The Discovery Institute is spreading misinformation again. They have a document that implies that it would be OK for schools in at least some states to "teach the controversy", by which they mean that it is alright for teachers to promote Intelligent Design creationism in their classes. I wonder if the DI would also consider themselves liable if any teacher followed their advice, and discovered that they were costing their district an awful lot of money, as in Dover? Somehow, I doubt it.
On the front page of their screed, they quote Charles Darwin: "A fair result can be obtained only by fully balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question." What they neglect to mention is the importance of that word "balancing": we have been balancing the arguments, and the scientific side weighs tons while the creationist side is a puff of air. They also omit any mention of facts on their side, because they have none. Darwin's quote is not advocacy for equal time for nonsense.
What they claim is that because a report on the NCLB claimed that students should be able to "understand the full range of scientific views that exist," ID is fair game for the curriculum. This ignores the fact that ID is not a scientific view and therefore has no place at the table. They also rely on a selective reading of state science standards. They claim that some indeterminate number of states allow the ID "controversy" to be taught.
Five states (Kansas, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Carolina,
and Minnesota) have already adopted science standards that
require learning about some of the scientific controversies relating
to evolution.
Four states (Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and South
Carolina) have science standards that require learning about
some of the scientific controversies relating to evolution.
Yes, both quotes are directly from the same Discovery Institute document. Would you trust an organization that can't count and gets confused by numbers greater than three?
My state is in there. I know the Minnesota State Science Standards, and pulled out the relevant one. In their document, the DI quotes one small part of this standard, and I've put that part in bold.
|
The student will understand the nature of scientific ways of thinking and that scientific knowledge changes and accumulates over time. |
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This does not support the teaching of Intelligent Design creationism in the classroom. It is a general statement about the provisional nature of science and the requirement for solid scientific evidence to support our ideas. We no more expect our high schools to refute evolution than that they will deny cells, atoms, germs, plate tectonics, or the big bang.
In particular, note items 3 and 4, which the DI conveniently leaves out of their literature. There are criteria for recognizing scientific knowledge that include consistency, an empirical basis, logic, reporting, and falsifiability, and that there are methods in place to manage the process. The Discovery Institute's propaganda violates all of these and does not belong in our schools.
If a misinformed teacher tried to pull a Buckingham and insert creationism into Minnesota schools, at the urgings of the Discovery Institute, they'd be inviting a lawsuit that I'm confident would be slapped down hard. We've been through this before, with the Rodney LeVake case, and here's some surprising news for the DI: the creationists lost.
There's a more relevant standard in the Minnesota requirements that the Discovery Institute glossed over.
| The student will understand how biological evolution provides a scientific explanation for the fossil record of ancient life forms, as well as for the striking molecular similarities observed among the diverse species of living organisms. |
|
If something is to be taught in our schools, that's the degree of specification we expect. The DI seems to think that the fact that we encourage critical thinking means they've got carte blanche to insert any old bogus bit of pseudoscience into the curriculum, and are urging teachers to do an injustice to the standards of their profession.
I read that as incitement to commit a crime.
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The only way to actually teach about controversies in evolution is to ignore ID, creationism, and spend a lot of time talking about mainstream research on evolution. There always is controversy (usually lots of it) within any science; that's how the thing works. That this is not so is The Big Lie of the creationist/ID movement.
Wait a minute... the Discovery Institute LIES?!!
Say it ain't so!
Oh please, DI, just for me, put that belief to the test, oh please, oh please, oh please... /Schadenfreude
--thalarctos, who just got back from an unbelievably sobering risk management seminar about the legal and insurance risks of implementing an evidence-based approach
I agree PZ.
This is a brainwashing we see in the United States. We are taught it since we are practically born. There is a "Fair and Balanced" lie, where there is always, "two sides to the story."
In the real world there are some stories where there is only one actual story, no "sides." It would be stupid to see:
"Cyanide poisoning bad for you? The other side to the story, tonight, on Fox News."
There may also me 3 "sides" to a story, or several hundred. It all depends on the subject. Babies either come from "The Stork" or they do not. There is no other side to that freakin' story...
What I learned last week: it doesn't matter whether the DI considers themselves liable. It only matters what the judge thinks. Nothing else.
So please, DI, just for me, please test it! please, please, pretty please!
kthxbye!
I've half a mind to start a campaign to force churches to give equal time to Cthulhu in their services. Preach the controversy!
What, exactly does the Discovery Institute hope to discover? Since they are approaching the whole issue of 'evilution' from a stance of already knowing the answer. From now on I will refer to them as the Deficient Institute... Deficient in science, morals, education and common decency to their fellow man.
/rant
I think this is more evidence for my denialists shouldn't be debated post. It's clear they will never put forward anything of their own resembling scientific effort, or even give it the old college try. It's the appearance of a debate that they desire and that is it. False parity 'R Us. Whatever happens, this must be opposed.
To me it seems the DI is just wanting PR of any kind, even if it is bad. Bad PR is still PR.
Here's the thing:
even if organisms were intelligently designed and not evolved, ID *still* wouldn't be science.
Too funny. In the Dover case, it ended up costing the school district $2 million dollars. The plaintiffs graciously waived $1 million of that.
It definitely sounds like a case of inciting school districts to violate the US constitution and end up in court. Again.
I'm sure that there will be more court cases. There have been several since before the one in Pennsylvania. You would think organisations devoted to teaching and learning could learn from history but they never seem to.
The DI should include a copy of their Wedge manifesto with their package to make it clear what their ultimate goal is, but they aren't going to.
I'm shocked. What is it about Christianity that makes its followers so dishonest?
Well, it's not the first time a bunch of religious wackos tried to conscript others to do their proselytising for them.
Next they'll be promising indulgences for teachers who 'teach the controversy.'
Oh goodie, more wasted time on invisible entities. Since time is one of the the only commodities that cannot be replenished, shouldn't taxpayers get a losses incurred refund from the Discovery Institute each year?
This is where we could have a whole lot of fun playing with the authoritarian mindset.
Hey, if Darwin was right about that, wasn't he right about everything else, too?
Question:
What are the holes in evolutionary theory?
A friend of mine, when talking about this subject, was pretty strong headed that ID shouldn't be taught (this is weird for him, because its the only subject where we agree, for him, GW is fake, Bush is sane, and all illegal immigrants should be shot on site). However he is also pretty strong minded that the holes in evolution should be taught. And I agree, but I don't really know what they are.
Are the 'holes' just a lack of a complete transitional fossil record from first cells to humans? Or are there real areas where there are strange occurrences that evolution doesnt quite answer (and surely God did it doesnt really answer either).
anyone know?
Oh gee, they quote mined Darwin. I suppose scientists should feel free to quote mine the bible then. Wasn't there a commandment in there somewhere about....not lying?
PZ, the folks at DI must truly hate you. Keep up the good work.
This is a brainwashing we see in the United States. We are taught it since we are practically born. There is a "Fair and Balanced" lie, where there is always, "two sides to the story."
and
To me it seems the DI is just wanting PR of any kind, even if it is bad. Bad PR is still PR.
The media is so bad about the whole fair and balanced crap. Reporting on the new Florida Science Standards is horrible, with all sorts of "both sides" crap and downright false reporting. I keep finding gross errors and distortions in the news stories. It's obvious that in most cases the reporters assigned haven't a clue what they're reporting on and haven't the time or inclination to do some basic research.
For the latest load of crap, see: http://www.flascience.org/wp/
Blake Stacy: Brilliant :-) Not that they'll ever admit to that, though ....
"However he is also pretty strong minded that the holes in evolution should be taught.
As the school guidelines posted by PZ already testify too, student are (and have been for some time) been taught about the scientific process, and that that process is ongoing and never complete. The problem with teaching all the "holes" is that more often than not those "holes" are simply far too complex for a high school teacher, let alone a high school student to fully understand. The scientific curriculum at that age should be focusing on simply getting across the scientific method and why it is important, in addition to providing the basic background in physics, chemistry and biology required for further study at college level.
To be honest, I think most students don't become fully comfortable with the nuances and limitations of the current thinking in their respective specialist fields until they have successfully submitted and defended their Ph. D dissertation.
There's another aspect to the idea of "balance."
Even where there are legitimate controversies, any comparison has to be done on an equal footing if there is to be any sort of "balance of views." Let's suppose there were any kind of alternative to the theory of special relativity--in college one would use the same empirical methods and virtually the same rules for theoretical modeling to "teach the controversy."
When "one side" wants to teach science, and the "alternative" rests on the belief that details are not important, "Causes" may be invoked when there is no hint that they exist detectably in any area, and ancient religious beliefs deserve to be respected for no other reason than that they are ancient religious beliefs, there can be no balance. The differing ideas aren't even on the same stage, let alone being comparable.
I suppose that "gaps" could be taught, on the other hand, but of course they can't be the same BS gaps that the DI zealously brings up to discredit evolution, for these come from the same lack of balance that Judge Jones ruled against. Anyhow, real gaps in our knowledge often are taught where they can be properly appreciated, at the college level.
IOW, "balancing" out the teaching of biological science attendant with its most comprehensive theory with a bunch of religiously-inspired nonsense fails to balance at the starting gate, at our willingness to actually question what we believe rather than to cling to ancient superstition.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
The holes in your friend's knowledge...
Yes, that's typical of our so-called "liberal media" that the Right has been beating us over the head with for so long. I have to hand it to them, it's a great strategy (if you have no morals): buy out all the mainstream media (they're ALL owned by something like three giant megacorps now), then as the corporate masters pull those media distinctly to the right, whenever a news outlet says something you don't like, blame it on their being "liberal", like those people on the other side of the aisle you don't like. Unbelievable.
Right on, Blakey Stacey. The more they lose, the more they quote Darwin.
(Hey! Sound bite! Sound bite!)
