George Romanes' Argument Against Design

[Roy (34-year veteran)]

@Eddie

@Roy

None of those objections apply to any of the YECs I mentioned (Andrew McIntosh, Jorge ‘welcher’ Fernandez, John Oller, John Sanford, John Baumgadner and Robert Compton)…

You appear to be deaf. I told you long ago that at the time I had not the slightest notion of the religious views of any of those people, except for Sanford.

It strikes me as extremely unlikely that anyone could have 40+ years experience reading about creationist arguments yet not know of John Baumgardner.

[Roy (34-year veteran)]

If any papers had been read at Cornell that involved Creation Science, I would have tuned them out and done crossword puzzles.

One of my other specialist subjects. Especially Listener, Ximenes and Azed. Look them up if you don’t recognise them.

[Roy (34-year veteran)]

@John_Harshman

@Eddie

Are you equating the tree-like pattern with a nested hierarchy?

Yes. They’re isomorphic.

It’s not what one doesn’t know, it’s what one doesn’t know one doesn’t know.

Lamarck, in fact, didn’t propose a tree. He thought that there was an only slightly branched ladder of life, with new organisms arising constantly from the slime, and then proceeding to become more complex over time.

Thanks. I didn’t know that. But at least I did know I didn’t know that.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@Roy

I’m familiar with it.

If you’re aware that ad hominem argumentation is illegitimate, then why do you continue to employ it? Either refute the contents of the Cornell papers, if you can (big if!), or stop talking about the private religious affiliations of the people who attended the conference, while pretty obviously insinuating that those religious affiliations render the papers invalid.

@Roy

It strikes me as extremely unlikely

What strikes you as extremely unlikely is a profoundly unimportant concern in my life.

@Roy

One of my other specialist subjects.

“Other?”

[Roy (34-year veteran)]

@Eddie

@Roy

I’m familiar with it.

If you’re aware that ad hominem argumentation is illegitimate, then why do you continue to employ it?

I’m not aware that I ever have. Please provide an exact quote.

I frequently comment that some people are wrong so frequently that the expectation is that they will be wrong on any given occasion, so aren’t worth bothering with; but that’s not strictly speaking ad hominem.

Either refute the contents of the Cornell papers, if you can (big if!), …

If you think that’s a “big if”, you’re sadly mistaken. I’ve read several of the papers, and they are uniformly dismal. For example (from memory), one of Jorge ‘welcher’ Fernandez’s papers includes the ridiculous assumption that the initial forms of his word-based genetic organisms should be considered to have a higher fitness than their mutated offspring for no reason other than that they were the initial forms.

or stop talking about the private religious affiliations of the people who attended the conference, while pretty obviously insinuating that those religious affiliations render the papers invalid.

That’s your paranoid inference, not my implication, and I object to your comment about private religious affiliations of people who have publicly published for organisations with statement of faith signatory requirements.

@Roy

It strikes me as extremely unlikely

What strikes you as extremely unlikely is a profoundly unimportant concern in my life.

Total avoidance of point noted.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@Roy

That’s your paranoid inference, not my implication,

No, it’s the very obvious implication of everything you have ever written here about the religious affiliations of the writers at the Cornell conference.

@Roy

If you think that’s a “big if”, you’re sadly mistaken.

It’s a big if because in the two or three years of posting you’ve done here, I’ve seen not the slightest sign of even undergrad scientific training on your part, and the Cornell papers are written at well beyond undergrad level. But if you really can refute any of the papers, you are welcome to publish your refutation in a proper academic forum.

@Roy

and I object to your comment about private religious affiliations of people who have publicly published for organisations with statement of faith signatory requirements.

Whether their religious affiliations are unknown to all but a few, or shouted from the rooftops for the whole world to hear, those affiliations are irrelevant to the arguments made in the papers, so your attempt to defend your ad hominem tactics on the grounds of this distinction fails.

@Roy

Total avoidance of point noted.

I’ve not avoided the point. For the past several posts, you’ve effectively been calling me a liar, implying that I haven’t done the study I say I’ve done. I’m not going to play the childish schoolyard game of going back and forth with you: “Am not!” “Are too!” I know what I’ve read, and I know what I’ve studied. If you don’t believe me, I couldn’t care less. If you don’t believe that the boiling point of water at sea level is 100 degrees Celsius, that won’t change the fact. Your internal mind-state regarding my statements is unimportant, mainly because what’s true is true no matter whether others fail to perceive it, and secondarily because you simply aren’t a significant player in these debates, and your implied accusation that I’m lying has no stature.

[T_aquaticus]

@John_Harshman

But I don’t see the reason for bringing up identical adaptations. What would predict such a thing?

Just to recap . . . I could be wrong, but I think the mechanism of change is relevant to the question of nested hierarchies. If the mechanism of change produced identical adaptations in separate lineages, wouldn’t the result be a lack of a nested hierarchy?

