Replacing Darwin Made Simple

Conversation
21

And then there’s fossils of transitional species. Of the correct ages:

643×874 38.4 KB

Figure 1.4.3. A comparison of the jawbones and ear-bones of several transitional forms in the evolution of mammals . Approximate stratigraphic ranges of the various taxa are indicated at the far left (more recent on top). The left column of jawbones shows the view of the left jawbone from the inside of the mouth. The right column is the view of the right jawbone from the right side (outside of the skull). As in Figure 1.4.1, the quadrate (mammalian anvil or incus) is in turquoise, the articular (mammalian hammer or malleus) is in yellow, and the angular (mammalian tympanic annulus) is in pink. For clarity, the teeth are not shown, and the squamosal upper jawbone is omitted (it replaces the quadrate in the mammalian jaw joint, and forms part of the jaw joint in advanced cynodonts and Morganucodon ). Q = quadrate, Ar = articular, An = angular, I = incus (anvil), Ma = malleus (hammer), Ty = tympanic annulus, D = dentary. (Reproduced from Kardong 2002, pp. 274, with permission from the publisher, Copyright © 2002 McGraw-Hill)

4 Likes
22

Oh, please do. I bought a copy to review a while ago and despair at the wretched state of humanity, brought on by beginning to read it, has prevented me from finishing it. So far, at least.

And when you do: please consider posting it not only here, but also over at Amazon. I don’t think there is any book merchant in the world where the book reviews are more widely read, and most of the critical reviews there (there are exceptions, but fewer than one would like) are not terribly substantive. I think you’ll find that a lot of people do read a good review (and that the Amazon ranking system will recognize that – my review of Meyer’s latest obscenity is now rated the “most helpful” review on Amazon, and hence comes right to the top when you’re looking at the reviews), and you may even save a few people from the ugly fate of actually reading and believing this nonsense.

2 Likes
23

I just want to note here that this is Jeanson’s proposed mechanism of speciation: Ancestral heterozygous states become homozygous as lineages diverge. He says you don’t need natural selection, just created variation and different losses of that variation in different lineages over time.

He cites precisely one example of observed new species, a specific Galapagos finch, and you know what the punchline is? We know the mechanism of speciation in that case, and it isn’t what Jeanson says. It’s hybridization.

Call me old fashioned, but if you’re going to propose a novel mechanism for a biological process, I’d expect you to provide at least one observed example of that mechanism operating.

6 Likes
24

Why stop there? Whales and Salamanders are still tetrapods. Tetrapods are still vertebrates. Actually, you, me, and all eukaryotes can be one big happy baramin. It may not be PC, but I’m a bit domainist when it comes to kinds that don’t tidy their DNA into a neat nucleus.

7 Likes
25

I’m more of a big tent sort. All life is one baramin, one kind - the peptidyltransferase kind.

7 Likes
26

I haven’t read Replacing Darwin Made Simple. Though maybe I should; I had a hard time getting through the larger book. But elsewhere he does claim exactly that for the finches. I quoted a bit below, but you probably need to read the article in full for the explanation of why its both hybridization and a shift toward homozygosity.

The founder . . . appeared to be a typical member of the source population of G. conirostris [the scientific term for another one of the original species of finch]. . . in terms of average genome-wide homozygosity. . . . A gradual increase in homozygosity was then observed over the next five generations, as expected from the small number of breeding pairs (one to eight), causing genetic drift.8

In other words, the parental species was relatively heterozygous, and the new species shifted to a state of increased homozygosity —just like Replacing Darwin predicted.

27

Look. I’m gonna be honest. Talking with you can be frustrating, because you have a tendency to lift snippets out of context without really grasping the big picture or, as is the case here, reading the works in question.

Jeanson doesn’t talk about hybridization. He just doesn’t. He talks about divergence into different environments and a loss of heterozygosity over time. That’s the mechanism he proposed.

Hybridization is not that. Almost by definition, hybridization involves a large increase in heterzogosity (because you’re hybidizing two different lineages) followed by a steep decline (because you necessarily have a small population and therefore strong drift and lots of inbreeding).

This is not the mechanism Jeanson describes. Period.

6 Likes
29

Okay, I had the time so I did a video review. Went longer than I planned but what the heck. The book’s only 90 pages long and full of astonishingly bad arguments. Enjoy? Enjoy.

It’d be cool if Jeanson was a member here, love to see him explain himself.

4 Likes
30

I thought I’d watch just to see what you had to say. You read my replies to you here and write back so I figure I’d give you back the same courtesy. And I wanted to get to all the Jeanson videos you’ve done eventually so why not this one tonight.

I’m 50 minutes in, and all the sighs and "I don’t care"s had me chuckling earlier, but now I’m laughing out loud. I’m actually laughing while I type this, so thanks for the entertainment. :slightly_smiling_face:

If you are interested in other specific reactions that I, as a creationist, have to the content of the video, let me know. I’ll see if I can finish it tonight.

31

One thing I hope you can take away from this (extremely informal) review is that the arguments and “evidence” Jeanson puts forward are just not serious. And that’s to say nothing of what I can only think are pretty blatant lies. I come away thinking he thinks very little of his audience.

4 Likes
32

I don’t come away thinking that he thinks very little of his audience but I can understand that you do.

But we agree on observable speciation…I got another chuckle when you criticized hyper-speciation at about 58 minutes right after mentioning that. :slightly_smiling_face:

33

Why not, other than the obvous tribal reasons?

34

Recall that @thoughtful is his audience. Even if Jeanson does think little of them, he’s not about to make it easy for them to realize that.

