More Excuses for Cambrian Non-Evolution

[nwrickert (Neil Rickert)]

@gbrooks9

But the only real motivation for dismissing a ton of natural evidence is the fixation on Paul treating Adam and Eve as historical people.

I always took that as literary allusion.

[gbrooks9 (GeorgeB)]

@nwrickert

I always took that as literary allusion.

@nwrickert

Which is why you have no problem with evolution.

Paul’s Adam is the linchpin of Creationist rejection.

[T_aquaticus]

@nwrickert

This analogy points to part of the issue for Mung and for many opponents of evolution.

By itself, the term “evolution” could be referring to the process of change in the biosphere. Or it could be referring to the natural history of how we got here.

Evolutionists often say that there is overwhelming evidence for evolution. And they are right, as long as we are talking about evolution as the process of change. But if we are talking about natural history, then there are many gaps in the chain of evidence.

It is of the nature of history, that there is never more than a partial record. So all history depends on taking that partial record, and interpolating to fill in the gaps.

From the scientists perspective, this is easy. The process of change is well established, so we use that process in our interpolation.

The religious opponents of evolution won’t accept that, because they want to allow that there might have been miracles involved.

That’s roughly the impasse.

I completely agree. A good analogy might be a crime scene. We may not know every step and every movement a criminal makes, but we can still gather fingerprint and DNA evidence that can clearly indicate guilt.

Your use of the word “interpolation” is also important. We have the end products of evolution with us right now. Their genomes are a record of their ancestry imperfectly kept which allows us to fill in the gaps between the known points with great confidence, but always tentatively as @swamidass always encourages me to highlight.

I’m not a fan of Dawkins, but he did write something of interest. I think it does a great job of describing the outlines of the arguments we see here on a regular basis. In the essay he describes how a butler is on trial for murder, and the evidence is stacked heavily against them. The prosecution then discovers a video tape which he enters into evidence:

With bated breath, the court watches the films. One of them shows the butler in the act of opening the drawer in his pantry, taking out a pistol, loading it, and creeping stealthily out of the room with a malevolent gleam in his eye. You might think that this solidifies the case against the butler even further. Mark the sequel, however. The butler’s defense lawyer astutely points out that there was no spy camera in the library where the murder took place, and no spy camera in the corridor leading from the butler’s pantry. “There’s a gap in the video record! We don’t know what happened after the butler left the pantry. There is clearly insufficient evidence to convict my client.”

In vain, the prosecution lawyer points out that there was a second camera in the billiard room, and this shows, through the open door, the butler, gun at the ready, creeping on tiptoe along the passage toward the library. Surely this plugs the gap in the video record? But no. Triumphantly the defense lawyer plays his ace. “We don’t know what happened before or after the butler passed the open door of the billiard room. There are now two gaps in the video record. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my case rests. There is now even less evidence against my client than there was before.”
Richard Dawkins

[Mung]

@John_Harshman

The book is about adaptation, which is Losos’s field. He makes no claim that everything is adaptive, but the stuff he studies definitely is.

So the book is clearly and unequivocally adaptationist. That’s what I said and you confirmed it. Thank you.

[Mung]

@gbrooks9

@swamidass shouldnt assume an anti-evolution stance based merely on adhering to the premise that science can detect gods activity.

I have no idea how science would detect either the presence of God’s activity or the absence of God’s activity. As far as I am aware it lacks the requisite tools and methods to do so.

[Mung]

@T_aquaticus

Historians don’t know the exact places where Napoleon’s feet touched Russia, yet they are quite confident that Napoleon did invade Russia. How do you explain this?

I believe I am still waiting for you to explain how historians know that Napoleon invaded Russia without having any details of his having done so.

[T_aquaticus]

@Mung

I believe I am still waiting for you to explain how historians know that Napoleon invaded Russia without having any details of his having done so.

They have evidence of the large brush strokes of history. They have material written during the period on both sides of the struggle. With biology, we have the same type of evidence. We have more than enough evidence to conclude evolution occurred without needing to know the fine details.

[John_Harshman]

@Mung

So the book is clearly and unequivocally adaptationist. That’s what I said and you confirmed it. Thank you.

