As I explain in this article I wrote for Uncommon Descent many years ago, it’s probably somewhere between 1000 and 5000. Hope that helps. Cheers.
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I didn’t even get four minutes in. His version of the “collector curve” at 2:47 is trivially wrong.
His version is this:
when it should clearly be this:
Yeah, that’s an old one - pretend that because a family is represented in the fossil record, it’s essentially complete. That’s like saying we’ve seen a badger, so we know all about black-footed ferrets, wolverines, sea minks, ratels, marbled polecats, stonemartens and giant river otters.
It’s garbage.
Added: I’ve listened to the rest now. Behe’s calculations, pre-specified mutations, evolutionary biologists are liars, not enough time, no fossil precursors… - it’s all garbage.
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Is this what he’s talking about?: Raup D.M. Taxonomic diversity estimation using rarefaction. Paleobiology 1975; 1:333-342.
Then yes, trivially wrong.
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No, it’s simpler than that. It’s just the number of different species found as the amount of time spent searching increases.
Think of it as analogous to the number of different flavours found as you pick jelly beans out of a bag. Initially you’ll get a new flavour with every bean. After a while, some of the beans you pick will be flavours you’ve already encountered. Eventually, most of the beans you pick will be flavours you’ve already encountered, and it’ll become rarer for you to pick out a bean with a new flavour.
It’s a bit more complex for fossils since they’re not distributed randomly but tend to be found in clumps of the same species. But there’s no way that you’d expect to see a curve like Bechly’s, which indicates that at the midpoint of your exploration you’re finding lots of new species with no effort at all.
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So there’s no time axis on that graph at all?
“Effort” is time spent searching, but not time in the sense I think you mean.
Yes, what I mean is that time is not cumulative from left to right. It’s a point. You expend x effort, you find y species. Raup’s plots are of known species after some amount of time/effort.
That’s my understanding of Bechly’s plots (if you insert “supposed to be”). I can’t find an accessible version of Raup’s paper.
Doug Axe explained to @swamidass what he meant by the use of the word confrontational in this conversation. That took place more than a year ago now. You can see it here. It’s late in the conversation, beginning around the 1:09:00 minute mark. Is Evolution A Big Deal? A Conversation with Two Leading Scientists. - YouTube.
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Since you asked me … it’s not really that 3000 beneficial mutations occurred, but that many variations in traits occurred. Traits are determined by one or more genes and interaction with the environment. The point is that a mutation in a single gene may affect more than one trait, and the number of affected trait grows combinatorially with each new mutation (magnitudes more than 3000). We also have a species transitioning between environments, and the fitness value of existing traits may reflect a favored habitat. It’s very likely that some beneficial traits will occur, or that creatures will prefer habitats better suited to their new traits (from otherwise neutral mutations. ie: genetic drift).
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That’s right, and I don’t think I misrepresented him. What I said was, frankly, quite vague and based on his own choice of words. So I’m not sure what the issue is.
Axe: “I do not argue for a confrontational approach to science. Look through the chapter. See if you can quote me on that. I’m talking about, it appears that God himself has described creation as though it confronts us.” (This comes a little after 1:13:00 minute mark.)
Are you saying that your characterization of him in the Bechly discussion accurately reflects the answer he gave you in the McDowell discussion?
I’m saying what I said accurate reflects what Axe wrote in the TE book. He certainly has the right to change his position of course, and perhaps he has. At the moment, I can’t square Axe’s quote with what he wrote specifically as an objection to WLC.
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I understood what he wrote in the TE book to be consistent with what he told you in the McDowell discussion. I don’t see any change of position. I guess we just understand him differently. Thank you for clarifying.
@swamidass, have you followed up to ask Bechly what he meant? I don’t think he can find a forum with other scientists that would be friendlier than this one.
If one is inclined to keep score (who won the debate?), then one way to tally things up is try to figure out which side is more confident in their position. Here, we have one “side” that will meet with critics freely, in different forums. The other “side” is so unsure of their claims that they will not discuss things with critics, including people they have openly criticized. That speaks very, very loudly. If Bechly is so unsure of his assertions that he cannot visit a friendly forum to hash things out, this tells me that his position really isn’t tenable.
Score one for @swamidass!
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