@John_Harshman

Did Romanes claim that design would have produced identical adaptations in distantly related species? If so, on what basis?

Here is Romanes’ argument:

Thus, even if we confine our attention to a single structure, how wonderful are the modifications which it is seen to undergo, although never losing its typical character! How are we to explain this? By design manifested in special creation, or by descent with adaptive modification? If it is said by design manifested in special creation, we must suppose that the Deity formed an archetypal plan of certain structures, and that He determined to adhere to this plan through all the modifications which those structures exhibit. Now the difficulties in the way of this supposition are prodigious, if not quite insurmountable. In the first place, why is it that some structures are selected as typical and not others? Why should the vertebral skeleton, for instance, be tortured into every conceivable variety of modification in order to make it serviceable for as great a variety of functions; while another structure, such as the eye, is made in different sub-kingdoms on fundamentally different plans, notwithstanding that it has throughout to perform the same function? Will any one have the hardihood to assert that in the case of the skeleton the Deity has endeavoured to show His ingenuity by the manifold functions to which He has made the same structure subservient; while in the case of the eye He has endeavoured to show his resources by the manifold structures which He has to subserve the same function? If so, it appears to me a most unfortunate circumstance, that throughout both the vegetable and animal kingdoms, all cases which can be pointed to as showing ingenious adaptation of the same typical structure to the performance of widely different functions, are cases which come within the limits of the same natural group of plants and animals, and therefore admit of being equally well explained by descent from a common ancestry; while all cases of widely different structures performing the same function are to be found in different groups of plants or animals, and are therefore suggestive of independent variations arising in the different lines of hereditary descent.
–George Romanes

Why not use the same eye for fish and squid that live in the exact same environment? Why use the same limbs for whales and humans even though they live in very different environments? Why would ID just happen to produce the same pattern that common descent would produce?

@John_Harshman

Nevertheless, he’s not talking about nested hierarchy or common descent, which is what you were talking about.

It’s the same concept. If a natural process can explain it then ID is falsified.

@John_Harshman

Incidentally, at the level of individual nucleotides, all homoplasies are indeed identical, and we must detect homoplasy, only imperfectly, by its failing to fit the general pattern.

Agreed. We would expect a certain level of homoplasy with evolutionary mechanisms. Like so many other things in science, there is a signal to noise ratio.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@T_aquaticus

It’s the same concept. If a natural process can explain it then ID is falsified.

What do you mean by we can explain it?

[T_aquaticus]

@colewd

What do you mean by we can explain it?

I mean the theory is consistent with multiple independent lines of evidence which is the same way that theories explain phenomena in the rest of science.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@T_aquaticus

I mean the theory is consistent with multiple independent lines of evidence which is the same way that theories explain phenomena in the rest of science.

How do you judge if this is true? How do assign confidence to your finding?

[T_aquaticus]

@colewd

How do you judge if this is true? How do assign confidence to your finding?

I look for how well the observations match the predictions. Within each hypothesis that is tested I use statistics to assign confidence. As a whole, I assign confidence based on the ability to tie together independent lines of evidence that didn’t previously have an explanation that tied them together.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@T_aquaticus

, I assign confidence based on the ability to tie together independent lines of evidence that didn’t previously have an explanation that tied them together

Based on this do you think the resurrection of Jesus is true?

[T_aquaticus]

@colewd

Based on this do you think the resurrection of Jesus is true?

I have yet to see evidence that is independent of the claims and verifiable, so I have not been convinced of its veracity. I suspect that you don’t believe the claims of other religious are true, such as the prophet Muhammad riding a winged horse into heaven and then back again, all of which is backed by accounts claiming to be eyewitnesses. I also suspect that you don’t believe that the angel Moroni showed Joseph Smith the location of the Golden Plates.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@T_aquaticus

I have yet to see evidence that is independent of the claims and verifiable, so I have not been convinced of its veracity. I suspect that you don’t believe the claims of other religious are true, such as the prophet Muhammad riding a winged horse into heaven and then back again, all of which is backed by accounts claiming to be eyewitnesses. I also suspect that you don’t believe that the angel Moroni showed Joseph Smith the location of the Golden Plates.

I have evidence that they are both false prophets based on the Deuteronomy 18 test. We have many lines of independent documented evidence of the resurrection.

[T_aquaticus]

@colewd

We have many lines of independent documented evidence of the resurrection.

That seems to be outside the purview of this topic, but if you want to discuss further I would follow up in a different topic. What I would be looking for is evidence that is independent of the persons making the claim, and it would need to be evidence that can be verified.

[John_Harshman]

@T_aquaticus

If the mechanism of change produced identical adaptations in separate lineages, wouldn’t the result be a lack of a nested hierarchy?

Yes, assuming that those identical adaptations were distributed randomly and greatly outnumbered the actual homologies, but that’s not really what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about the explanation for the observed nested hierarchy, and what causes the particular changed observed on particular branches of the tree.