What gets me is that they simultaneously exalt the science standards of Pennsylvania as being friendly to ID, while continuing to whine about Dover. How does that make sense? (No, don't answer that!) ;-)
Another headline with the same currency as this one: Snakes are Legless
And no, PZ, I'm not faulting the headline, because however monotonous it is to say that the DI lies, they just do it again on a nearly daily basis. The boredom this causes is no reason to quit, and headlines really should do what this one does, inform us about the article.
I'm jabbing the DI's lying ass.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
I thought the New Mexico thing sounded fishy, because I graduated from high school there not long ago. I looked it up and low and behold!
http://www.nmlites.org/standards/science/index/html
I didn't see any reference to ID, but then I found this: http://pworld.thstateonline.com/?p=47
Anybody know what to make of this?
@ david #23
So, you are saying there are no holes? That is hard to believe. Theories do a great job of explaining the preponderance of evidence, but it is a rare case that it explains all of the documented evidence. Perhaps there is a nuance here and there as DSKS in #21 says. But what are they. A real scientist will say "Here are the areas that we simply don't know yet"
I have read up read through Talk Origins, I learned a bunch of stuff there. But surely there are things that have happened, that we have evidence for that still needs explaining...if there weren't, why are we still studying it?
So, forgetting whether or not it should be taught in high school (and perhaps DSKS is right, maybe its not HS material). Anyone know what the 'holes' are?
Saying that the Discovery Institute is spreading misinformation is like saying that evolutionary biologists are spreading evolution. The DI is misinformation personified, and I think the best way to deal with them is not to dwell on their arguments, but to mock them for the lack of political effectiveness. They've produced no legislation, no reforms and their veiled threats to sue educators are clearly positioning statements with no real substance.
They are the Disappointing Institute, and we should focus on their failure to advance their own political agenda. That hurts the lawyers and the politicians a lot worse that arguing about 'dissents with Darwinism'. When we argue science with a bunch of non-scientists, it gives them a patina of respectability. We tend to lose PR points when that happens, unless our scientists are also skilled at the lawyerly reply. On the other hand, should non-lawyers focus on DI's failures to advance their own legal and political agenda, this will tend to undercut their effectiveness in general without ever putting the science up for (usually dubious) 'debate.' The stock question should not be 'what's the science?' but rather, 'why should DI, largely a bunch of lawyers, even be regarded as credible on scientific matters when they can't gain any traction in the courts or the legislature?"
My apologies in advance for our friends in the legal and political spheres who are effective, dedicated, ethical and supportive of science education.
I can't speak to the specifics (I'm not a science, just an educated layperson), but as I understand it, the "holes" that people refer to are:
1. Bits and pieces that they're not quite sure of in evolutionary theory. Basically, details they haven't quite puzzled out yet. There are controversies on little things, such as how much of evolution is long, slow development versus spurts followed by long periods of inactivity. These are usually pretty technical and not too interesting to the likes of me.
2. "Gaps" in the fossil record. I put gaps in quotes because where you draw the lines between species (and genus, order, family, etc.) is really a judgement call, and the line between one type of creature and another REALLY isn't as cut and dried as the creationists would have you believe. But, there are spots in the fossil record where we don't have an in-between specimen to show what happened in between point A and point B. The thing is that these spots get filled in gradually (e.g. Tiktaalik).
Both #1 and #2 are real, but neither is a structural weakness in the theory of evolution. People like the DI would have this sort of thing thrust into the schoolroom at a stage where it will confuse students more than it would inform them. And, it should be noted, that's the reason they're trying to get it taught at low levels of education, and not at college level.
(Um...ahem...I meant to say I'm not a scientist, not a science. Time to brew a pot of coffee.)
I'm not a science.
I guess that explains why I've always had faith in you, Leon. ;)
techskeptic: I think David was absolutely right with his comment (and to think I was going to devote a paragraph or two to what could have been boiled down to one sentence so well!). The issue here really has nothing to do with what the actual "holes" are in evolution and everything to do with what the Man on the Street thinks they are. He doesn't know what, say, punctuated equilibrium is, let alone care about what paradigm of evolutionary thought is passed on to children and teenagers. He just has vague misgivings about evolution, or he thinks it's counterintuitive, or that it leads to some bleak view of life and the role of our species. And all this can be traced back to a general misunderstanding of evolution.
Really, anyone who speaks of "holes in evolution" doesn't know what they're talking about. If he ever says "just a theory", then it will be confirmed.
It's funny, because I was just posting about the situation here in NM this morning. Although the standards aren't SPECIFIC in stating that the schools should "teach ID", there are standards here which SOME districts ((cough... RIO RANCHO... cough)) have taken as a free ticket to lunacy:
but my very FAVORITE part of the Discovery Document is the big bold letters on page 9 that states:
Oh no--say it ain't so!
While we all got a good, satisfying rise out of the Kitzmiller case, each and every one of those trial cases is dangerous. As PZ (I think it was PZ) pointed out, when we win one of those cases, it just means we haven't lost anything. If we lose one of those cases, we're (potentially) in big trouble.
Good one, Brownian! I've been trying to come up with a witty comeback involving science, religion, laws, theory, or something, but ah well, it escapes me. Come on, finish brewing, my afternoon companion...ah, there, it's almost finished.
It may not be a binding legal precendent, but you can bet your sweet bippy that in future legal silliness any judge (and certainly the lawyers on the side of reason) will look to and cite the Dover decision.
Anyone know what the 'holes' are?
It's a nonsensical question. The ToE is not a complete theory and, because it is largely contingent rather than lawful, it never will be. To answer the question one would have to lay out all the possible evolutionary facts and remove all that are explained by the current theory -- that would leave the "holes".
You say your friend is pretty strong minded that the holes in evolution should be taught, but you don't know what they are. Well, why didn't you ask him what holes he was referring to that aren't being taught but should be? We aren't mind readers. Or are you or your friend foolishly implying that there's some sort of conspiracy to hide known "holes"?
But surely there are things that have happened, that we have evidence for that still needs explaining...if there weren't, why are we still studying it?
Even if we had explanations for all the evidence at hand, that wouldn't be the end of science, because science constantly uncovers new evidence -- we don't know everything that has happened, and we don't even know where to look for some of these things or how to characterize them ... yet.
I would like all science teachers to be able to read this very short statement at the beginning and end of each semester of science education:
"Intelligent Design is a caricature of Young Earth Creationism wearing a Lab-coat and Stethoscope."
It's some kind of gaseous emission, to be sure.
Blake: Hey, if Darwin was right about that, wasn't he right about everything else, too?
That's an interesting point: they love to quote mint scientist, and say "see, a leading scientist(TM) agrees with us; ergo we're right" (Argument from authority), not once seeing what that implies regarding the opinions of most other scientists (and usually also the one being quotemined) who disagree with them. Also, whenever they want to belittle science, they call it a religion. Again, not seeing the connect that if science shouldn't be given any credence because it's a religion, what does that say about the demands they make for respect for their religion? Odd.
Jefe;
Nice, but I much prefer; "Intelligent design is creationism in a cheap tuxedo".
Leon:
Thanks. This is nothing more than detail with regards to chronology and specificity of fossils. If this truly is the extent of the 'holes', I'm truly amazed at how robust of a theory it is (I do wish PZ would chime in). those aren't holes at all. They are not things that evolutionary theory do not describe. they are simply things that are needed to further detail and round out the results of an evolutionary process.
Rey Fox,
i was trying to make clear in my original post that my friend does in fact agree with evolutionary theory, in fact he scoffs at his creationist brethren (he is catholic) and cheered the Dover Trial. but I think he rightly points out that most every theory has a dataset that it does not fully explain. for example they teach Newtonian Physics and the Bohr model of the atom, both of which, by todays standards are very coarse approximations of reality, we have done much better than this due to data that these models do not describe (near light speed physics, heisenberg effects, etc). It doesnt make the older model useless for their boundary condition, they just make them innaccurate. Maybe there is something like macroscopic vs microscopic differentiantion in evolutionary theory (see? if I were an expert in this, I would know the answer to this I am sure). something in one that does not describe the other?
It quite possible that 140 years of attacking evolutionary theory has made it the most robust scientific theory to date, and I'm cool with that. It would just be more robust science, a result of honest scientists, if some place like talk origins put up the real data that evolution doesnt truly describe (none of this "eye is too complex" nonsense). I mean stuff that they themselves admit requires that evolutionary theory need further work.
If there are inconsistencies in the theory, we should be honest about them, and study more about it to strengthen the theory. I realize that if we point out flaws in the theory, creationist nutjobs will point at it and say "See? Godidit". But we shouldn't let that get in the way of true science.
It seems to me that claiming there are "holes in evolution" because not all the details are known is like saying there are "holes in quantum mechanics" because we don't know the exact electronic energy of benzene, for example.
Oh sure, we have pretty close approximation, maybe, but the variational principle tells us it's wrong (only the true wave function will give the right answer). I mean, isn't it a huge hole in quantum mechanics that we can't even apply it exactly for anything but the most trivial of systems?
Most of them can't even fathom the scientific process...
explaining that you don't know the exact year a dinosaur died because of the nature of dating the fossils just emboldens them... "I want FACTS not GUESSWORK." I hear that alot.
Then try to explain that even being a million years off doesn't impact the study of fossils greatly.
A real scientist will say "Here are the areas that we simply don't know yet"
Not if they want to get any work done -- it would take too long to enumerate them.
truth machine:
Well, why didn't you ask him what holes he was referring to that aren't being taught but should be?
I did. I didn't get an answer. I giggled at that. But that doesnt mean that there arent any, it just means that he doesn't know what they are, and he assumes, like I do, that most every theory doesn't explain ALL the data. My asking what the holes in the theory are, have nothing to do with my conversation with him, it is my own curiosity. I'm not asking anyone to explain any particular thing, I am just asking what the greatest evolutionary minds think are problems with ToE.
