I’ve offered the cathedral metaphor to answer your question below:
In essence, what I’ve tried to convey with this metaphor is that if we assume a teleological view of the evolution of life on earth, we shouldn’t be surprised if, at some point, evolution comes to a halt. That’s all and is quite straightforward.
A particular moment may not be special for God who is timeless and spaceless, but the situation is different for beings that live in time and space.
Okay, but we know then that we are not at that point, because all life is still evolving. There are species going extinct, and others move in to occupy their niche. Allele frequencies continue to change both as a consequence of genetic drift and in response to environmental selection, and so do the phenotypes of species.
That would require that genetic mutations cease to occur - which would surprise anyone who knows any science. I don’t doubt it wouldn’t surprise you.
Aside from the fact that evolution hasn’t actually come to a halt, the cathedral metaphor requires that the lengthy process was necessary, which it couldn’t be unless God is limited. And, again, there is no reason to suppose that the current state of the world (universe?) should be the finished one. Are you expecting armageddon soon?
True, but we were in fact talking about God. For the beings, whatever moment they’re in would probably be considered special, as you consider the present moment special just because you’re in it. You might be advised to get over yourself.
A precision may be useful here. When I say that under a teleological perspective we shouldn’t be surprised if, at some point, evolution comes to a halt, I am referring to creative evolution. And as far as creative evolution is concerned, it is not true that we know it is still an ongoing process.
No, not at all, for under the God’s guidance theory, the process of random mutations and natural selection is irrelevant to creative evolution, meaning that genetic mutations can still occur even if creative evolution has come to a halt.
Of course, I perfectly know that random mutations occur all the time, and you perfectly know that I know this. So why do you resort to these base and puerile attacks? Aren’t we suppose on this site to discuss matter of science and theology peacefully ?
I have no idea what you mean by creative evolution and how to distinguish it from any other evolution. Is this one of those pigs aren’t turning into whales all around us things again?
To elaborate on the cathedral metaphor: the history of its construction seems very odd. Nine tenths of the construction time was spent forming little balls of clay of varying shapes. Only late in the process were any of these balls combined to make bricks. After that, bricks were quickly laid to make walls until quite a substantial building was formed, but at various times the building was demolished, most of the bricks destroyed, and new bricks were formed modeled on the few that were left. The cathedral had been, to all appearances, finished many times before. And currently we seem to be going through another period of demolition. If this is supposed to be the completed cathedral, what were the previous completions, and why are so many bricks being taken out now? If we saw a cathedral being built in this fashion we would judge the builder insane.
What, for example, was the point of going to all that trouble to make Steller’s sea cow, only to have it disappear just after the world entered its culminating state?
The evolution going on right now is by the same mechanisms that have always propelled evolution. But it is not just life. Everything on our planet is in constant flux. We do not feel movement, but the ongoing travel of tectonic plates can be exactly measured. We do not perceive mountains rising and falling, but both are measurable. The moon is further away than when you were a child, but you cannot see the difference. Change may be gradual, and if it were not for the technological precision available to us, would be imperceptible. Change is all constant, and there is no endpoint. Were it not for the brevity of our lives, the tranquil sea before you would be a heaving frothy ocean.
My emphasis:
If random mutations and natural selection continue to occur, so will evolution. “Creative” evolution (whatever that is) may not, but that wasn’t what you wrote.
We are. But it’s difficult when people (you) try to avoid refutations of their claims by pretending they said something else.
By creative evolution, I essentially mean the implementation of new complex functional systems, new body plan, large scale morphological and physiological transformations.
But what is the evidence that micro and macro evolution (creative evolution) are both caused by the same mechanism? There isn’t any. It is an assumption. You think it’s a reasonable one. I think it is not. But the bottom line is that there is no evidence for it.
Macroevolution is not the same as your “creative evolution”.
Right. And one of those systems was sonar, according to you. Were you wrong?
That’s another Humpty Dumpty word, so vague as to be useless in this context.
Another one. Those only take place over long periods of time. There’s zero evidence that the processes that drive them have slowed or stopped.
Why do you feel the need to invent new terms?
False. All the mechanistic evidence supports that they are the same processes. That’s why all you have are word games.
It is not. It is supported by the evidence, both morphological and molecular.
I KNOW it’s not an assumption. You only think it is because you are marinating in rhetoric and avoiding evidence. Do blind people use sonar? Does it involve any new structures? Any evolution? Why are you avoiding this when you claimed that you avoid nothing?
The bottom line is that you don’t look at evidence.
These are notoriously ill-defined.
As for your nebulous idea of “creative evolution”, if this is supposed to mean merely large-scale morphological transitions (or the degree of change that separate more distantly related organisms), there is evidence it is caused by the same mechanisms (here meaning the accumulation of genetic changes such as mutations, under drift and selection) as those you presumably think about with microevolution.
We can show it by comparative genetics. One of the ways is simply looking for the hallmarks of particular types of mutations, such as transposons, whole genome duplications, and so on. Another is looking for evidence of positive and purifying selection (dn/ds ratios for example), and substitution biases. Yet another is sequence conservation (again as evidence for the operation of selection on different parts of the genome). These are all different lines of evidence that the genetic differences between species have been caused by the molecular mechanisms of transgenerational evolutionary change in a population: mutations and genetic recombination subject to drift and selection, which are the same mechanisms operating during microevolution.
Some of the inferences are just simple and obvious. Repetitive regions for example, known from direct empirical observation to be highly prone to mutations, are usually also more highly variable between species.
According to you it’s just an assumption, this inference. With no evidence for it. Someone just dreamt it up and nothing reasonable links the experiments to the inference that genetic differences between species owes to a similar mechanism.
What a fatuous suggestion.