Note that Romanes is talking about separate creation, a particular sort of design. His argument has nothing to do with design that limits itself to causing changes on a tree of descent, the sort of thing envisaged by, for example, Michael Behe. He’s arguing against separate creation, not design per se.

@T_aquaticus

Why would ID just happen to produce the same pattern that common descent would produce?

Again you conflate ID with separate creation. Creation is only one sort of ID. Don’t confuse the two.

[T_aquaticus]

@John_Harshman

Yes, assuming that those identical adaptations were distributed randomly and greatly outnumbered the actual homologies, but that’s not really what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about the explanation for the observed nested hierarchy, and what causes the particular changed observed on particular branches of the tree.

In my mind, the nested hierarchy implies that the mechanism of change is blind to the other changes occurring in other lineages. An adaptation in one branch can’t be copied in another, unless we are talking about horizontal inheritance in the case of prokaryotes. At least in my mind, the nested hierarchy says a lot about the mechanisms of change.

@John_Harshman

Note that Romanes is talking about separate creation, a particular sort of design. His argument has nothing to do with design that limits itself to causing changes on a tree of descent, the sort of thing envisaged by, for example, Michael Behe. He’s arguing against separate creation, not design per se .

I guess I don’t see a meaningful difference. In Behe’s scenario, the designer could copy a gene from one lineage and then stick it into the genome of a species in another lineage, just as humans do. I don’t see how a designer would be prevented from taking a gene from one lineage and putting it into another.

At the same time, Romanes is careful to say that he is talking about direct and immediate methods of creation.

To avoid misapprehension, however, I may here add that while Mr. Darwin’s theory is thus in plain and direct contradiction to the theory of design, or system of teleology, as presented by the school of writers which I have named, I hold that Mr. Darwin’s theory has no point of logical contact with the theory of design in the larger sense, that behind all secondary causes of a physical kind, there is a primary cause of a mental kind. Therefore throughout this essay I refer to design in the sense understood by the narrower forms of teleology, or as an immediate cause of the observed phenomena. Whether or not there is an ultimate cause of a psychical kind pervading all nature, a causa causarum which is the final raison d’être of the cosmos, this is another question which, as I have said, I take to present no point of logical contact with Mr. Darwin’s theory, or, I may add, with any of the methods and results of natural science.
–George Romanes

Or as Darwin put it:

It can hardly be supposed that a false theory would explain, in so satisfactory a manner as does the theory of natural selection, the several large classes of facts above specified. It has recently been objected that this is an unsafe method of arguing; but it is a method used in judging of the common events of life, and has often been used by the greatest natural philosophers … I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as showing how transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery ever made by man, namely, the law of the attraction of gravity, was also attacked by Leibnitz, “as subversive of natural, and inferentially of revealed, religion.” A celebrated author and divine has written to me that “he has gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws.”

— Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)

[John_Harshman]

@T_aquaticus

In my mind, the nested hierarchy implies that the mechanism of change is blind to the other changes occurring in other lineages.

That depends on the magnitude of changes the designer is willing to introduce. If he limits himself to tinkering with genes, introducing mutations he likes, rather than popping eyes into place from whole cloth, your objection goes away.

We can agree that the less prominent the act of intervention, the less evidence it presents for design. And I agree that the history of life argues against even the tinkering view of design. But that’s not what Romanes is talking about.

This brings up an interesting subject: how would we expect a designer to work that would distinguish that work from non-design? IDers seem largely silent on this question, even the ones that try to analogize it to vehicle design. They also seem quite silent on the question of how many designers there are, merely assuming for some unknown reason that there’s exactly one. Multiple designers, different ones for cephalopods and vertebrates, for example, would handle your objection.

[colewd (Bill Cole)]

@T_aquaticus

In my mind, the nested hierarchy implies that the mechanism of change is blind to the other changes occurring in other lineages. An adaptation in one branch can’t be copied in another, unless we are talking about horizontal inheritance in the case of prokaryotes. At least in my mind, the nested hierarchy says a lot about the mechanisms of change.

Yet we see this with complex adaptions such as echo location.

[evograd (Blogging Graduate Student)]

@colewd

Yet we see this with complex adaptions such as echo location.

You say “yet”, as though this is inconsistent with what T aquaticus said, but it isn’t. As was pointed out earlier, a certain amount of homoplasy is expected - there will always be a certain signal to noise ratio. This is especially true when physical constraints limit the number of feasible solutions to a given problem - this increases the likelihood that the same solution with be employed independently. Second, as I’m sure has been pointed out to you before, echolocation hasn’t been perfectly “copied” in organisms like the bats and whales I imagine you’re referring to. They’re a good example where homoplasies are clearly recognisable as such, quite apart from the phylogenetic evidence indicating independent origins,