as an outmoded hypothesis, but recently it has been maintained that it corresponds rather well with observations of evolution in the fossil record, and that such mechanisms as heterochrony and molecular drive would produce nomogenetic effects. See also ARISTOGENESIS; ENTELECHY; ORTHOGENESIS. link
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Also here's a balanced review of Berg's seminal work on the subject.
Of course you could just read the book for yourself if you are so inclined. |
I'm saying that if you don't have a 'planner' then you don't have a 'plan'.
Unless you are relaxing the conventional use of planner to include events that occur as described by law-like forces. Is gravity a planner? If so then I will concede your point because it is spurious.
complex is as complex does. snowflakes are intricately detailed structures that require complex geometry to describe. Yet, they form as if by law. Fortunately we know a bit about those sorts of laws. |
Snowflakes are complex ordered structures, and form by laws. We do know something about those laws. Life is complex, organized, specific, functional, and purposeful. You are right, we don't know how such structures could be formed by lawful processes. BUT there is evidence that the modifications (evolution) of such structures proceeded in a determined way. | Quote | | Yet despite repeated incessant requests for you to pony up your laws, you provide none. Just wave hands and say "these guys say it's true". Why didn't you include VMartin in your list of the esteemed frustrated materialist from ATBC selectionist? Are you VMartin? |
I'm not Martin, though I do admire his ability to set you all off! BTW, these are not "my" laws, they are God's and need to be discovered. We can see that evolution proceeds in a determined direction: countless evidences of convergent evolution testify to that. So the evidence points to laws, it's up to us to discover precisely what those laws are.
| Quote | (Aside: I haven't overlooked how inconsistent your epistemology is, in one place you require atom-atom relations in a narrative of origins, in the other you are willing to squint to a 1 micron width aperture and claim that you see evidence for law-like activity behind nature. Tut tut, dear Portia, your knickers are in plain view).
the murmuring cloistered darwinian monk-prophet mynym you linked to is hardly 'balanced'. My observations of this character suggest he is about three days behind on his meds. I'll take a look, since rhetoric is entertaining I suppose I may find something of interest in his dark dank cellar of the web.
don't presume too much about what we have read, Portia. Your inability to argue your point is one thing, what others have argued is entirely a different issue.
And you have neglectfully avoided the evidence that natural selection does drive evolutionary changes. Your argument, if you were intellectually honest (you aren't, I do not think) would be an argument for the frequency of evolution by law vs evolution by RM/NS, not that RM/NS doesn't do anything. |
I accept RM+NS as a mechanism for microevolution - everybody does. If its "frequency" is limited to that one area, we'll have no argument.
You all keep clamoring for the "laws of evolution". I myself don't claim to know what they all are, but some of the central tenets (laws) of nomogenesis listed by Berg are these (italics within quotations are his):
1) "The struggle for existence is not a progressive, it is a conservative agency: it does not spare the most diverging individuals, exterminating the others; but, on the contrary, maintains the standard and restricts variation." (pg. 400)
2) "Evolution bears a sweeping character, and is not due to single, accidentally favourable variations." (pg. 400)
3) "...evolution is to a considerable degree predetermined, that it is in the same degree an unfolding or manifestation of pre-existing rudiments." (pg. 403)
4) There are two types of laws by which characters develop in organisms:
A) Autonomic: "characters... which owe their development to inner causes, inherent in the very nature of the organism... independently of any effects from the environment." (pg. 403) "Accordance with autonomic laws may best be traced by studying forms that have developed convergently" (pg. 404)
B) Choronomic: "the formation of new characters... due to the effects of the geographical landscape, which also transfigures the forms in a determined direction." (pg. 403) "Compliance with choronomic laws is revealed by investigating the effects of the geographical landscape on organisms" (pg. 404)
5) "Organisms have developed... polyphyletically" (pg. 406) "The evolutionary process should be imagined in the following manner. A considerable quantity... of primitive organisms have developed on parallel lines, convergently experiencing approximately the same transformations and effecting that process at various rates" (pg. 404)
6) "Hereditary variations are restricted in number, and they develop in determined direction." (pg. 406)
7) "Species arising through mutations are sharply distinguished one from another." (pg. 406)
8) "The extinction of organisms is due to inner (autonomic) and external (choronomic) causes." (pg. 407)
9) "...evolution was chiefly convergent (partly divergent)... based upon laws... affecting a vast number of individuals throughout an extensive territory... by leaps, paroxysms, mutations" (pg. 406)
Now these are Berg's proposed laws that I cherry picked from the "conclusion" chapter of his book. They were put forth in 1922 and may need updating. They do represent a good starting point that shows a partial history of the beginnings of the nomogenesis school of thought. Schindewolf had his own set of rules which he believed evolution followed, as did Goldschmidt. Posting them all here is beyond the level to which I plan to go in defense of this. The information is out there for anyone to read. You guys keep telling me to "go read the literature" in defense of your position, so I don't feel as if I need to go farther than that in defense of mine.
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"If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance." Orville Wright
"The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question." Richard Dawkins
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