1 Like
35

Not an uncommon problem at all. From my review of Darwin’s House of Cards:

Bethell’s approach is quite plainly based upon a deep contempt for his reader’s level of general learning and intelligence. While ID’s detractors are often criticized for lobbing insults at the intelligence of ID’s supporters, very few of those detractors display a contempt for that intelligence as profound and general as Bethell’s. As much as ID’s proponents complain that they are not taken seriously, and that their followers are derided as fools, I have never seen a book which assumes that a person interested in ID is as poorly informed about basic biology or as generally witless as this book does.

Now, there are people who are so heavily inclined to be charitable that they’d give someone like Jeanson a pass – they think it would be kinder to think of him as a complete moron than to think of him as a liar. I think this gets it exactly backwards. The con artist is a craftsman, and while we cannot admire his mission we can admire his skill at his craft. And, of course, a well-crafted approach like Jeanson’s which succeeds in fooling people would be very hard to arrive at by mere stupidity – you have to have a strategy for ball-hiding and misdirection to pull this sort of thing off. We see, as another con artist puts it, a “purposeful arrangement of parts.”

5 Likes
36

Of course. That’s why I asked how it looks from her perspective.

37

Well for one thing I don’t see the argument comparing the phenotypic development of a frog to the phenotypic diversity of cats as a bad argument. But it only makes sense from a creationist perspective. Because if the genome controls for phenotype then that means it can contain the diversity in both cases if it is originally created.

I also think what he is trying to do to advance his ideas is very difficult, in terms of writing. As I see it, he has three audiences to appeal to with new ideas, well, now 4: One of his audiences is mainstream biologists and he’s just needs more lab data to back him up; any argument about new theory just isn’t going to be accepted without it. Yes, it is frustrating that AIG doesn’t make lab work a priority. Another audience is mostly lay creationists, the vast majority who have no idea what the state of mainstream science is and need complicated concepts explained in a digestible way- not easy. A third audience is creation scientists. A fourth audience he now has he may not have considered is historians.

Do I think some of his arguments or writing could use improvement? Sure. Are ad hominems helpful? No.

38

First, development and evolution are completely different. Shouldn’t have to explain how and why. It’s such a dishonest argument.

Second, it’s not just a matter of more data. If Jeanson wants to be taken seriously, he needs to operate within the scientific community, not AiG’s safe space.

He literally will not communicate with critics except in writing in ARJ, AiG’s journal cosplay.

So real scientists are going to ignore him, and rightfully so. He wants that to change? He know exactly what to do.

4 Likes
39

I got that they’re completely different. But I don’t see that it’s a dishonest argument because I made it as part of a joke. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you’re a creationist. I see it as an argument to convince creationists who are still skeptical of change over time in any significant way.

As far as I can tell that’s mostly AIG policy and because the few mainstream scientists that criticize his work often engage in ad hominens and don’t actually deal with the content in a significant way. But you did criticize the content so at least he is getting that feedback if he wants his arguments taken seriously in the mainstream community he can see where he needs improvement.

40

Perhaps, but an article by Jeanson was covered this week by @Joel_Duff on his YouTube channel. The Jeanson article was written in 2013 when he was still at ICR. If it didn’t result in his sacking, then it could only be because he had the movers waiting for publication.

One can’t defend Jeanson’s approach to critics. My point is that when the boot was on the other foot, Jeanson paid a high price. And he might feel that once in a lifetime is enough.

41

If you really believe that it makes sense, then you should have no problem explaining it. In the past, you have not exhibited any real understanding, because you don’t seem to realize that most things that go wrong during development are not genetic.

Also, invoking a “creationist perspective” is one of those obvious tribal reasons that I politely asked you to avoid. You’re redefining “making sense” as “uncritically accepting handwaving without evidence to maintain one’s tribal identity.” That’s really all there is, correct?

Controls for? Sorry, that’s not coherent. In science, “to control for” is used in the context of experiments, as in, “Did you control for calcium in that reaction?”

There’s a whole lot more going on in development. The genome as blueprint, particularly for regulatory development (our development) is a poor metaphor. Think for a moment about all of the positional information involved in, say, twinning. Twinning only works because of the iterative, cumulative nature of all those developmental mechanisms.

Indeed. It’s not science. If he were trying to advance his ideas scientifically, he would be testing hypotheses.

I asked for things other than tribal things, though.

Science isn’t about simply accepting an argument. It, like evolution, is iterative. Jeanson (you too) is simply rejecting science. Period.

Your view of data is very Eddie-esque, as though it just magically appears for the smarter people to use in their sophisticated arguments. This is why you should “read” papers starting with the figures and tables. Then you’d see real scientists arguing with themselves to generate new knowledge.

Sorry, I don’t see any justification for you to blame AiG for Jeanson’s failure to do any science. Besides, there’s no reason he has to work for them. Real scientists move around all the time.

The reality is that no creationist, including you, believes (religiously) in what he’s selling.

Very easy. Just cherry-pick the data (i.e., scientific misconduct) and lie when that doesn’t work. That’s a lot easier than doing science.

No such thing. It’s a cargo cult. No one is DOING creation science. None are testing a creationist hypothesis. There’s no real faith. It’s really about getting attention and Benjamins from people like you.

But why just arguing and writing? What about the foundation of science, testing hypotheses? Do you have faith that doing so would yield your desired results?

I agree in most cases, but I’m not sure you know what they are. Moreover, not all ad hominems are fallacious, the most obvious case being pointing out that someone posing as an expert isn’t one.

AiG policy is irrelevant. If this is really important and a matter of strong faith, Jeanson does not have to be associated with AiG.

Examples?

@dsterncardinale is dealing with the content, or the lack thereof. You, Valerie, are avoiding content and falling back on tribalism and weak excuses like “AIG policy.”

The improvement would come from testing hypotheses instead of offering arguments in writing. Jeanson doesn’t appear to have sufficient faith to do that.

4 Likes