Good to see you’re finally catching on. But even thought that’s true, it’s not the main point here. If you know how a mechanism works, you don’t have to know its ancient history to deal with its breakdowns. Your car mechanic, in all probability, knows zero about the historical development of the internal combustion engine between 1870 and 1990, but he can still fix your car.
So will you retract your claim that evolutionary theory isn’t very important, since it has helped us explain why antibiotic resistance develops within bacterial populations, which is of utmost medical importance.
This doesn’t make sense. Mutations,
natural selection, genetic drift, exaptation, horizontal gene transfer and others contribute to the evolution of antibiotic resistance. These are the same processes that drive evolution on a grander scale. If you accept that evolutionary theory (not darwinism) explains antibiotic resistance, then you have accepted evolutionary theory in toto.
You accept “micro-changes” huh? Go to a natural history museum and look at hominin/d (I forget) fossils and you see microevolution until we get to homo sapiens, do you accept that?
God doesn’t need to come down to tell you the holocaust happened, as there are reliable ways to know it happened. There are reliable ways to investigate the natural history of all life on earth and those methods scream that evolution happened.
Macroevolution is microevolution plus microevolution plus microevolution plus plenty time. Since you accept microevolution, then you have accepted macroevolution. Speciation is a macroevolutionary process and new viral or bacterial “species” emerge occasionally, isn’t this medically important?
Its true that the evolutionary history of bacteria which lived billions of years ago would most likely be of little medical importance to us. However, we can trace the origins and propagation of extant pathogenic viruses and bacteria using phylogenetic methods. This was done with HIV and SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19 virus) and today we know a lot about their evolutionary histories. Most importantly this information is important to epidemiologists to enable them track and predict any potential evolutionary trajectories of extant pathogens. Evolution wins again.
Sadly you have spectacularly failed to catch on.
No, because I mean something different from “evolutionary theory” than what you mean. I mean by evolutionary theory not simply the study of populations, mutation, and selection, but the attempt to show that all life on earth arose without plan, guidance or design from primitive one-celled ancestors. And that programmatic view is completely unnecessary for doing research on bacteria and viruses and finding cures for diseases springing from them. It’s in that sense that I meant that evolutionary theory isn’t very important.
I don’t think cosmology, as currently practiced, is very important either. Sometimes interesting, of course, but not particularly important. Generally speaking, I find “sciences” that are heavily speculative and heavily focused on unrecoverable past events are less useful for human life than sciences which are heavily experimental and focus on nature as it operates now, in front of our eyes.
I deny that. Or rather, I deny that this claim is certain. And in fact, some evolutionary biologists, do, too, and I’m not talking about Christian ones. On BioLogos I linked to debates where evolutionary theorists (secular, non-believing ones) were arguing about whether macroevolution was just microevolution writ large, or whether macroevolution required additional processes beyond those studied as microevolutionary.
Wrong. See above.
You are acting as if we have a full set of skeletons showing every degree of gradation. Often we have only a single tooth, part of a jawbone, a thigh bone, a finger bone, etc. You are taking theory-driven reconstructions from these parts as if they were data. Not that I have any religious objection to the origin of the human body from lower primates, but you are exaggerating the completeness of the fossil record.
And also unreliable ways.
Those methods at most scream that descent with modification happened. That it happened wholly due to unguided, unplanned, undesigned causes is certainly not “screamed” by the data we have. It’s a metaphysical interpretation imposed upon the data, for ideological reasons. Mike Behe is very good at distinguishing between common descent, which he accepts, and the powers of the Darwinian mechanism (your microevolutionary changes in bacteria, etc.), which he regards as real and confirmed, but limited in extent. I suggest you read Darwin Devolves.
That’s the vulgar, popular conception. As I already indicated, it has been disputed by trained evolutionary theorists. Some believe that other mechanisms are in play.
Yes, that was part of my point. And it’s equally true that the bacteriologist trying to find ways of combating some new disease doesn’t need to know anything about when the dog part of the Carnivora branched off from the bear part, and doesn’t need to know by what mechanisms winged flight in birds arose, and doesn’t even need to believe that macroevolution is microevolution writ large. As long as he comprehends the principles of microevolution, he can do his work quite adequately.
Which I don’t deny, but that’s not what I meant by “evolutionary theory”, as I said above. It’s just basic population genetics, which I regard as a sound science (though like any science, it can be misused to draw invalid conclusions, as Joshua has shown with regard to the Genealogical Adam). If to you “population genetics” means “evolutionary theory”, then I understand you, but my point is that evolutionary theory writ large could be false, while population genetics principles could still be true.