I see you have abandoned “pan-adaptationist” in favor of “adaptationist”. But no, not even that. I’m pretty sure that nobody would disagree with the idea that some changes are adaptive and result from selection. Perhaps even you wouldn’t disagree with that. An adaptationist view, and this was the essence of the argument between adaptationists and neutralists, would be that all changes are adaptive. Losos says nothing of the sort. Give it up.

[Mung]

@swamidass

Behe demands a mutation by mutation account. Axe demands a mutation by mutation account.

@mung, you didn’t know? Wow.

No I didn’t know. I guess that’s a benefit of posting here.

I have Darwin’s Black Box and The Edge of Evolution by Behe, and Undeniable by Axe. Can you point me to some specific instances?

[Mung]

@John_Harshman

An adaptationist view, and this was the essence of the argument between adaptationists and neutralists, would be that all changes are adaptive. Losos says nothing of the sort.

Yet you admit that in his book the only explanations he has to offer are in fact adaptationist. So I don’t think it’s unfair to call the book pan-adaptationist. If you can point to where he offers a non-adaptationist explanation in his book I’d be happy to change my mind about it. And all this is clearly missing the point anyways, which is that the book is blatantly Darwinian. Where does he present any non-Darwinian explanation for any of the cases of evolution that he presents?

So Darwinism still exists in science, at least as presented in popular science writing. Contra Joshua.

This should come as no surprise to him, given that he has already commented on the state of popular science writing over at UD.

[Mung]

@T_aquaticus

They have evidence of the large brush strokes of history. They have material written during the period on both sides of the struggle. With biology, we have the same type of evidence. We have more than enough evidence to conclude evolution occurred without needing to know the fine details.

Your fist sentence makes no sense to me. Your second sentence concedes that the reason we know about the invasion of Russia by Napoleon is because we have details about it. Which is precisely what I was arguing. So thank you for that.

Your claim that we have the same type of evidence when it comes to evolution needs something to back it up.

As for as your last sentence, I’ve not argued that evolution has not taken place.

Historians don’t claim that they know history happened, therefore they don’t need the details to be known in order to know that Napoleaon invaded Russia. The claim that Napoleon invaded Russia is based on historical details, and the broad brush of history is constructed from collections of such historical details.

Evolution, on the other hand, has it backwards from the way that history actually works. It’s not built up from the details to give the broad brush, like history is. Evolutionists claims that the details are not required, because, you know, we know evolution happened.

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@swamidass

Behe demands a mutation by mutation account. Axe demands a mutation by mutation account.

@Mung

I have Darwin’s Black Box and The Edge of Evolution by Behe, and Undeniable by Axe. Can you point me to some specific instances?

From Behe at the Dover Trial, under oath:

Q. And I’m correct when I asked you, you would need to see a step-by-step description of how the immune system, vertebrate immune system developed?

A. Not only would I need a step-by-step, mutation by mutation analysis, I would also want to see relevant information such as what is the population size of the organism in which these mutations are occurring, what is the selective value for the mutation, are there any detrimental effects of the mutation, and many other such questions.
Kitzmiller v. Dover: Day 12, PM: Michael Behe

More importantly, identifying the full step-by-step mutational pathway is what Behe says is critical to establish if a pathway is irreducibly complex or not.

@swamidass

Behe writes a different definition, that he carries forward to this day in the Edge of Evolution .

An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway.
http://www.discovery.org/a/442

Now this definition suffers greatly compared to IC1, because it is not longer objective and directly measureable. Instead, we need to understand something of the evolutionary pathway, which is not directly observable.

So, if we don’t know the steps, it is IC. If we do know the steps it is IC too, because Behe incorrectly thinks all the steps must be selectable.

@swamidass

Embedded in this definition is an important straw man. He writes “one or more unselected steps.” Here, into the IC2 definition is being smuggled a strict enforcement of “Darwinian” evolution. Now, anyone following biology at a basic level of competence knows that strict-Darwinian evolution was falsified a long time ago, in the 1970s. We now know that a large proportion of changes are near neutral or even slightly deleterious in the short term.