It's a nonsensical question. The ToE is not a complete theory and, because it is largely contingent rather than lawful, it never will be. To answer the question one would have to lay out all the possible evolutionary facts and remove all that are explained by the current theory -- that would leave the "holes".
yes I agree. I don't understand why that makes the question nonsensical. Surely something has arisen over the last 140 years that made biologists go "hmmm...". Perhaps not.
Oh, and I love the implication that evolutionary biologists aren't "real scientists".
Surely something has arisen over the last 140 years that made biologists go "hmmm...".
Yes, many things.
Perhaps not.
You're getting very tiresome.
I am just asking what the greatest evolutionary minds think are problems with ToE.
That's a different subject from the question of what the "holes" are -- but then you've been told that several times.
yes I agree. I don't understand why that makes the question nonsensical.
Then you're agreeing to something you don't understand.
pablo:
It seems to me that claiming there are "holes in evolution" because not all the details are known is like saying there are "holes in quantum mechanics" because we don't know the exact electronic energy of benzene, for example.
Yes, that is true, if all the 'holes' are just the sort of details of chronology or fossil specificity that Leon was talking about. What I am wondering about is something that really is unanswerable by evolutionary theory.
for example: I know this has never happened. but if a fossil of a more advanced species appears below a fossil of a less advanced species. I realize this has never happened and is one of the things that makes the ToE so strong.
But is there really nothing that is of this caliber, even if it is only one instance? Truth Machine indicates that there are too many to enumerate. I presume he was simply refering to the number of gaps in the fossil record there are, but that is not what I am looking for.
If we could just figure out a way to convert stupidity into electricity, the DI would power the world.
Truth Machine:
huh???
You're getting very tiresome.
No one is forcing you to respond to me... or be a dickhead.
That's a different subject from the question of what the "holes" are -- but then you've been told that several times
No it isn't. you just interpreted what i meant by "holes" to mean "gaps" in the evolutionary records. Perhaps my previous post to this one will clear that up for you.
Then you're agreeing to something you don't understand.
no, I agreed at what it would take to understand where the weak points in a theory is. but there are thousands of scientists looking at evolution, they dont all have to look through all the data. Just one has to come forward, with an understanding of evolutionary processes and say "hmm...this is weird".
Oh, and I love the implication that evolutionary biologists aren't "real scientists".
I don't know where I implied that. It was never intended that way. If you interpreted something that way, that's your problem.
It seems to me that claiming there are "holes in evolution" because not all the details are known is like saying there are "holes in quantum mechanics" because we don't know the exact electronic energy of benzene, for example.
There are those sorts of little holes in evolution, but there are much larger holes too, as large as major disagreements as to the role of endosymbiosis as an evolutionary mechanism, and everything in between.
as large as major disagreements as to the role of endosymbiosis as an evolutionary mechanism
There we go! that is what I was looking for and can look up. Its these 'major disagreements' I am looking for. At least its something I can look up? Is there a small list of "major disagreement" I can see somewhere (there can't be that many can there?)?
No one is forcing you to respond to me... or be a dickhead.
No one is forcing you to post your repetitive and off-topic tripe ... or be a dickhead.
No it isn't. you just interpreted what i meant by "holes" to mean "gaps" in the evolutionary records.
No, I told you what holes are, and you said you agreed. Now you are talking about "problems"/"really is unanswerable", but the failure of a theory to be complete is not a "problem", it's the nature of science. And we certainly don't want to waste class time spending all day telling students what isn't known.
no, I agreed at what it would take to understand where the weak points in a theory is.
Like I said, you agreed to something that you didn't understand -- that's not what I was talking about, that you responded "I agree" to.
Oh, and I love the implication that evolutionary biologists aren't "real scientists".
I don't know where I implied that.
You said "a real scientist will say ..." while complaining about what isn't being said. The implication is clear to anyone who isn't a dunderhead.
Just one has to come forward, with an understanding of evolutionary processes and say "hmm...this is weird".
People say this all the time; just peruse the archives here.
PZ, I remember that in Dover it was pointed out that the fact Evolution was the only theory that was targeted was enough to infer a hidden religious agenda, which _might_ explain - although I admit I am not certain - why the standards you mentioned talk about other scientific theories like plate tectonics. Maybe it's just a way to introduce ID in the classroom without being accused of having a religious agenda. They want to give the impression of being fair and applying the "controversy" thingy to all the sciences, not just biology.
I mean, we all know Creationists are quite good at patching legal holes after all... Am I the only one to think that? Or maybe I'm just paranoid? ;-)
there can't be that many can there?
What makes you think that?
"Just one has to come forward, with an understanding of evolutionary processes and say "hmm...this is weird"." - Techskeptic.
They have. In many cases these oddities have lead to a breakthrough of some kind through research and observed data.
Some prime examples of things that have made Biologists say "Hmmm...this is weird." have been changes in HIV recently. Behe has been seen to comment on these "Hmmmm" moments about HIV, and been slapped down as incorrect or underinformed by scientists in the know about HIV mutation in recent years.
Many of the "Holes" or "Gaps" exist simply because of poor or incomplete understandings of portions of evolutionary science.
The Theory of evolution states simply that - "Organisms changed (evolved) gradually over time, and the main engine of this change (evolution) is natural selection." Now - practical applications of this theory in a variety of disciplines have led to heaps and heaps of experimental data and observations that have supported the theory.
To successfully learn the "holes" in the theory, one would have to become a multi-disciplinary savant. This very well could lead to a profound and in-depth knowledge of a variety of practical applications that have arisen from the theory and studies that have surrounded its application.
(deep breath)
And even at that point, the "holes" would not be evidence in support of completely abandoning evolutionary theory (a theory that has already led to a multitude of daily practical applications), but would simply lead to further research into why we don't know or haven't found the supporting evidence for the "gaps" in question.
Why does the DI do this to itself all the time? Pain. Pain is the only way they can know whether or not they are still alive. (as an organization)
I don't know how much more blatent DI has to get before they can be held liable for inciting to commit a crime. Why couldn't the Dover board sue DI for publishing intentionally fraudulent textbooks and insisting to school boards and churches that their ideas on education policies are legal? Or does DI somehow waive any such liabilities when they boast about the legality of their policies but then recommend against schools actually going to court over them?
If there's another court case in the future costing millions to taxpayers, someone should seriously start pointing fingers at the source of all this misinformation and inform the local public about how they're being screwed and used to push the crackpot agendas of the DI.
I'm not a biologist. In fact, the only biology I study is my wife... and that's as far as I', going to take THAT.
I've taken a quick spin through their Educator's Packet... what a load of unmitigated B.S.! Back pedalling, side-stepping, mis-informing, and outright liying. I dread to think about what I'll find when I go through it in detail.
Right in their cover letter, for instance, they claim that "Evolution has a number of different definitions". Well, yes - but only ONE as it applies to biology. "Change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such process as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift". End of story.
Ignoring their true aim for a moment, let's look at what DI *claims* to want - "Teach the Controversy". While in broad terms, a case can be made for this to be a controversy, I think that when all is sorted out, it's not even that.
Controversy, in the dictionary, is defined as "A prolonged public dispute, debate, or contgention; disputation concerning a matter of opinion."
What - to me at least - *implied* by this definition is that the differences of opinion are between equally knowlegable people.. Ergo, for this to be even considered a controversy, DI needs to get some serious science on their side.
How a bunch of dyspeptic lawyers and engineers can think to seriously tackle a structure so robust as Evolutionary Theory is beyond me. Perhaps they suffer from hypercubicalism and can't get a real job.
Since that is as likely to happen as the second coming, this can't be really called a controversy.
This is more a case of Luskin, West, Behe et. al. standing in a field and waving their private parts at us.
The problem is, we can't ignore them. They might sneak in to the kitchen and pee in our wheaties, and that would just ruin the whole day.
jeesh,
OK. first lets agree that email/text on a message board is a crap way to communicate and very prone to misinterpretation since intonation and body language is deleted to large degree (well, we have italics and emoticons).
I never intended to not include evolutionary biologists from my "real scientists" statement. They were intended to be included.
I'm looking to understand the current list of "major disagreements" (to use your terms) in evolutionary biology. I used the term "holes" to describe this. Perhaps it was a poor choice of words.
there can't be that many can there?
What makes you think that?
Ok. there are millions. What do you think are the top 5 major disagreements? I've got one so far.
p.s. I dont see how discussion of the controversies within evolutionary biology is off topic on the thread about how DI is intending to portray controversies as a means to get ID nonsense into schools. I'm just trying to discern real controversy from ID nonsensical controversy. I for one am not a real scientist (Evolutionary Biologists included), I am an engineer.
The Theory of evolution states simply that - "Organisms changed (evolved) gradually over time, and the main engine of this change (evolution) is natural selection."
No it doesn't. From Wikipedia:
The ToE is much broader than a single statement, and your single statement is woefully incomplete and isn't even accurate; see, e.g.,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_theory_of_molecular_evolution
Thanks Jefe.
Yeah, I read ERV about the HIV stuff (not that I could truly understand all of it! I'm grateful she wrote a laymans version!). That was great work on her part.
sounds like you agree with DSKS, teaching some of the current disagreements within the evolutionary scientific community is probably not high school material.
I dont see how discussion of the controversies within evolutionary biology is off topic on the thread about how DI is intending to portray controversies as a means to get ID nonsense into schools.
The "controversy" they are talking about is evolution vs. ID -- not unexplored areas or internal scientific debates within the science of evolution. What you're talking about has nothing to do with the Discovery Institute.
""The Theory of evolution states simply that - "Organisms changed (evolved) gradually over time, and the main engine of this change (evolution) is natural selection." - Jefe
The ToE is much broader than a single statement, and your single statement is woefully incomplete and isn't even accurate; see, e.g.," Technosceptic
You better email this to Jerry Coyne Chicago U. It was he that I was quoting/paraphrasing when I typed that out.
sounds like you agree with DSKS, teaching some of the current disagreements within the evolutionary scientific community is probably not high school material.