If we’re merely quarreling over a term, the discussion is pointless. I accept that there is mutation and selection and that Darwinian processes can modify organisms and even lead to new species. I deny that such processes can explain the entire history of life on earth, because, in my view, they are not capable of generating radically new structures and systems, as opposed to tinkering with and modifying existing systems. You may disagree, and that’s fine. I’m not here to argue about that. My point was simply that one doesn’t need to accept the standard picture of bacteria to man evolution in order to do very competent research and medical applications regarding bacteria and viruses. The most doctrinaire YEC, with proper technical training, can sequence a genome with every bit as much accuracy as the most hardline follower of Dawkins or Coyne. The most rigid YEC can master the structure of amino acids and proteins, and the processes by which they are generated from DNA, as well as Allen Orr or Francis Collins. Chemistry and biochemistry are objective sciences which a fundamentalist can learn as well as anyone else. And all the YECs known to me accept antibiotic resistance and the existence of mutations and selection. They just don’t place that knowledge within the wider framework of bacterium to man evolution. And they don’t need to, to work in the field of epidemiology or bacteriology.
Just to be clear, I’m not a YEC myself, and I think common descent is true. But I don’t regard it as anywhere near proved that macroevolution can be explained wholly by unguided, unplanned, undesigned processes. It’s the link between that claim and useful empirical work on bacteria that I’m objecting to. If you want it put another way, I believe that “evolution” is true, but that “the theory of evolution,” as believed by Darwin, Mayr, Dobzhansky, Gaylord Simpson, Dawkins, etc., is not.
it’s important to note here that you do not have a problem with evolution. This is because as long as there are populations of organisms (like bacteria) where there is variation among members of those populations, together with the ability to pass on that variation to progeny then evolution will happen.
You are also not against common descent, since you believe all modern day dogs are descendants of an ancestral dog “kind”.
What you are actually against is universal common descent, right? If evidence is provided to show that this is the case, would you accept it?
Evolution is not universal common descent, but since there was a universal common ancestor, we are modified descendants from it. While universal common descent may not be useful to medical practice or research, evolutionary theory is.
OoL research is heavily experimental and deeply speculative, so where does it belong?
Every scientific discipline has its fair share of deeply speculative ideas. These speculations or hypotheses are developed to explain observations (historical or current) and make testable predictions. When new data emerges, scientists check to see which hypotheses measure up and which remain unsupported. If a given hypothesis survives the onslaught of new data over and over again, then it becomes a theory or part of a theory with time. That’s how germ, chromosome and atomic theories all began. Before the 1950s, what served as the molecular basis for heredity was deeply speculative (despite the heavy experimentation at the time), but today the story is different. Curiosity and informed speculation drive scientific research.
This is false. Every evolutionary biologists accepts that mutations, natural selection, genetic drift and others all operate on a grand scale. Cite evidence to show otherwise.
Like I said macroevolution is microevolution plus microevolution plus microevolution plus microevolution plus plenty time with or without other processes.
We don’t need whole skeletons to show gradation, we can clearly see some degree of gradation in the incomplete fossils we have. For example, the increase in hominin brain size as we proceed from earlier layers to more recent ones.
You are wrong here. The fossils tell us the tale, so do our genes and its a beautiful one. Its evolution!!
If that’s your problem, accept evolution and say it was guided like Swamidass and other theists who accept evolution.
It’s been debunked thoroughly. No need.
You are wrong here. No evolutionary biologists doubts the role of microevolution in macroevolution. Some think that there extra mechanisms in addition to it.
The rest is not relevant.
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Gotta love our “Eddie.” I set up a hoop designed for the dumbest of the YEC’s, crack the whip, “Eddie” jumps right thru it.
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But “religious studies and natural theology”? That’s important. Couldn’t get thru a day without that stuff.
Derpity derp derp.
I’ve been observing this conversation with both interest & dismay. I have no expertise in science (just an undergrad in Physics & Mathematics). My PhD training is in OT theology and biblical languages. I myself am open to the scientific evidence and have no upfront theological stopgap to things like common descent. I’ve officially supported and contributed to @swamidass’ GAE model as a promising point of dialogue. On several internet forums, I’ve observed and appreciated the contribution of @Eddie. I don’t always agree with him, but I do find him reasoned and informed…even if verbose at times 
He’s also an actual scholar in his own right. I have no problem with the back-and-forth on specific issues. But I find it highly inappropriate (and ineffective) at the potshots and ad hominems some (not all) have taken at him in this thread. He should be welcomed as an informed interlocutor, not some hack off the street. I think a proper engagement with him would benefit all.
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Religion and philosophy are important – for the soul.
Experimental sciences and their applications are important – for the body.
Speculative sciences about unrecoverable past events are important – for neither.
True, but sad we need someone to remind of this. Why can’t reasonable-minded people just accept this and move on? Anyway,
What does the below mean? Are you contradicting yourself? Please reconcile the two statements below
Seems like this conversation went off the rails a very long time ago…
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