Welcome to Terrell Clemmons: Questions on Methodological Naturalism

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

You’re speculating about what I’d say about a counterfactual situtation. We never observe macroevolutionary change in real time, so I don’t know what my reaction would be. Regarding what we can observe, I’d say we can’t possibly tell regarding any single mutation.

Macroevolution is just the accumulation of single mutations. If you can’t tell if a single mutation is guided, how would observing millions of mutations be any different?

@Eddie

But if you affirm it as a fact (rather than a tentative hypothesis) that a whole series of unguided, unplanned mutations turned primitive artiodactyls into whales, then I would argue that this would be an unlikely result unless something was somehow lining things up.

Why?

@Eddie

Just as I might not be able to explain how the dealer managed to give me three royal flushes in a row (I might not have enough knowledge of the techniques of a card sharp to figure it out), but would feel pretty certain that the result was engineered.

That’s easy to achieve as well. Start with 5 random cards. Draw one card at a time. If that card improves your hand, then keep it and discard one card. Keep repeating this process and you will end up with either a royal flush or 4 of a kind, every time. You are ignoring how mutation and selection works.

@Eddie

How do you know that they are?

Because that is what the evidence indicates. The mutations that separate species are consistent with the mutations we see happening in real time. I discuss the evidence in this thread:

Mutations Are Consistent With Biochemistry

In a previous thread I discussed what science meant by random mutations and how this term is defined by experimental results and statistics. A lot of this work was done in the 1940’s and 50’s, and since then many new facts have been discovered in the field of genetics, such as the discovery of DNA. This gave rise to the field of molecular biology and allowed us to understand biology at the molecular scale. So what exactly causes mutations? We once again have to reiterate the the limited scope of science. What science can do is put forward hypotheses and see if the evidence is consistent with that hypothesis. What science can not do is make ontological statements about absolute truth. With that in mind, the next few posts will discuss the evidence that links mutagenesis (the production of mutations) with the biochemistry of the cell and why scientists aren’t simply assuming that mutations are caused by biochemistry.

@Eddie

That doesn’t describe Denton’s book! He doesn’t argue against evolution understood as descent with modification; in fact, he assumes it.

Has Denton ever been refused a job in a Biology department? Has he ever applied for one?