Note that the dispute between Abby Smith and Michael Behe is not a current disagreement within the evolutionary scientific community. (I'm not saying that you meant that it is, but just in case, as you seemed to slide from one to the other.)
Eeep! I misrepresented Techskeptic above.
Post 67 should attribute the second quote to "truth machine"
oftentimes it seems like dealing with stupid humans is truly as impossible a task as sweeping back the tide. Don't get me wrong, I'm stupid too. But then, so are you. It's built in to all of us.
this brings to mind an interesting study I was reading about.
Just google this, the title of the paper, it should be the first hit,
Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments,
It's about metacognitive skills- in this case referring to the ability to observe your own skill or lack thereof and adjust accordingly.
Essentially what it shows is that (surprisingly!), the stupider and less skilled you are, the less likely you are to learn from your mistakes, EVEN IF you have your mistakes explained to you. It's not a very long paper, give it a go.
why do I mention it? Well, if only a few people are very smart, then that leaves a lot of people who aren't very smart. if all it takes is a few very smart and corrupt people to continue to de-rail conversations by continuing to contend that religion needs to be allowed the same footing as science, well, the many will continue to buy the garbage they spew and feel justified glomming onto their archaic nonsensical beliefs.
I was quoting/paraphrasing when I typed that out.
Which was it? Please provide a citation so it can be evaluated in context. If Coyne is saying that, he shouldn't be -- it would imply, among other things, that the Theory of Evolution has exactly the same content it had when Darwin first proposed natural selection as mechanism of evolution.
Techskeptic (#28):
Here's a quick example of significant evolutionary issues that aren't understood: origin & maintenance of sex. I doubt this is what your friend had in mind, though, since (as other comments have noted in general) simply to understand such problems requires a pretty good understanding of evolutionary dynamics and lots of natural history (i.e. biology).
"if all it takes is a few very smart and corrupt people to continue to de-rail conversations by continuing to contend that religion needs to be allowed the same footing as science, well, the many will continue to buy the garbage they spew and feel justified glomming onto their archaic nonsensical beliefs."
Good point Will von W.
There is a bizarre tendency for our society to change from talking about an issue, to conflating the controversy around an issue as the important part of the show.
So instead of talking about practical benefits of teaching science in science class, we're talking about the "controversy" that only exists due to a dolled-up creationist agenda.
Techskeptic ->
The 'holes' it has are mostly the same sorts of 'holes' history has, in that you can determine what happened to the degree that you have artifacts, records and forensic work.
Looking back a little bit, you can find things that fit within the evolutionary framework quite nicely, but that were still a surprise.
Before we got so heavily into genetic and protein analysis (prohibitive costs were definitely a factor!), looking at anatomy and gross morphology of creatures, the best guess was that things like eyes or vascular systems, for example, developed totally independently between way far-flung relatives like fruit flies and mice. With the discovery of the Hox genes which turn out to control eye development for both flies and mice, and genes like tinman which control the dorsal vessel in flies and the heart in mice, we have been surprised at how much more in common creatures have, and how early some things must have developed.
There's still a lot to discover, but a great deal of it consists of just grinding away...
Genetic sequencing still isn't cheap, and it will certainly take some time to sequence every species on the planet. Past that, protein sequences, protein folding determinations, and understanding the biology, especially the physiology, of every creature helps fill in more of the modern details and casts light on the evolutionary details.
Finding fossils helps fill in the history (I stood on the side of the Rift Valley when I was there on honeymoon and just shook my head, "how the hell would I know where to start digging?") but takes a lot of doing (if only there was a way to detect them without digging first).
Finding fossils in good enough shape to extract proteins from can help us figure out how that might have evolved to present day - there was an article about retracing the evolution of an ancient protein out recently.
There's still an awful lot of even just finding out how biological systems work left to go. Histones, for example, the quarter-cakes with a spike around which DNA winds, have a code of their own. Acetylation and deacetylation are involved in gene regulation, and I believe are likely to be heavily involved in determining what kind of cell a cell is specialized to be. How does the histone code play into evolution? I think it's still early days.
There are some things that are just hard to determine. The fight is still on, for example, over whether the "last universal common ancestor" was a single kind of organism or a group of gene-swappers may never be resolvable.
If only the creationists would make themselves useful and find an actual hole instead of a rhetorical or definitional hole :)
techskeptic: I hope you can forgive us for being skeptical of the motivations of your friend. I'm not sufficiently well-versed in the current state of evolutionary theory to say what its current controversies are, but to my knowledge, but I don't really see why the "holes" of evolution should be any more taught than the "holes" in any other scientific theory. In my experience, those who push for such things are rarely ever trying to provide any interesting thought exercises, but rather are trying to cast the sort of doubt on evolution that doesn't really belong.
And don't mind the truth machine, it got testy at me earlier today just for not knowing how the disemvowelling program works. It doesn't seem to have any setting between "off" and "rabid".
truth machine
Read this.
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/coyne07/coyne07_index.html
Paragraph 6, sentence 2. After the heading: Don't Know Much Biology.
Here's a quick example of significant evolutionary issues that aren't understood: origin & maintenance of sex.
I think it's not understood mostly by those who still haven't grasped that evolution must be viewed from the POV of the genome, not that of individuals. The article you linked to makes clear enough the benefits, and the supposed "paradox" is a chimera resulting from fuzzy thinking.
it got testy at me earlier today just for not knowing how the disemvowelling program works
Gotta love the ad hominem innuendo. What I said was that, since it's so much easier to just remove "y"s unconditionally than to figure out when they are playing the role vowels rather than consonants, and there's no benefit to doing the extra work, you should be able to say which technique is used. It wasn't about not knowing how it works -- from the second link I gave, apparently how it works is that it doesn't remove "y"s at all.
Well, Y not?
@thwaite (#72):
The origin of sexuality is something creationists are indeed aware of, so much so that I expect it's included in some creationist list of talking points. I infer that because the question came up when I was talking to a member of my family, whose knowledge of basic science is otherwise nonexistent.
I told her that the answer is, we don't know . . . yet. Of course, she was not satisfied by the answer, since she has no concept at all of how scientific knowledge is accrued over time. Remember that fundamentalist Christians are so very uneasy with any degree of ambiguity, and so very ignorant of almost all subjects (including the history of their own sacred documents), that any answer beyond 1+2=2 takes them out of their comfort zone.
Paragraph 6, sentence 2. After the heading: Don't Know Much
Biology.
Thanks.
Context matters: when Coyne used that sentence, he was characterizing the ToE as a single overarching thing, as opposed to Brownback taking different elements of the theory and treating them as if they were separate competing theories (He claims that there is "no one single theory of evolution," citing punctuated equilibrium as an alternative to Darwinism. (He's apparently implying that there might be something dubious about evolution because there's a multiplicity of theories).) When Coyne says "it is this", he doesn't mean that's the entirety of the theory (which you did when you said "The Theory of evolution states simply that ..."), he's talking about which theory it is, and that there's just one. Note that Coyne's "organisms evolved gradually over time and split into different species, and the main engine of evolutionary change was natural selection" is a very broad description that includes many many scientific details that comprise the scientific theory of evolution.
the supposed "paradox" is a chimera resulting from fuzzy thinking. -T.Machine
The wiki article discusses the two-fold cost of sex balanced against its benefits, and for those costs cites J.Maynard Smith and G.C.Williams. Neither is prone to fuzzy thinking; Williams basically invented the 'selfish gene' perspective in 1966 (Dawkins then popularized it); Smith did an entire academic book titled The Evolution of Sex in 1978 which is still pertinent, and he was as much mathematician as biologist. (Smith's first career was in aeronautics, but he got bored when he realized that planes still fly like beetles, whereas birds are much more interesting fliers).
Oh? What part of "There is only one going theory of evolution and it is this:" did I miss him saying?
sexuality ... any answer beyond 1+2=2 takes them out of their comfort zone
Hey, that answer takes a lot of people out of their comfort zone!
Oh? What part of "There is only one going theory of evolution and it is this:" did I miss him saying?
I just explained this to you in detail. There's a huge difference between saying "the theory of evolution is [minimized characterization]" and "The theory of evolution simply states ...". The ToE can arguably be characterized that way, but it states much more than that. I refer you again to the paragraph from Wikipedia that describes what a scientific theory is.
I've gotta say, Truth Machine, that you were the first to start name-calling in this thread. Techskeptic may have been a little slow on the uptake, but you slammed him/her pretty hard.
If you're thinking Techskeptic is here trolling for quote mines, well, I wondered too, but it doesn't look like it to me at this point and I'd hesitate to make the assumption unless I was pretty sure.
Gotta love the ad hominem innuendo.
I've gotta say, Truth Machine, that you were the first to start name-calling in this thread.
Tu quoque ... What would that have to do with Rey Fox's comment? And name-calling isn't the same as ad hominem. And it is Techskeptic who called me a dick-head after I said he was getting tiresome -- which one is name-calling, Leon?
Fix that:
"Gotta love the ad hominem innuendo."
I've gotta say, Truth Machine, that you were the first to start name-calling in this thread.
Tu quoque ... What would that have to do with Rey Fox's comment? And name-calling isn't the same as ad hominem. And it is Techskeptic who called me a dick-head after I said he was getting tiresome -- which one is name-calling, Leon? Why do you "gotta say" things that aren't true?
If you're thinking Techskeptic is here trolling for quote mines,
Who said I think that? I don't.
well, I wondered too, but it doesn't look like it to me at this point and I'd hesitate to make the assumption unless I was pretty sure.
Uh, who's making assumptions here?
I agree with what Leon has just posted.
I agree with what Leon has just posted.
Uh, so what? Other than that makes two of you in error, as explained in #87.
Go ahead and teach the controversy. Do it in civics or politics classes where you can discuss the controversy itself without promoting anti-science.
They've included handy links to the moronic web sites and bogus literature of ID on pages 20-21 of their silly document.
That's useful.
In fact, it's information gold!
