Evolutionary Science, not Darwinism

Excellent question, Jordan. I have seen both answers given by opponents of design detection. I don’t think there is a unified response to your question.

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Biology textbooks and NSCE is exclusievely “from a scientific point of view.” Are you suggesting we get stickers to put on biology textbooks that say “from a biologists point of view”? Really?

Yup, and it is a totally wrong impression. Let’s correct it instead of repeating the same pointless arguments.

Maybe, but we face a new moment. Let’s stop reliving the traumas of the past.

Just stop complaining about it, and we might be able to improve things. The approach you take, and that ID takes, actually makes movement forward much less likely.

Try just letting it go, and see what happens.

Well, if you are going to keep insisting that I am doing this, without pointing out examples of where I have urged anyone here to accept ID, I can’t say anything more. I think you are conflating many discussions we had over the previous year or two – on BioLogos and in private, before I joined the discussion here – with what I have actually written here on this site. I don’t think I’ve ever claimed here that ID people have proved design in nature, and I don’t think I’ve ever pushed particular ID arguments (flagellum, explanatory filter, etc.) on anyone here. Maybe on BioLogos, maybe elsewhere, but I don’t see that I have done that here. Of course, people here who remember me from BioLogos may perceive me as an ID advocate, but I haven’t deliberately tried to push any ID arguments here.

I have of course discussed ID here – almost always after someone else has brought the subject up. But mainly I have offered clarifying remarks, e.g…, “some ID proponents believe in interventions and some in front-loading,” not argued that ID is correct and everyone should accept it.

Most of my discussion here has been about natural theology, methodological naturalism, history of evolutionary theory, etc. And I’ve probably more often mentioned non-ID people like Shapiro and Turner and Tour than I have Dembski or Meyer or Luskin etc. I may have mentioned Denton fairly often, but mainly to characterize his position as not requiring miraculous intervention, or to indicate his comments on structuralist vs. adaptationist schools of evolutionary thought, rather than to say that he is correct in his views on design.

I think I may have argued that fine-tuning arguments seem convincing to me, but such arguments are not unique to ID. Francis Collins has indicated support for them, as have other non-ID folks.

I am not trying to get anyone here to accept ID arguments as true. That is not why I’m here. But if someone says something false about ID – such as that all ID folks insist on miraculous interventions, or that Discovery engineered the Dover Trial, or that a God who designs is incompatible with true Christian theology – then of course I will react. But none of that amounts to pushing ID arguments about blood clotting or laws of thermodynamics or genetic entropy etc. on unwilling biologists. I have no plan to do that.

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No, Joshua, your response simply will not do. I’m of course not suggesting putting stickers on books; you know that is not my style. But you are representing the language as innocuous in context, when it wasn’t. Even Eugenie Scott advised those organizations to drop the “purposeless and unguided” language, and Ken Miller had the words removed from subsequent editions of his textbook. There was agreement that the words had too much metaphysical baggage, and ought to be taken out of science textbooks and policy statements of science organizations.

Stop? I believe this is the first time that I’ve mentioned the “unguided and purposeless” language affair on Peaceful Science. You act as if I brought up the subject daily.

And so they were removed. Right?

That isn’t even in play any more. That was 20 years ago.

Okay. I’ll pause and rethink. If I overreacted, please excuse me.

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7 posts were split to a new topic: Science, The Resurrection, and NOMA

I think that answers Jordan’s question: the bogey is that word “natural”, which has no obvious meaning outside a specific metaphysical framework.

What is the difference between “scientifically explainable” and “naturally explainable”, since science is the study of natural explanations?

In this case, "natural " is being used as a placeholder for “There is no category of ‘divine’.” And so in answering this:

(a) it’s not methodology, because Patrick excluded “scientifically explainable” from his avowal of “natural causes”. Therefore (b) it’s a philosophical constraint. QED.

EDIT: These remarks, of course, apply only to the “Patrick Interpretation” and are not to be generalised to all.

What Shapiro describes is well within mainstream evolutionary science. The only thing we disagree on is Shapiro’s need to redefine what is already adequately defined within the mainstream theory. The mechanisms that Shapiro points to are random mutations with respect to fitness and have been known about for decades in many instances.

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But you don’t want them to fight it out. You condemn anyone who criticizes Shapiro.

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I don’t condemn anyone who criticizes anyone, in the proper sense of the word “criticize” – assess the value of something, including good points as well as bad points. I don’t think calling Shapiro a “nut” (as someone here has done) is “criticism” in that sense.

I have read his book, but not his articles, so I won’t comment on his articles, but in the book he not only admits but emphasizes that much of the data he is employing has been known about for decades, so he is not trying to put anything over dishonestly. His point is that while the facts have been known, their significance for evolution has not been fully appreciated. They might be well-known facts among bacteriologists but not very often mentioned by evolutionary theorists. Surely there is nothing wrong with pointing out that knowledge gained in one field of biology might have some application to another field of biology.

If the charge against Shapiro is that he unduly sensationalizes, that’s a fair criticism to make – if it’s true. But in these internet discussions over the years, I’ve heard two incompatible criticisms of Shapiro: (a) that he sensationalizes discoveries that are well-known, and mainstream; (b) that he is outside the mainstream – way out, to the point of being incompetent. Well, if his crime is sensationalizing mainstream ideas, then he isn’t out of the mainstream, just a show-off. But if he is a “nut”, then he might well be outside the mainstream and also incompetent. I guess if I heard a consistent judgment on the guy – e.g., that he is a competent molecular biologist but that he tends to aggrandize his thoughts as more original than they are – I would be more comfortable. But I hear inconsistent judgments, which makes me wonder whether the standards governing what is good or bad evolutionary biology are themselves inconsistent.