I thought about responding by just calling this an appeal to your incredulity, but to really bring out how absurd your position is we could make an exact mirror of the argument for ancient craters. What caused them? Are they craters? Well it’s just an assumption, there’s “no evidence” they were caused by bolide impacts.
This idea that the continued accumulation of the same genetic changes we see over short timescales produce small-scale changes, should somehow fail to produce larger-scale changes over greater timescales when more changes accumulate, is “just an assumption” with “no evidence for it” is that stupid. It’s Ken Ham-level “were you there?” stuff.
Are you aware that many non ID scholars are dissatisfied with the idea that large scale morphological changes in evolution (macro evolution ) were caused by the same type of neodarwinian mechanisms underlying small scale changes (micro evolution) and that they consider this idea to be an unsupported assumption ? Do you think these scientists are stupid? Do you think Gerd B Muller is stupid? James Shapiro? Denis Noble? Eva Jablonka? Etc…
Any field has it’s share of various degrees of fringe and outside thinkers, people who (for example) like attention and their name in the media, or who see themselves as brave fighters against the oppressive orthodoxy, are contrarians and provocateurs, are caught in some spiral out of the mainstream by various social feedback mechanisms, are genuinely crazy, who like to think of themselves a bringers of The Next Big Paradigm Shift™, and so on. People who are just wrong for all sorts of reasons.
It is no more a surprise that we can find a handfuld of such people in biology than it is we can find flat-Earth astronomers, ancient-aliens-archeologists, or doctors that deny the germ-theory of disease.
Incidentally I think you should be a ware that a large portion of the people who take positions ala “microevolution doesn’t explain macroevolution” generally don’t deny the reality of microevolutionary mechanisms in resulting in large-scale morphological change on longer timescales.
They are often referring to macro-evolutionary processes like species selection(which by definition can’t operate be low the species level), and other forms of hierarchical evolution with selection operating perhaps even at the level of entire types of ecosystems, which is still natural selection—as explaining certain patterns in the fossil record such as punctuated equilibrium, explosive radiations following large changes in Earth’s climate and mass extinctions, convergence and so on.
So it’s not that they deny that ancestor population A changed into descendant population B through a combination of mutations, recombination, and drift and selection under various scenarios of geneflow and so on, they are just trying to explain something else about the larger patterns in the evolutionary history of life viewed at a more holistic level.
Creationists often completely misunderstand(if not more frequently deliberately misrepresent) paleontologists and evolutionary biologists of these types, and try to lump them together with more fringe and crackpot contrarians.
What I find notable about that list of individuals is they each have their pet project views and personal hypothesis of things they think aren’t given enough emphasis in evolution. But none of that really changes the simple and obvious inference I made in my previous reply to you.
Have any of them tested an ID hypothesis lately? Ever? Etc…
I would suggest that it is inaccurate to say that there are “many”. It would appear rather that there is a small but very vocal ‘fringe’ advocating (vociferously) for that position, but that they have been wholly unsuccessful in convincing the wider scientific community of it – quite probably because they haven’t been able to provide any evidence of anything that isn’t either (i) already built into the existing evolutionary framework (though possibly under different nomenclature) and/or (ii) of marginal and/or disputed impact on evolution.
I don’t think anybody is calling them “stupid”. Many might consider them to be “misguided” or similar.
It seems to me that this idea is countered by consideration that as transitional fossils fill in gaps, differences which were once large scale morphological changes are reduced to a series of small scale changes. Thus, the macro evolution just disappears, or rather becomes a reference for a longer chain composed of a series of micro evolutionary steps. Put another way, if the types of mechanisms cannot account for macro evolution, how is it they do account for each step of micro evolution along the way?
Eh, no they aren’t. [Extremely rare] =/= [non-existant]. The fossils exist.
In the 1980 McLean v. Arkansas-trial, Gould also said:
Q Does the fossil record provide evidence for the existence of transitional forms?
A Yes, it does.
Q Are there many such examples?
A Yes, there are.
Q Could you give us one example?
A One very prominent one is the remarkable intermediate between reptiles and birds called Archaeopteryx. Archaeopteryx is regarded as an intermediate form because it occurs, first of all, so early in the history of birds. But secondly, and more importantly, is a remarkable mixture of features of reptiles and birds.
Now, I should say that we don’t expect evolution to occur by the slow and steady transformation of all parts of an organism at the same rate; therefore, we find an organism that has some features that are very birdlike and some that are very reptile-like. That’s exactly what we
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A (Continuing) would expect in an intermediate form, and that’s what we find in Archaeopteryx. Archaeopteryx has feathers, and those feathers are very much like the feathers of modern birds. Archaeopteryx also has a so-called furcula or wishbone, as in modern birds.
Later:
Q Professor Gould, you have just talked about a transitional form, Archaeopteryx. Could you give an example of an entire transitional sequence in the fossil record?
A Yes. A very good example is that provided by our own group, the mammals.
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Q Would it assist you in your testimony to refer to an exhibit?
A Yes. I have a series of skulls illustrating the most important aspect of this transition.
https://www.antievolution.org/projects/mclean/mva_tt_p_gould.html
This claim is appallingly wrong on at least three levels:
It is merely an opinion, and opinions aren’t evidence.
The opinion is in any case taken out of context to misrepresent Gould’s views, as the analysis of this infamous quotemine, at the Quotemine Project, shows:
Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists — whether through design or stupidity, I do not know — as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. The punctuations occur at the level of species; directional trends (on the staircase model) are rife at the higher level of transitions within major groups.
Thus, all that this quote “shows” is that it’s employer is either ignorant or deceptive – ignorant if they don’t know Gould’s actual opinions on transitional fossils, deceptive if they knew and used the quote anyway.
This is pretty much emblematic of ID argumentation – vacuous and misleading.