Thanks, DI, for not hiding your collective stupidity under a bushel.
The wiki article discusses the two-fold cost of sex balanced against its benefits, and for those costs cites J.Maynard Smith and G.C.Williams.
Uh, yeah, it cites Williams as demonstrating that the costs can be surmounted. What I said was that the "paradox" is a chimera -- there is no paradox, as the benefits of sexual reproduction outweigh any theoretical costs -- even in regard to JMS's model, it says "Often all else is not equal, however, in which case the realized fitness cost to sex may be much less than this intrinsic twofold cost of producing males". The fuzziness is in looking at costs to individuals rather than the actual fitness cost from the POV of the genome. Whether JMS or Williams is prone to that error I can't say.
I stand corrected, Truth Machine. Looking back, I see it was Techskeptic that first called you a dickhead, not the other way around.
Yes, I understand name-calling and ad hominem aren't the same thing, but it seemed awful rich to be the first to hurl an insult, and then accuse someone of ad hominem. Now I have egg on my face for pointing that out when it wasn't true, and I apologize for that.
That said, you jumped all over him/her very fast, without a lot of provocation. I get the impression Techskeptic is earnestly looking for information; he/she got a somewhat of a hostile reception, and that's not really cool here.
I didn't assume you necessarily thought Techskeptic was trolling for quote mines. I worded it the way I did because I wasn't sure. After the first couple responses he/she came back sounding a lot like some other trolls we've seen here, so I wondered, and your responses sounded like you might have been thinking the same thing. You weren't; I guessed wrong, and that's fine. But that does make it less understandable why you went after Techskeptic so hard in the first place.
There are lots of things we simply don't know yet. Take one of the subjects of my Ph.D. thesis -- the question of which known animals (dead or alive) are the closest relatives of the turtles. But these are not questions about the theory of evolution; they have nothing to do with the principle. The theory of evolution cannot, and never will be able to, explain what those closest relatives are or why they are that, but all answers that have been suggested so far are compatible with the theory of evolution, so there's no hole.
Eh, no. The controversy over punctuated equilibrium is over. Of the few cases where we can see speciations in the fossil record, most but not all are congruent with the punk eek model, and those that aren't seem to be cases like where planktonic diatoms speciated sympatrically in the whole equatorial Pacific at once.
And even 20 years ago, it wasn't a hole in the theory of evolution. Remember: mutation is random, selection is determined by the environment. We say "it evolves" in the active voice, but that's a mistake; "it" is tossed around by the environment.* So punk eek says that the environment of a species tends to be stable over hundreds of thousands of years and to change rarely but fast (over thousands or tens of thousands of years, that is -- remember, you are talking to paleontologists, the kind of people that can't tell last week from last ice age) and/or that species enter new ecological niches fast. Punk eek is not really about the theory of evolution.
* This might be slightly easier to explain in an ergative-absolutive language. But I digress.
Erm... no.
In principle, I agree with you and your friend: if there were any limitations, such as how Newtonian physics flat-out says that the observed perihel rotation of Mercury and the observed effects of gravitational lensing (among other things) simply don't exist, or how the theory of relativity and quantum physics disagree under extreme conditions, then of course they should -- and would -- be taught. I just can't think of any.
Bad example, because "advanced" cannot be defined. Sure, the theory of evolution predicts that we won't find a rabbit in Silurian rocks (and, accordingly, would have a pretty big hole if we ever found one), but that's not because a rabbit is more or less advanced than anything we know from the Silurian; it's simply because several nested groups to which the rabbits belong -- mammals, limbed vertebrates... -- appeared much later in the fossil record, in (almost exactly) the expected nested sequence.
That was 50 years ago. Nowadays it is clear that primary chloroplasts are internalized cyanobacteria and mitochondria are internalized α-proteobacteria, and that that basically is it. The chloroplasts of, say, brown algae are derived from red algae with a primary chloroplast in them, and so on, but these are things like the question of the ancestry of turtles: they are not about the principle.
Here we get to one of the last holes that were closed. But the discovery that the parthenogenetic rotifers somehow managed to completely get rid of transposable elements closed that hole, didn't it?
(If you stopped reading at "par-" and want an explanation of what all that means -- and it is an interesting topic --, you'll have to wait. It's close to 1 at night over here. I haven't had a look at the wikipedia article, but chances are good that it's a good introduction.)
You don't. And usually you don't start by digging, because usually a fossiliferous layer crops out at the surface. You start by walking around and looking for fossils that have been exposed by erosion. When you find one, you start digging.
This is more like a hole, and it's by no means closed! However, it's small. Really small. To understand evolution as it is currently understood, you only need to know that inheritance occurs and that Lamarckian inheritance never or almost never occurs. All the fiddling with the histones (and DNA methylation and stuff) could provide a tiny non-zero value for "almost", and figuring out just how tiny it is is a pretty hot, although small, area of ongoing research; but so far it seems to work on a timescale of generations, not of tens or hundreds of generations.
I notice you started the sentence by mentioning a fight and then changed your mind and wrote the issue may never be resolvable, which precludes a fight (in science)... :-)
For swapping genes, all participants need the same genetic code. How do you get the same genetic code if not through inheritance?
But, actually, I'm digressing again. This is again a question like whether it's turtles all the way down. Common descent is not part of the theory of evolution.
Finally, if you continue to search for holes, you might come across the question of how altruism towards individuals other than close relatives was ever able to evolve. This was a much-researched problem for quite some time, but it was closed very easily: the benefits of reciprocal altruism are pretty much evident.
We have a winner.
I disagree. It merely fails to use Hanlon's Razor most of the time.
P.S. Thwaite's original comment was that the "origin & maintenance of sex" is an "issue" that isn't "understood" -- I agree in re origin, in the sense that all sorts of historical facts that haven't been established aren't "understood", but I don't think that it is any longer a surprise that sex did originate or that it is maintained, and the origin of sex is less of a mystery than, say, the origin of cells.
Sorry, David. I thought that might be the case. But it was the only example I could think of offhand and it made a good demonstration (as far as I know) of the kinds of controversies that do exist in the field.
That said, you jumped all over him/her very fast, without a lot of provocation.
I disagree. You write "After the first couple responses he/she came back sounding a lot like some other trolls we've seen here" -- I didn't take him/her as a troll, but I did find the repeated requests for a list and the insistence that not providing one implies there aren't any "holes" or "problems" and that "a real scientist" would provide a list to be "very tiresome", as I said. In any case, don't you have anything better to worry about than how easily or justifiably I am provoked?
I disagree. It merely fails to use Hanlon's Razor most of the time.
That's rather stupid, David (I'll definitely give you the "benefit" of the doubt here), given how often I accuse people of stupidity, or stupidity and/or dishonesty.
That's true, but I don't think "advanced" was meant literally; I think he/she was using it as shorthand for species that must come later in the fossil record: e.g., a rabbit must appear in the record later than the first fish. (See, even I'm having trouble using more accurate wording...)
Well, there are two of them, and added together they're very important, but individually they're quite small. Diminutive, even. Midget-sized.
P.S. David, what you wrote in the rest of #94 makes up for any stupidity displayed in the last sentence many times over. A truly fine post -- if only you had resisted the urge.
You're right about that.
----------
Sorry, truth machine. I should have narrowed down Hanlon's Razor to ignorance vs malice -- ignorance being an entirely curable condition, in the absence of stupidity at least. Also, you seem to react as angrily to stupidity as to malice, which I find pointless at best.
=8-)
(I have learnt to appreciate the praise. 8-) )
??? I don't understand. What're you talking about here?
David (#94),
That was an interesting & useful overview, thanks.
Since I don't follow this lit closely, I'll be interested if you've a secondary-lit citation for the sexual import of parthogenetic rotifers (when you're awake again, of course). A quick casual search shows wiki doesn't really discuss them in relation to sex (unforgivable, really). A similar search in google gave this promising hit from Georgia Tech: Timing of sex in cyclical
parthenogenetic rotifers, Serra, Snell & King 2003.
I often think of the fame, money, etc that would go to the individual or team that could actually disprove evolution (or gravity, or etc). You would be an instant household name, never worry for funding, and be written about in the history books for as long as one can imagine.
With that much incentive to disprove a major theory, why do IDiots and their lot think most scientist have no desire to look at alternatives? That they're happy to just accept whatever's already known.
Which would you rather have on your resume? Publishing a paper on something that would back a hundred and forty year old theory, or disproving a hundred and forty year old theory? These people make no sense.
Wow, step away for a bite to eat for a few minutes!!!
Leon:
thanks. 'He' BTW.
David Marjanović:
Thanks that was a great post with a lot for me to munch on.
david and TM:
I disagree. It merely fails to use Hanlon's Razor most of the time
Ouch! I take it I am on the stupidity end of that.
I didn't take him/her as a troll, but I did find the repeated requests for a list and the insistence that not providing one implies there aren't any "holes" or "problems" and that "a real scientist" would provide a list to be "very tiresome", as I said.
Look, I don't think I could have been more clear. I'm not a scientist. I'm an engineer (mechatronics). Would either of you care to discuss state-space controllers for multi-input multi-output systems with software observers. Perhaps the value of using a howland current source versus other methods? Kane's method for system modeling? The value of Coulomb counting as a method for battery charge inference?
I'm just trying to understand some aspects of evolution unfamiliar to me. If you google this topic you get flooded with AiG and Uncommon Descent nonsense.
So I merely asked what are the real contraversies? I used the word 'holes'. Perhaps that was not accurate. Luckily I got some good, responses, even from you TM.
Well, I can stop now, there is a lot of good stuff for me to munch on. Thanks everyone.
Merchants of Sleaze . . .
Thy collective name is "Discovery Institute".
Sorry, truth machine. I should have narrowed down Hanlon's Razor to ignorance vs malice
I don't think Hanlon said anything about ignorance. Ignorance is a necessary state for all of us, but some of us strive to reduce ours to a small degree.
