Darwin Devolves: The End of Evolution?

[NLENTS (Nathan H. Lents)]

@pnelson

the review largely ignores his main thesis in Darwin Devolves ,

Then I don’t think you understand either his argument or our rebuttals. My other essays on this book will have more space and maybe help you see our point more clearly.

[NLENTS (Nathan H. Lents)]

@swamidass

The strange thing is that he seems to think Lenskis experiment is a good demonstration of his law, but Lenski’s experiment does not extrapolate to macroevolution. It’s designed to test other things.

Yes, exactly. His complete and total misunderstanding of the LTEE is shocking. He expects to see things (innovation, creativity) that the experiment is precisely designed NOT to generate. It’s a nearly perfect recipe for streamlining, efficiency, and rapid growth, and those are the adaptations that emerge.

[pnelson (Paul A Nelson)]

Hi Nathan,

I look forward to your longer analyses. Science reviews don’t give the space one needs.

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@pnelson

I look forward to your longer analyses. Science reviews don’t give the space one needs.

There are several articles in the works @pnelson. Nathan has one coming out on his blog, and next week his longer in a magazine comes out. I am planning an article here at PS too. It is possible that Lenski might explain more too.

From my point of view, however, I think Dennis Venema explains it aptly:

@T.j_Runyon

Author: erosion is really, really common. We see it all over the place. Here are hundreds of known examples. Mountains can’t be natural.

Reviewer: the author doesn’t address what we know about all the many, many geological processes that cause rock uplift.

Author: the reviewers don’t even address my main argument!

If that is the tack Behe wants to go, he is more than welcome to do so. It would be another example of not engaging with legitimate critique.

[cwhenderson (Curtis Henderson)]

I’ve lost count and this may be mentioned elsewhere, but there is yet another response from EN this morning:

Cited to Attack Darwin Devolves, Study Devolves on Close Inspection |...

To quote:

The review is a hit piece, but it’s so insubstantial that Behe must feel like he’s just been bludgeoned by a stick of cotton candy leavened with fairy dust. (The fairy dust here are the oft-recycled Darwinian fairy tales — e.g., whale evolution.)

I propose a new term to describe this strategy of panic-induced spam - “spamic”.

[T.j_Runyon]

Boy, they are losing it.

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@NLENTS check this out.

https://darwindevolves.com/criticism/

Notably, they leave out our responses. Perhaps we should create our own page, to give a more complete picture?

[gbrooks9 (George)]

@NLENTS

He was the DI’s only real hope in their quest to be taken seriously. This really doesn’t help the cause.

The ID folks clung to him… even though he never once discusses Adam and Eve as special creations!

@swamidass is more public with miraculous Adam and Eve than Behe ever was.

[NLENTS (Nathan H. Lents)]

@swamidass

Notably, they leave out our responses

Which ones? My polar bear article is there. My post about “devolution” isn’t, but that’s more recent and they haven’t responded to it. They may not and that’s fine. I think they’ll only post links to either positive reviews or negative ones that they actually respond to and I don’t see a problem with that. It’s a promotional page for the book, so it’s normal to be selective in which reviews you want to direct people to. I have pages for both of my books and I don’t include links to the negative reviews. (Each book got one negative review from a serious place - I’m not counting the DI, but I DID choose to link to those because why not? I don’t consider those serious. But that was my choice. I didn’t feel obligated to.)