Progress after the Royal Society conference?

[lee_merrill]

@RonSewell

@lee_merrill

Darwin thought it was a concern, was he wrong?

He was certainly out of date with respect to the current catalog of the fossil record.

The man has been dead for 150 years. What is with you ID guys and your fixated obsession with Darwin? Is it about the quote mines?

A lot of weirdness here, what does the fossil record have to do with Darwin’s concern about the validity of reason? I think he saw clearly that if you remove God from the picture, and make humans the result of an unreasoning process, that undermines human reason. What further developments can you find that address this? And I’m not fixated on Darwin, I mention him because you all respect his judgement. And what are you referring to with quote mines? Please be specific. Thank you.

[lee_merrill]

@Mercer

@lee_merrill

So are you saying there are no valid, unsolved problems in science, where no progress has been made?

No, I am not. I said what I said and you are avoiding addressing what I said.

I think the shoe is on the other foot, you do seem to discount the problems the Third Way raises, what have I avoided in what you said?

[lee_merrill]

@Faizal_Ali

Hi, Lee. I’ve been away a few days.

What refutations do you have for the points raised in this article?

Hi Faizal, welcome back! I did read the article, and responded to it, the link is here. Glad to discuss further…

[RonSewell (RonS)]

@lee_merrill

what does the fossil record have to do with Darwin’s concern about the validity of reason?

I was responding to your post quoting Darwin on intermediate links.

@lee_merrill

Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links?

which definitely relates to the fossil record.

[RonSewell (RonS)]

@lee_merrill

A lot of weirdness here, what does the fossil record have to do with Darwin’s concern about the validity of reason? I think he saw clearly that if you remove God from the picture, and make humans the result of an unreasoning process, that undermines human reason. What further developments can you find that address this?

I think that myself and others have been clear. Reason is based on having a grasp of reality, and that is explicable in terms of ascertaining the environment and anticipating future outcomes. There is no need of further developments, because the demand that reason can only be conferred by God is and always has been a baseless assertion.

[Rumraket (Mikkel R.)]

@lee_merrill

A lot of weirdness here, what does the fossil record have to do with Darwin’s concern about the validity of reason? I think he saw clearly that if you remove God from the picture, and make humans the result of an unreasoning process, that undermines human reason. What further developments can you find that address this? And I’m not fixated on Darwin, I mention him because you all respect his judgement. And what are you referring to with quote mines? Please be specific. Thank you.

I think I completely undermined that argument in the other thread. Remember the post with the boxes?

[Tim]

@lee_merrill

A lot of weirdness here, what does the fossil record have to do with Darwin’s concern about the validity of reason?

What “concern” of “Darwin’s” “about the validity of reason”, Lee? The only quote of Darwin I can find of yours on this thread was about the fossil record.

@lee_merrill

And I’m not fixated on Darwin, I mention him because you all respect his judgement.

I think you’d have trouble finding anybody on this forum who respects Darwin’s judgement so much that we’d accept things on his unsubstantiated say-so. That you believe that we would is just further evidence that you share the ID Creationist apologetics echo chamber’s fixation with him: Darwin on Trial, Darwin’s Black Box, Darwin Devolves, The Deniable Darwin, etc, etc.

[Faizal_Ali]

@lee_merrill

Thanks! Well, let’s see…

“This model has been almost universally rejected, but Eldredge and Gould called attention to the important and still not fully explained pattern of stasis, and raised a possible role for speciation in fostering long-term character evolution, which is a topic of ongoing research [[39–42](javascript:].”

So this actually states that Eldredge and Gould’s concerns were valid, and a current topic of research, and I note that these concerns correspond with some of the EES concerns.

As is generally the rule with you, you do not understand what the “concerns” of the EES actually are. They are not merely stating that there are aspects of evolution that are not yet fully understood and require further research. That would be a ridiculously trivial statement.

What they are claiming is that their “concerns” have not been noticed and and subjected to research by mainstream evolutionary biologists, and that properly addressing these concerns will require abandoning the existing model of evolution and replacing it with a new (unspecified) model.

As you have correctly noted, Futuyma’s paper demonstrates that these concerns have in fact been acknowledged and researched by evolutionary biologists for decades before the EES even existed, and that there is no evidence that addressing these “concerns” will require anything beyond the evolutionary mechanisms that are already known.

[John_Harshman]

@lee_merrill

I think he saw clearly that if you remove God from the picture, and make humans the result of an unreasoning process, that undermines human reason.

Did he? Where? You have to stop making this claim until you can provide the source. And you should know that Darwin was wrong about some things. We don’t believe anything just because Darwin said it, if he even really said it.

[John_Harshman]

I will add that it took me only a few minutes on the internet to find the letter in question. Are you that incapable?

But here you are:

| Darwin Correspondence Project