Also, you seem to react as angrily to stupidity as to malice
I react to intellectual sloppiness, intellectual dishonesty, and stupidity coupled with arrogance -- like what we get from the fundies and deniers who lecture us.
which I find pointless at best
I'm a pointal relativist -- nothing has a point in any absolute sense. The point of any behavior is ultimately found in the doing of it, and I apparently get something out of posting here for reasons not completely transparent to my conscious mind.
I have learnt to appreciate the praise. 8-)
It seemed due.
Ouch! I take it I am on the stupidity end of that.
I don't think David was referring to you, and I don't think you're stupid.
I didn't take him/her as a troll, but I did find the repeated requests for a list and the insistence that not providing one implies there aren't any "holes" or "problems" and that "a real scientist" would provide a list to be "very tiresome", as I said.
Look, I don't think I could have been more clear.
What part of what I wrote there isn't clear? Can't you understand how "So, you are saying there are no holes? That is hard to believe." and similar accusatory language repeated several times comes across?
I'm trying to work my way through this document. It's hard going.
Through the study and analysis of a system's components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof.
Okay, I'll play. let's investigate my left foot. It's natural, it has structure. So tell me, what are its components and what is it the product of?
Such research begins by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act.
What? Intelligent agents? Hey, what about my left foot?
Scientists investigating design then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence.
Wait a minute, don't go tangential on me! Get back to my left foot!
Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago.
Hey, it's nice that you have managed to impose your preconceptions onto the natural world, but you haven't explained my left foot!
Has The Discovery Institute ever spent so much as a nickel on researching ID? Perhaps an expedition to the Gobi to find those fossilized dinosaur saddles. The Amazon to find the talking snakes? Proof that Pi = 3.
C'mon DI. You're scientists. Do some science.
The entire premise of ID is that evolution is not possible. You cannot publish a scientific paper positing the impossibility of answering a question based on impossible to attain information. Its an asinine lie, but it outlines the basic problem in society. The horrific lack of scientific literacy, and the religious excuse to avoid the lessons.
What part of what I wrote there isn't clear? Can't you understand how "So, you are saying there are no holes? That is hard to believe." and similar accusatory language repeated several times comes across?
yes I can understand how that may come off as accusatory. It wasn't meant that way. I was trying to delineate that there are very few if any theories that dont have problems and I wanted to understand what they were. I tried to ameliorate that by pointing out that text-only is a crappy way of communicating, and that you should generally presume people don't mean to be accusatory, mean, deceptive, etc etc, unless they truly show them to be. I an certainly not an eloquent writer. I only got sparky with you when you started in with the "you have been told many times....tiresome" stuff.
David,
LOL thanks for the Hanlon 'ignorance' modification. That I'll certainly agree to.
Some great responses in this thread,
So make of this what you will--
You said that D.I. lies "again";
The proper word is "still".
Theory of Intelligent design?
Paul Nelson, Touchstone Magazine 7/8/2004.
As Nelson suggests, a theory of intelligent design needs to be a bit more than a couple of ill-founded concepts and a lot of bleating about the alleged inadequacies of the theory of evolution.
Without such a theory all the DI has are complaints about the theory of evolution which clearly spring from religious
rather than scientific concerns.
David, never mind on the lit request on rotifers & sex (unless you've a favored recommendation). I think this BioEssays essay is likely to be sufficient for orientation: Deleterious transposable elements and the extinction of asexuals, Arkhipova & Meselson, 2005. And I've yet to search Trends in Evolution & Ecology or any such.
===
Leigh (#79) - yeah, popular awareness (if not understanding) of such foundational issues can be surprising. I hope your family member was an anecdote, not a data sample. She might be a talking-point parrot, but I recall the big PBS series on Evolution from 2001 has a pretty promininent discussion of the evolution of sex, and is of course unable to do justice to the subtleties of the questions, given popularization's constraints.
C'mon DI. You're scientists. Do some science.
According to the definition of Intelligent Design offered in that guide, "design theorists" play a big part in the whole process.
I think this is what happened:
The Design Theorists - those are the people who get paid the big bucks - came up with a glorious theory (with help from the - Shhhhhh! - B.I.B.L.E.).
They hired some scientists.
They said: go forth and find us "objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence."
The scientists - who like a challenge - went out. They found some computers! They brought them back. NO! They got yelled at. NO! Find us some living objects! And don't come back until you do!
The scientists huffed: why didn't you say so? So, off they went again... and... they haven't been heard from since!
The best thing for the DI to do now is send out a search party to locate their lost scientists. Because they're dutifully wandering around - very confused - in search of something that doesn't exist!
That's DI in a nutshell.
(I'm not a scientist, so be kind)
I am assuming that most of the data to support evolutuion was from fossil and taxonomic studies as well as observation of transmutations in flora and fauna. I am also assuming that our recent breakthrough in genomic studies will pave the way to work backward in charting our evolutionary lineage.
The evidence I've seen just from the fossil record is overwhelmingly compelling unless I had a pre-existing dogmatic bent toward a supernatural explanation where any "gap" would be construed as refutation. Is the future of evolutionary studies in genomics, or should I say, will tracing genomes be the best way to prove evolution for the masses ?
Maybe the DI just wants to bait more ID proponents into getting a legal beat down so that they can make another Expelled film?
There may also me 3 "sides" to a story, or several hundred.
Well as far as the DI is concerned there are only two: the monkey people, or the don't come from no monkey people. It really is that simple. That's their main objection with the theory of evolution. They don't want to come from no monkeys.
David Marjanović:
Perhaps you were thinking of Clark's Law?
Well as far as the DI is concerned there are only two: the monkey people, or the don't come from no monkey people. It really is that simple. That's their main objection with the theory of evolution. They don't want to come from no monkeys.
But they don't seem to mind coming from people who some Southwest Asian deity made from dirt 6,000 years ago. How's that for irony?
And that right there exposes them as non-scientists, and their idea as an unscientific theory, since it shows they have the battery plugged in backwards. You don't start with a theory that directs your research; you start with a conjecture or hypothesis that directs your research, and that eventually becomes a theory if it stands up to repeated and rigorous testing.
And let alone repeats; we're still waiting on any first tests--or, for that matter, a testable hypothesis. But, we have it from Dembski's own admission that they (or at least he) have no intention of producing anything testable.
E-I-E-I-O!
Surely something has arisen over the last 140 years that made biologists go "hmmm...". Of course it has. Pick up a copy of any biology journal (a real one, not New Scientist or Discover magazine) and you'll find it in there. Honestly, you're pondering a question in a vacuum. There are questions, that's why we're studying them. New data bring new questions. Wash...rinse...repeat. That's the difference between science and all this pseudoscience crap. We don't start with a conclusion and work backwards discarding data that don't fit the desired picture. Just once I'd like to see the people screaming about the holes in evolutionary theory apply the same standard to the cretinists. Hole in ToE: We don't have an exact date to the day of a speciation event. Hole in ID: No evidence at all whatsoever, but look the Darwinists don't have an exact date to the day of a speciation event.
Anyone notice how there have been ABSOLUTELY ZERO creationists or Intelligent Design proponents who have bothered to say how Creationism or Intelligent Design can explain the Cambrian Explosion at all?
Of course they've said how: Goddidit! That's their explanation for everything that isn't currently explained.
I'm more interested to note that they gleefully point to every--single--tiny--little--flaw they can find in the TOE, yet fail to provide a theory, or even so much as a hypothesis, of ID. Refresh my memory, isn't there something out there about pointing out a splinter in someone else's eye while ignoring the wooden beam in your own...?
Evolution doesn't need to prove itself to scientists. In the hotbed of creo nonsense, the USA, acceptance of the fact of evolution runs around 99% among relevant scientists. It is higher in Europe. You can find more scientists in the relevant fields who are locked up in mental hospitals for one reason or another.
The amount of evidence after 150 years is gigantic, whole libraries full. No one person can know it all anymore. Plus, evolution is fully consistent with everything found in geology, genetics, paleontology, and astronomy. And cretinism isn't consistent with anything.
One of the reasons scientists hate this sort of thing. We've seen it before. We've assumed it was dead and over. And like a zombie, every few decades creationism lurches from the grave to bother another generation of scientists.
As to when the masses will be convinced. Today 400 years after Galileo, Bruno, and Copernicus, 20% of the US population still believes the sun goes around the earth. Even the fundies have mostly given up on the geocentric universe theory. Mostly. That tells you that people will believe anything no matter what and 20% is probably the lowest we will ever get. The rate limiting step isn't evidence, it is human nature.
Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago.
Ok, so what do they do with this detection of design? What comes of it, what good is it? Oh, I know ... it justifies genuflection before the Great Designer in the Sky. (And don't let Christians fool you -- they think God is in the sky and Satan is inside the Earth, because that's what they were taught as children. And if they don't think that, why do they believe any of the rest of the mythology?)
I'm praying very hard right now that the sun will rise in an hour. If it does, it must mean prayer works.
The essence of prayer is written on church signs across America, "Pray until something happens." We've all seen it.
Every time I see one, I'm so struck by the sheer stupidity of the statement, all I can manage is, "Well duh!"
OEJ
Bother! The same old fallacy of false choice is still what gets creationists the most mileage. The facts and arguments for and against evolution is the scientific question. The facts and arguments for and against creationism can't even be put as "sides" as there are no positive arguments, just negative facts.
The problem was that "problems" or "holes" is nondescript.
We can have a theory that isn't complete. (Nuclear theory, I think. At least they still can't predict the nuclear dripline worth damn.)
We can have a complete theory, and it could still fail to predict some data. (Newton gravity.) We can have a theory that in principle can predict all data, but for practical reasons don't. (Quantum mechanics.) And we can have a theory that can predict all data in theory and perhaps in practice, but as of yet there are still "holes" in our facts or applied knowledge. (Evolution perhaps.)
David Marjanović:
Intriguing. How should I read this?