So, yes one of the most famous ID proponents there is does demand a mutation-by-mutation step-by-step pathway.

[Mung]

@swamidass

So, yes one of the most famous ID proponents there is does demand a mutation-by-mutation step-by-step pathway.

The question he was answering was about an IC system.

The allegation made above in this thread was that “ID supporters demand a mutation by mutation pathway for millions of years of evolution before they will accept the evidence for evolution.”

I’m pretty sure that you are aware that Behe accepts common descent, so laying this charge on Behe has to be a real stretch. Behe obviously accepts evidence for evolution. And he obviously does not demand a mutation by mutation pathway for millions of years of evolution before he will accept the evidence for evolution.

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@Mung

The allegation made above in this thread was that “ID supporters demand a mutation by mutation pathway for millions of years of evolution before they will accept the evidence for evolution.”

Not precisely.

@Mung

Does the historian need to map every spot where Napoleon touched Russia in order to confidently state that Napoleon invaded Russia?

No. Do you think this is at all analogous to the absence of detail by evolutionists?

@T_aquaticus

Yes. ID supporters demand a mutation by mutation pathway for millions of years of evolution before they will accept the evidence for evolution.

@swamidass

From Behe at the Dover Trial, under oath:

Q. And I’m correct when I asked you, you would need to see a step-by-step description of how the immune system, vertebrate immune system developed?

A. Not only would I need a step-by-step, mutation by mutation analysis, I would also want to see relevant information such as what is the population size of the organism in which these mutations are occurring, what is the selective value for the mutation, are there any detrimental effects of the mutation, and many other such questions .
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day12pm.html

Yes, Behe does affirm common descent. He also rejects a large amount of evolutionary science simply because there is no positively selected path at every step known yet. He does accept part of evolutionary science, but rejects a lot of the rest, because he cannot be given a mutation-by-mutation pathway.

Seems like @T_aquaticus did make a good analogy. Perhaps all he shoudl revised it to:

Yes. ID supporters demand a mutation by mutation pathway for millions of years of evolution before they will accept evolutionary science.

[John_Harshman]

@Mung

Yet you admit that in his book the only explanations he has to offer are in fact adaptationist.

Let’s suppose you were a big fan of walnuts, and you wrote a book about walnuts, showing many examples of your favorite walnuts. Should I call you a pan-walnuttist and complain that you hadn’t included any pecans in your book? Losos talks about adaptation and considers experiments in which adaptation happens. He talks about convergence, and when it does or does not happen. Adaptation is the bulk of the explanation for these sorts of phenomena.

@Mung

Where does he present any non-Darwinian explanation for any of the cases of evolution that he presents?

He doesn’t, because what he presents are all cases of adaptation through selection. When you’re talking about walnuts, there’s no need to bring pecans into it.

@Mung

So Darwinism still exists in science, at least as presented in popular science writing. Contra Joshua.

That just shows that you don’t know what Joshua meant. Perhaps he will enlighten you.

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@John_Harshman

So Darwinism still exists in science, at least as presented in popular science writing. Contra Joshua.

That just shows that you don’t know what Joshua meant. Perhaps he will enlighten you.

I agree with @John_Harshman and don’t know how possibly to make myself more clear on this point. Why do people insist on tilting against the imaginary darwinist windmill?

[John_Harshman]

@swamidass, have you read Jonathan Losos’s book? Are you familiar with his work? If not, I recommend it.

[Mung]

@John_Harshman

what he presents are all cases of adaptation through selection

Yes, I know. I read the book. And that’s what I got from it too.

[John_Harshman]

@Mung

Yes, I know. I read the book. And that’s what I got from it too.

Then why are you claiming that Losos is a panadaptationist?

[Mung]

@John_Harshman

Then why are you claiming that Losos is a panadaptationist?

That wasn’t my claim, John. My claim wasn’t about Losos.

You wrote: Incidentally, that’s a great book. Lots of interesting experimental evolutionary biology, though it isn’t clear what Mung sees in it.

I responded: I see pan-adaptationism

It is clear that my comment was about the book, not about Losos.

Misrepresenting what others actually write. Is that how you want to be known?