He certainly did not produce a simulation of evolution accurate enough to be useful to your argument,
The fact that you haven’t shown any such thing. Your whole argument rests on the limitations of the “weasel” - to come to a conclusion long ago shown to be false.
And yet you seem able to make the claim that non-Darwinian mechanisms are needed to achieve IC. When do you intend to actually support it?
In reality Mendelian inheritance solved a serious problem in Darwin’s own ideas. It took a while to see that but when it was understood Darwinian evolution returned with the”New Synthesis”.
Hardly a refutation, just an additional factor. And it’s been generally accepted as the origin of eukaryotes
Why would we need recently discovered mechanisms when the mechanisms known to Mūller are sufficient to refute your claim?
yepp. I meant that beginning p. 77 in the updated paperback edition.
I linked the article of Thornhill & Ussery also. Did you read it?
The case is a bit more complicated. The claims weren’t claims of Behe but of ‘Mike Gene’. Even the beginning of the chapter concerning Behe’s concept are tricky. If you like we can discuss that.
That’s a difficult question and depends on semantic issues. What are “new theories”? Is the clarification of issues a ‘new theory’?
@Thomas, if you’re going to ignore the vast majority of my post and respond only to the first five words and a footnote, there’s no point in trying to have a conversation with you. So I’ll just highlight for others where and why you are wrong, and not waste time trying to convince you of anything.
‘Weasel’ programs have neither. The strings being manipulated always have the same number of components (letters), there’s no ability to add or remove them, only to change them. The only possible definition of functionality for ‘Weasel’ is of having an exact match to the target, but if you say that any string not matching the target exactly is non-functional (and hence non-selectable) then you’re just left with a random search for the entire string, and all you are doing is confirming Dawkins’s original demonstration that cumulative selection is much faster than single-step selection - which is already known.
So it doesn’t matter how you rewrite ‘weasel’, you will never be able to conclude anything about the evolution of irreducible complexity because you are using an inappropriate example. You are wasting your time.
But, since Dave Thomas and I did exactly that, it’s not apparently interesting enough for you to comment on.
Using the original definition, not the one Behe adopted after he realised the original one was having no impact. ↩︎
Darwinism encompasses all of life — human, animal, plant, bacterial, and, if I am right in the last chapter of this book, extraterrestrial. It provides the only satisfying explanation for why we all exist, why we are the way that we are. It is the bedrock on which rest all the disciplines known as the humanities.
Dawkins did not say the solution was cumulative selection - he said it was “Darwinism”, which covers a whole lot more than just cumulative selection.
Based on your description of how you modified ‘Weasel’, the problem is that you didn’t show what cumulative selection can’t achieve, you showed what not having cumulative can’t achieve. Which Dawkins had already done.
You’re right, I mis-stated my argument. I meant members of an YEC-organization, e.g. AIG, ICR or others.
There are some YEC-folks in the ID-movement. And I agree that most people in the US don’t know the difference between ID and YEC.
Do we agree that the first versions of that book (you find a list in the protocol of the Dover-Trial) was written before Johnson founded the ID-movement?
You know of course
Dembski, W.A.; (ed.) (2006) ‘Darwin’s Nemesis. Phillip Johnson and the Intelligent Design Movement’ Leicester, Inter-Varsity Press
Contained is
Ross, M.R.; Nelson, P.A. (2006) ‘A Taxonomy of Teleology: Phillip Johnson, the Intelligent Design Community and Young-Earth Creationism’ p. 261-275
as input of the ‘YEC-fraction’ (my wording, if you’re interested I’ll quote some lines). Quite an tiny fraction, regarding the number of contributors.
Would it be reasonable to move this discussion to Side Conversation, and remove the need for moderator approval of comments? There has been some strong disagreement, but the discussion seems to be going well despite that. Please respond here or privately to @moderators.
My argument was ‘sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander’.
Ask credentialed posters here if they identify as ‘Darwinians’, ‘Darwinists’ or any designer mentioning Darwin… If so you have an argument.
You can also read
Scott, E.C.; Branch, G. (2009) ‘Don’t Call it ‘Darwinism’’ Evo Edu Outreach 2:90-94
Can you imagine a reason calling a mechanism ‘non-darwinian’? Or a reason, why interventionists usually dont speak of ‘Evolution’ but of ‘Darwinism’ or mind Darwin in the title of their books?
I’ve read quite a lot of primary literature about the history of evolutionary biology. We can discuss that in any detail you want.
If you mean e.g.
Muller, H.J. (1918) ‘Genetic Variability, Twin Hybrids and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of Balanced Lethal Factors’ Genetics 3 (5):422-499
why do you mis-spell his name? Or do you mean someone other named ‘Müller’? Please cite an article of that person that I can see whom you mean.
I see a problem with a ‘wide’ definition of ‘creationism’.
Take authors like Swamidass, Pennock, Miller and so on. Are they ‘creationists’?
I proposed a term like ‘interventionist’ (meaning the belief that a supernatural enitity intervenes in evolution, e.g. by creating species or complex systems) for YEC, ID and quite some other positions. As non-interventionist you can believe in a creator and the possibility of a naturalistic science.
Dawkins was honest enough to admit the limitations of the “weasel”. Apparently you don’t share that honesty.
In other words you can’t support your claim.
Sure I can imagine a non-Darwinian mechanism. Genetic drift is an example. I think that IDists usually speak of Darwinism because they don’t understand that science isn’t based on authority.
Or because it plays well to their audience.
Anyway I think we’ve got to the point where you have throrougly answered the title question in the negative.
I don’t know if this is what you are thinking about. But the chart from Eugene Koonin that is reproduced in the article below might be relevant. It assesses some of the “central propositions of Darwin and Modern Synthesis” in light of more recent evolutionary theory (don’t be thrown by the use of the word “postmodern”):
I’ve read the rulings of Scopes, McLean, Edwards and Dover and quite a lot of transcripts. For me as German that is strange. In our schools nobody minds religious content.
I hope that the second presidency of Trump will not change that.
I’m quite sure that you can find some more mechanisms in the evolutionary literature.
My point was that ‘darwinism’ (often called RMNS), was regarded as most important evolutionary factor (think about Weismann, he wrote a book with ‘Allmacht der Selektion’ ('Omnipotence of Selection) in its title, or ‘creative selection’ as central element of the Modern Synthesis). Even today it’s the only known mechanism explaining adaptation.
But for generating novelties you need other mechanisms. There are plenty of them.
And what does anything you have posted so far have to do with the title question? I know the language barrier is causing some difficulty, but all I can think of is to ask you to be more careful to say what you mean clearly.