I have understood "common descent" to be roughly the same observation as "nested hierarchies", and thus being a prediction from the theory and an observation of the process.
There are two ways this poor naive layman can see that it isn't part of the theory proper:
- You may be referring to universal common descent and universal nested hierarchies, a LUCA.
That is of course an observation, a specific history from a specific boundary condition.
- You may be referring to something like that mechanisms for populations splits and speciation aren't part of the theory proper, but descriptions contingent on specific external environmental factors:
... or it could be something else entirely?!
To be clear, I was referring to a direct observation. I.e. for example AFAIU lamarckian evolution could but would with low probability mimic these observations exactly.
thwaite, thanks for the link to the paper... I didn't have much more than a university lecture to go on :-)
I was referring to him, but I meant the (already self-admitted) ignorance end, which means I had misremembered what Hanlon's Razor exactly is. Stupidity looks different!
Clark's Law looks more like what truth machine is using in reacting to intellectual sloppiness and personal attacks in the same way...
I don't see how this is automatically accusatory language. It can also be based on the observation that grand unified theories elsewhere (relativity, quantum mechanics...) have limitations and the induction that the theory of evolution is therefore likely to have such limitations, too. This is entirely justifiable, as long as it isn't taken as proof that the theory of evolution has such limitations -- which was not clearly techskeptic's intention, so I gave the benefit of doubt and gave an innocent answer, and have turned out to be right in hindsight.
I meant it more strictly: common descent of all known life.
There is overwhelming evidence for common descent of all known life, but the theory doesn't say anything about that.
Raven (#128),
That was a great, succinct post about why we need to cast of superstition and belief in gods and magic.
Thanks.
David,
There is overwhelming evidence for common descent of all known life, but the theory doesn't say anything about that.
[assume ignorance again]
Are you saying that common descent is not part of the theory (just change and natural selection). Common descent is an expected outcome of an evolutionary process, and therefore it is strong evidence for the theory. is that right?
sigh ... the state of FL may be rid of Hovind, but his supports march on :-(
Now we've got to deal the ID crap :-(
http://www.orlandoweekly.com/features/story.asp?id=8273
Actually. I don't personally think that the "pace" of evolution is going to turn out to be the issue most make it to be. We do know that *some* traits may have adapted, from a few examples, so that species can undergo rapid shifts to handle *known* problems, which one can presume they may have encountered at one time in the past, and which were preserved. Maybe the shift was needed often enough that a mechanism developed to *allow* it to appear rapidly as needed. That can explain some of the *leaps* that sometimes happen. The other source is more likely simply explained too. Lets say, for example, something like MRSA because 10 times more dangerous than it is already, due to some mutation, but the change somehow made people with green eyes less susceptible with it. Very quickly you might see 70-80% of entire populations wiped out, with most of the green eyed people being among the survivors. All of the sudden you have had a huge "shift" in traits. If you don't know **what** causes a sudden shift in traits, it looks like a gap. If you do, its easily explained. If the pressure to a species is constant enough, and even a "tiny" number survive under that pressure, those that survive are **going** to have a lot of novel traits, at least compared to the prior group, which may have had hundreds of different traits, but in which the number who had *all* or *most* of the apparently novel ones where either scattered or rare among the group as a whole.
In other words, if you don't know how many traits already existed, or the potential that already existed *for* them, its quite pointless to make wild claims about how a vast number of traits just popped up in X number of generations, instead of slowly over a longer period. All of those traits, or the precursors for them, could easily have already been there, but not expressed to a sufficient degree to be blindingly obvious in something like a fossil record.
And its certainly a simpler explanation than some unknown mechanism that magically poofs traits into existence at a more rapid rate once in a while.
In error? I don't think so. But please, carry on thinking you are always correct. Just remember that not everyone is a machine like yourself.
AgnosticOracle #12 "What is it about Christianity that makes its followers so dishonest?"
Conversely, what is it about science that permits its practioners to be honest?
If religion were supported by the evidence, then religionists could validate their beliefs honestly. If the urge to religionism were based on logic rather than purely on emotional gains, then religionists could be honest (and wouldn't be religionists).
I think that you already knew this.
Techskeptic: Correct. Well, sort of.
You see, Evolution would remain equally valid were Last Thursdayism to hold - but of course Common Descent would then fail.
Evolution via Natural Selection and Common Descent are complementary theories - Common Descent claims everything on Earth has a common ancestor, but doesn't explain how that's possible. Evolution explains how it could happen - but would be consistent with other things as well.
For instance, should evidence turn up (unlikely) that there were multiple independant life-origin events on Earth, Evolution would in no way be weakened, even though Common Descent would be at least somewhat overturned.
For Evolution vis Natural Selection to fail, we would have to see organisms either fail to adapt to their environments yet continue surviving (a failure of evolutionary theory in general, that would be), or to see adaptations take place in a method incompatible with NS - if we saw a dog give birth to a cat, for instance, that would probably falsify Evolution via Natural Selection (but not evolutionary theory in general, necessarilly - just the mechanism of NS.)
Alternatively, if we observed the sort of barriers required for the distinction between "Microevolution" and "Macroevolution" to be meaningful, that would disprove both Common Descent and Evolution Via Natural Selection (at least in the "interesting" sense.)
Of course, we have no expectation of doing so, and no cdesign proponentist has managed to propose a plausible barrier mechanism that COULD do so... but if it could happen, we'd definitely have evolution falsified.
Anyway, back to your question: Common Descent lends support to Evolutionary Theory in general, but not specifically to Evolution via Natural Selection. This is because yes, it accords with predictions of ToE, but NS is fundamentally irrelevant to those predictions.
Rey Fox #33 "The issue here really has nothing to do with what the actual "holes" are in evolution and everything to do with what the Man on the Street thinks they are. . . He just has vague misgivings about evolution, or he thinks it's counterintuitive, or that it leads to some bleak view of life and the role of our species."
If 'Lies in Genesis' and the 'Disinformation Institute' and creationist hangers-on were not pushing precisely this myth, then the average Man on the Street probably would accept the fact that evolutionary biologists have an accurate, if incomplete, explanation for biological evolution. He probably would not care. He has been told to care and told to be suspicious -- these are easy messages to comprehend, whereas science confuses the average human.
Research scientists spend their time on research/teaching, while the ID goons have nothing but time in which to plan propagandistic strategies -- sort of like full-time creationists-cum-Joseph Goebbels.
"And all this can be traced back to a general misunderstanding of evolution."
True. However, many who accept that evolutionary biologists have the inside track on the truth also have incomplete understanding of evolution. The difference between acceptors-of-evolution and advocates-of-creationism is partly attributable to lack of science education and, I think, largely due to long-standing idealistic naivety on the part of the scientific community.
I think that scientists too long ignored the propagandistic threat. As a group, scientist consider facts and truth to be of paramount professional importance, and have presumably assumed that these values are important to humans in general. The history of thought demonstrates that they aren't. People want to *feel* right, they don't particularly care whether or not they possess genuine understanding. They want the feeling of certainty and religious promises, and they care little for knowledge. To creationists, who also do not care for genuine understanding, this fact of religion-prone human credulity has always been obvious.
I think that the scientific community has belatedly woken up to the threat and now recognizes the imperative for a battle plan.
Will Von Wizzlepig #70 "Essentially what it shows is that (surprisingly!), the stupider and less skilled you are, the less likely you are to learn from your mistakes, EVEN IF you have your mistakes explained to you."
LOL. You must be younger and more idealistic than I if you found THAT surprising.
It's easy enough, beyond cognitive dissonance, to see why this should be the case. Our thoughts are not nebulous, independent entities that free-float in our brains, they are born of biologically-constructed neural networks, so 'changing our mind' requires some restructuring. The more that we know about a subject, the more neural networks we can bring to bear on any given problem, so the more potential versatility in our thinking. Or something along those lines . . .
(This also explains why successfully creative individuals are often quite bright.)
Our 'emotional' brain necessarily learns much more rapidly than our 'cognitive' brain -- we would not survive if we could not rapidly adjust our discovery that a situation that we had considered safe is actually dangerous.
Ironically, the above explains the observation that some individuals (Martin Luther, for example) rapidly become more religious after frightening experiences, whereas believers more often deconvert quite slowly.
Jefe #73 "So instead of talking about practical benefits of teaching science in science class, we're talking about the "controversy" that only exists due to a dolled-up creationist agenda."
When you say "we're talking" are you referring to the discussion here and now or to the DI-driven focus on the pseudocontroversy? Let's not dignify it by calling it a controversy - it isn't.
Is there any need *here* to discuss the benefits of teaching science in science class?
Before switching career paths, I taught high school science and thought that the chief benefit was not content but teaching the students how to think.
The fallacious argumentum ad ignorantiam pseudocontroversy has always lain beneath IDiocy, but, now that they've been *officiallly* exposed as unscientific creationism, the pseudocontroversy is their next obvious, let's hope last, place of retreat.
Michael Ralston 140 "if we saw a dog give birth to a cat,"
Quite an extraordinary concept! As I understand it, that would require either that a dog and cat had mated and the cat's genes had somehow 'prevailed', or that a dog's genes had spontaneously undergone massive mutation into 'cat genes' across much of the genome.
"that would probably falsify Evolution via Natural Selection (but not evolutionary theory in general, necessarilly - just the mechanism of NS.)"
Hmn. Let's go with dog-cat mating and suppression of all dog-chromosomes in the resultant mixed genome. If the environment happened to be favorable to cats rather than dogs, I don't see how this outcome would falsify the mechanimsm of NS, which depends upon whether or not a mutation proves beneficial to allele transmission into subsequent generations.
What part of your argument have I missed?
Common descent of something is an expected (though not strictly required!) outcome -- a prediction --, and if we found evidence out that each species or subspecies or whatever came from a separate origin of life, the theory of evolution would be in trouble (but not falsified, I think). But common descent of all known life on Earth is not necessarily expected. (Neither is it not expected, however.) It's just (easily) compatible.