That seems to be the primary criticism being made here, over and over.

Glad you agree it’s fair. What is left then? What exactly is the problem?

The problem is the inconsistency. One purported evolutionary expert here, John Harshman, says Shapiro is a nut, implying incompetence. Others say that his problem is not incompetence, but self-aggrandizement. And it’s not just this website that is relevant, Joshua. I am thinking of judgments of Shapiro (and of others) that I’ve seen elsewhere. The point is that the self-declared spokespersons of evolutionary theory on the internet (and elsewhere) appear to have inconsistent standards. And this has been going on for a long time, e.g., Margulis saying that John Maynard Smith “doesn’t understand evolution” and Dawkins angrily denying it. The question is: Why aren’t the standards (for what counts as good or bad science) as consistent in evolutionary theory as they are in engineering physics or electrochemistry or many other branches of science? Why is it that the engineering physics and electrochemistry fields aren’t constantly holding meetings like the Wistar Conference, the Altenberg conference, the Royal Society conference, etc., where the fundamentals in the field are thrown open for debate? There has to be a reason for this difference between scientific fields.

Notice that I didn’t mention ID once in the above paragraph. :slight_smile:

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These are mutually consistent claims. What is the disagreement exactly? Self aggrandizement that puts oneself unnecessarily in conflict with the field is incompetence. We have been saying the science is accepted already, so a Crusade to get it accepted is in error. Some would call that incompetence.

It is pretty similar. You may not be up to date on the similar controversy there :smile:.

This is what we see a lot from supporters of Shapiro. They clutch at their pearls when Shapiro is criticized, but they never tackle the actual science. Here you are arguing about nonsense like “standards of criticism” while ignoring the most fundamental scientific criticisms that people are making.

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That would be my criticism of Shapiro.

I’ll note that you labeled your two parts as “(a)” and “(2)”.

Ignoring that labeling, I have seen no reason to believe that Shapiro is incompetent. Of course, I’m not a biologist, so not really in a position to judge that. From my perspective, the only objection I have to Shapiro is that he hypes things up a bit too much for my liking.

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Shapiro came to my attention, because I saw a pattern of creationists quoting Shapiro, and using those quotes to attack evolution. And this was usually followed by biologists pointing out that Shapiro actually agrees with evolution and that they are misunderstanding what he is saying.

I don’t know why @John_Harshman calls Shapiro a nut, but that could be due to Shapiro providing ammunition to creationists.

T. aquaticus:

I have Shapiro’s book, and have read it, though it was a while ago. If you would like to specify the incompetent or erroneous scientific claims in the book, I might know better what you object to – beyond the commonly-made criticism that Shapiro is too concerned with making himself seem daring and original. I’m actually quite open to the claim that he has done this, but I’m interested in knowing whether he is guilty of bad science as well as inflated rhetoric. So far, no one here has shown any bad science. That he boasts too much, that he is too attention-seeking, or that some think he is a “nut”, does not establish that he has produced bad science. I assume that when the University of Chicago gave him tenure to research and teach molecular biology that they thought he produced pretty good science, so there is need to show where he fell off the wagon later on.

I disagree. That is not the normal meaning of the English word “incompetence”. It might be professional bad manners, or the like.

I remember back at university - in social psychology - my supervisor saying that “Thomas Bowlby, like most innovators, overstated his own case.” (Note to non-sociologists - Bowlby discovered maternal deprivation syndrome). So Shapiro wouldn’t be the first scientists to engage in hype, and it would be orthogonal to the value of the work.

I do remember, though, that a researcher well known to most of us here did his last work off the back of reading Shapiro, and thanked me for introducing me to his work. But maybe that’s his ticket out of the mainstream. so I won’t name him.

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The most obvious error is the way in which Shapiro misrepresents what is stated in the mainstream theory of evolution. When biologists say that mutations are random they mean that the processes that produce mutations are blind to how these changes will affect fitness. Nowhere do biologists say that:

  1. random mutations are only substitution mutations caused by copying errors.
  2. random mutations must have an equal chance of occuring at every base in the genome 3
  3. random mutations are not caused by complex mechanisms.

So what does Shapiro claim? That mutations are not random because they are not simply copy errors, there are mutational hotspots, and that they are caused by complex mechanisms. Shapiro ignores the one way in which biologists do say that mutations are random. From this misrepresentation he claims that the mainstream theory of evolution is wrong even though he doesn’t even address the claims the actual mainstream theory of evolution makes.

To use a specific example, Shapiro likes to talk about mutations caused by transposons. As it turns out, when transposons jump around the genome they cause neutral, beneficial and detrimental mutations. The mechanisms that cause transposons to jump around have no way of knowing which changes will improve fitness. Transposon mutations are random with respect to fitness. Shapiro falsely claims that they are not random mutations even though he can’t point to a single instance where transposon activity only produces beneficial changes.

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Your reply is on-point. I like the format of it. It would help me, though, if you could tie your answer to some passages of his book, so I can look them up and follow in more detail where the problems lie. Your comments sound plausible to me, but I would like the accused’s own words to give him a fair hearing.

Have their been public exchanges, orally or in print, where Shapiro has been asked about these points, and if so, what have his responses been?