Salient: The unspoken part that evolution via NS requires changes to be largely gradual, as dramatic changes would be unlikely to provide the sort of gradient that evolution can usefully work on.
That said, the case I was thinking was the "spontaneous massive mutation" case - interbreeding between what seem to be two dramatically distinct species would be less of a problem for NS.
Why aren't kids taught about the holes in the theory of a heliocentric solar system? We have no well-supported theory that unifies gravity with the electromagnetic, strong and weak forces. Therefore there is a controversy about whether the Earth and planets orbit the Sun or the Sun and planets orbit the Earth.
We also don't know everything there is to know about the insides of the Earth, so children shouldn't be taught as a fact that the Earth is round but should be taught the controversy over whether the Earth is round or flat.
I mean, what's so special about the holes in the theory of evolution?
As a service to American school boards, perhaps some evolutionist American lawyer could draft an indemnification agreement that school boards could ask the Discovery Institute to agree to if the board is considering adopting the DI's approach. There's nothing like a well-crafted indemnification agreement to focus the other guy on the risks he's asking you to take on the basis of his say-so. When he has to face the risk himself, you often find he's not quite so blasé about the risks involved.
Such an indemnification agreement might then be distributed to school boards as a model for them to use when the DI comes knocking. Afterall, the DI has plenty of money for such scientific activities as distributing press releases and other propaganda, so surely the DI can put its money where it's mouth is.
Michael Ralston #146 "The unspoken part that evolution via NS requires changes to be largely gradual, as dramatic changes would be unlikely to provide the sort of gradient that evolution can usefully work on."
Evolution cannot 'work' on any individual that does not survive because of changes so 'massive' that it was rendered incapable of survival. So, massive mutations would not be transmitted because selection would eliminate a deleteriously mutated genotype. However, that's just the flip-side of NS at work -- removal of deleterious mutations.
"That said, the case I was thinking was the "spontaneous massive mutation" case - interbreeding between what seem to be two dramatically distinct species would be less of a problem for NS."
Well, successful interbreeding between two dramatically distinct species would not be possible -- that's essentially what speciation means. If this were not the case, we'd probably have a species of wooly humans frolicking in fields.
"[T]he scientific side weighs tons while the creationist side is a puff of air."
Air still has weight. ID is more like a big empty void that is due to collapse under the pressure of the world around it any minute now.
David, a belated thanks for your answer. (Comment #134.)
That quote is not a real Darwin quote that appears anywhere on the Internet. Lying pukes.
HJ
I take it back. I'm retarded. Introduction to Origin....But it's totally taken out of context!
Grr. I want to kick the ass of the guy who wrote that last post.
(SIGH)
HJ
If this were not the case, we'd probably have a species of wooly humans frolicking in fields.
heh, there's a special on "bigfoot" on the History Channel (of all things) tonight.
so tired of all the wasted money on sensational "crtyptozoology" crapola when there is REAL, interesting zoology like zombie cockroaches to spend money on.
The holes in your friend's knowledge...
There are lots of things we simply don't know yet. Take one of the subjects of my Ph.D. thesis -- the question of which known animals (dead or alive) are the closest relatives of the turtles. But these are not questions about the theory of evolution; they have nothing to do with the principle. The theory of evolution cannot, and never will be able to, explain what those closest relatives are or why they are that, but all answers that have been suggested so far are compatible with the theory of evolution, so there's no hole.
Eh, no. The controversy over punctuated equilibrium is over. Of the few cases where we can see speciations in the fossil record, most but not all are congruent with the punk eek model, and those that aren't seem to be cases like where planktonic diatoms speciated sympatrically in the whole equatorial Pacific at once.
And even 20 years ago, it wasn't a hole in the theory of evolution. Remember: mutation is random, selection is determined by the environment. We say "it evolves" in the active voice, but that's a mistake; "it" is tossed around by the environment.* So punk eek says that the environment of a species tends to be stable over hundreds of thousands of years and to change rarely but fast (over thousands or tens of thousands of years, that is -- remember, you are talking to paleontologists, the kind of people that can't tell last week from last ice age) and/or that species enter new ecological niches fast. Punk eek is not really about the theory of evolution.
* This might be slightly easier to explain in an ergative-absolutive language. But I digress.
Erm... no.
In principle, I agree with you and your friend: if there were any limitations, such as how Newtonian physics flat-out says that the observed perihel rotation of Mercury and the observed effects of gravitational lensing (among other things) simply don't exist, or how the theory of relativity and quantum physics disagree under extreme conditions, then of course they should -- and would -- be taught. I just can't think of any.
Bad example, because "advanced" cannot be defined. Sure, the theory of evolution predicts that we won't find a rabbit in Silurian rocks (and, accordingly, would have a pretty big hole if we ever found one), but that's not because a rabbit is more or less advanced than anything we know from the Silurian; it's simply because several nested groups to which the rabbits belong -- mammals, limbed vertebrates... -- appeared much later in the fossil record, in (almost exactly) the expected nested sequence.
That was 50 years ago. Nowadays it is clear that primary chloroplasts are internalized cyanobacteria and mitochondria are internalized α-proteobacteria, and that that basically is it. The chloroplasts of, say, brown algae are derived from red algae with a primary chloroplast in them, and so on, but these are things like the question of the ancestry of turtles: they are not about the principle.
Here we get to one of the last holes that were closed. But the discovery that the parthenogenetic rotifers somehow managed to completely get rid of transposable elements closed that hole, didn't it?
(If you stopped reading at "par-" and want an explanation of what all that means -- and it is an interesting topic --, you'll have to wait. It's close to 1 at night over here. I haven't had a look at the wikipedia article, but chances are good that it's a good introduction.)
You don't. And usually you don't start by digging, because usually a fossiliferous layer crops out at the surface. You start by walking around and looking for fossils that have been exposed by erosion. When you find one, you start digging.
This is more like a hole, and it's by no means closed! However, it's small. Really small. To understand evolution as it is currently understood, you only need to know that inheritance occurs and that Lamarckian inheritance never or almost never occurs. All the fiddling with the histones (and DNA methylation and stuff) could provide a tiny non-zero value for "almost", and figuring out just how tiny it is is a pretty hot, although small, area of ongoing research; but so far it seems to work on a timescale of generations, not of tens or hundreds of generations.
I notice you started the sentence by mentioning a fight and then changed your mind and wrote the issue may never be resolvable, which precludes a fight (in science)... :-)
For swapping genes, all participants need the same genetic code. How do you get the same genetic code if not through inheritance?
But, actually, I'm digressing again. This is again a question like whether it's turtles all the way down. Common descent is not part of the theory of evolution.
Finally, if you continue to search for holes, you might come across the question of how altruism towards individuals other than close relatives was ever able to evolve. This was a much-researched problem for quite some time, but it was closed very easily: the benefits of reciprocal altruism are pretty much evident.
We have a winner.
I disagree. It merely fails to use Hanlon's Razor most of the time.
You're right about that.
----------
Sorry, truth machine. I should have narrowed down Hanlon's Razor to ignorance vs malice -- ignorance being an entirely curable condition, in the absence of stupidity at least. Also, you seem to react as angrily to stupidity as to malice, which I find pointless at best.
=8-)
(I have learnt to appreciate the praise. 8-) )
Bother! The same old fallacy of false choice is still what gets creationists the most mileage. The facts and arguments for and against evolution is the scientific question. The facts and arguments for and against creationism can't even be put as "sides" as there are no positive arguments, just negative facts.
The problem was that "problems" or "holes" is nondescript.
We can have a theory that isn't complete. (Nuclear theory, I think. At least they still can't predict the nuclear dripline worth damn.)
We can have a complete theory, and it could still fail to predict some data. (Newton gravity.) We can have a theory that in principle can predict all data, but for practical reasons don't. (Quantum mechanics.) And we can have a theory that can predict all data in theory and perhaps in practice, but as of yet there are still "holes" in our facts or applied knowledge. (Evolution perhaps.)
David Marjanović:
Intriguing. How should I read this?
I have understood "common descent" to be roughly the same observation as "nested hierarchies", and thus being a prediction from the theory and an observation of the process.
There are two ways this poor naive layman can see that it isn't part of the theory proper:
- You may be referring to universal common descent and universal nested hierarchies, a LUCA.
That is of course an observation, a specific history from a specific boundary condition.
- You may be referring to something like that mechanisms for populations splits and speciation aren't part of the theory proper, but descriptions contingent on specific external environmental factors:
... or it could be something else entirely?!
To be clear, I was referring to a direct observation. I.e. for example AFAIU lamarckian evolution could but would with low probability mimic these observations exactly.
thwaite, thanks for the link to the paper... I didn't have much more than a university lecture to go on :-)
I was referring to him, but I meant the (already self-admitted) ignorance end, which means I had misremembered what Hanlon's Razor exactly is. Stupidity looks different!
Clark's Law looks more like what truth machine is using in reacting to intellectual sloppiness and personal attacks in the same way...
I don't see how this is automatically accusatory language. It can also be based on the observation that grand unified theories elsewhere (relativity, quantum mechanics...) have limitations and the induction that the theory of evolution is therefore likely to have such limitations, too. This is entirely justifiable, as long as it isn't taken as proof that the theory of evolution has such limitations -- which was not clearly techskeptic's intention, so I gave the benefit of doubt and gave an innocent answer, and have turned out to be right in hindsight.
I meant it more strictly: common descent of all known life.
There is overwhelming evidence for common descent of all known life, but the theory doesn't say anything about that.
Common descent of something is an expected (though not strictly required!) outcome -- a prediction --, and if we found evidence out that each species or subspecies or whatever came from a separate origin of life, the theory of evolution would be in trouble (but not falsified, I think). But common descent of all known life on Earth is not necessarily expected. (Neither is it not expected, however.) It's just (easily) compatible.
David, a belated thanks for your answer. (Comment #134.)