In a previous post here at TSZ Mark Frank asked why people doubt common descent.
A more interesting question is why did Charles Darwin doubt common descent?
Stephen Meyer has written two books which I think adequately answer both questions.
Those two books are:
In this thread I am willing to discuss either book, but I’d prefer to limit discussion to Meyer’s most recent book, Darwin’s Doubt
While Signature in the Cell concentrated on the origin of life, Darwin’s Doubt concentrates on the “Cambrian Explosion,” the sudden appearance of numerous distinct phyla and their subsequent diversification.
Neo-Darwinism offers no realistic account of origins, with the difference being that Darwinists can in the case of the origin of life assert that their theory does not apply while that excuse fails to apply to the appearance of different animals in the Cambrian and their subsequent diversification.
Just to prove I can – [Edited 09/15/2013]
Deleted from the OP – [Edited 09/201/2013] – Just to prove I can. “The arguments are the same for both:”
How long is that in seconds?
Why did you start this thread if you’re just going ignore all critiques about Meyer’s ID claims in DD that have been raised?
Rumraket:
But as long as it logs in at less than 10 million years it qualifies as sudden?
So, for example, the transition from human-chimp ancestor qualifies as “sudden” in your book?
thorton:
I’m more than happy to discuss the book and criticisms of it with people who have actually read it.
So far, that seems to by myself and Elizabeth. Give her credit.
Prothero and Matzke are not here to defend their silly reviews and they have been adequately answered over at ENV.
I’m looking for people here at TSZ who actually want to explore why people doubt common descent and who are willing to do some reading in order to educate themselves. Go check it out from a library if you don’t want to buy it.
In return, I have offered to participate in threads started by Mark Frank to discuss books in favor of common descent. And if he doesn’t start such a thread, who knows, I might. IOW, I buy and read books regardless of point of view.
What I hate is ignorance (esp. when self-imposed) and intolerance. And yes, I love truth. But science is isn’t about truth, is it.
richardthughes:
I appreciate the honesty, as misguided as it is. No one is requiring you to buy Meyer’s book. Dances With Straw Man indeed.
Elizabeth, you must be proud.
I simply like to keep the lines between fiction and non-fiction distinct, Mung.
Are you intolerant of the ignorant?
I see. You’re here to defend the book, just not the ridiculous ID-Creationist horsecrap that Meyer pushes in it. 😀
Glad to see you know your limitations.
That explains why you’re running from every question you’ve been asked about Meyer’s Cambrian stupidity, because you love truth. 🙄
Mung, my time is limited, and I’m more likely to enjoy laughing, erm, WITH you than seeking out the bumper book of falsehoods at my library.
Elizabeth:
Is it your contention that Darwin himself invented the tree-like pattern? Or did he merely provide an explanation and a proposed mechanism for what was already commonly recognized as a pattern in his day?
So where do you place Meyer on the historical continuum? Pre-Linnean?
I know why creationists doubt common descent.
Ignorance can be cured.
“Mung, my time is limited”
Then spend it more wisely.
Not near as proud as your fellow ID-Creationists must be of you for your tap-dancing and squirming and evading every question on Meyer’s “ID-of-the-gaps” claims.
The 2 1/2 billion years’ worth of life before the Cambrian is still here too Mr. I Love Truth, still waiting for your IDC explanation.
A sophist who works at the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture; nothing more.
great! What does that have to do with anything in Meyer’s book?
At least I know that a ribosome requires protein to function.
Let’s be clear about something here, Mung.
I have been reading ID/creationist stuff since the 1970s. I have tested the knowledge of many of its advocates. I watched you run away repeatedly from a little exercise that many high school students can do very easily; and you are typical of the ID/creationist pushers and Gish Gallopers I have watched over the years.
You want to argue and sneer, but you don’t want to learn. You want to spam threads and provoke people with juvenile insults; just like Duane Gish did when he bullied biology teachers and provoked scientists into debating him. It’s your way of trying to get a free ride by getting people to debate you. But that makes you exactly like every other angst filled ID/creationist trying to make a name for himself.
We’ve all seen the game played over and over and over. It isn’t working for you.
Meyer works at the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture. We all know what that is. Meyer has made absolutely no contribution to science; and he never will.
Stop abusing Elizabeth’s hospitality. You are nothing but another Joe G.
What does Meyer’s book have to do with all the evidence we have for the history of life on the planet, including the 2 1/2 billions years before the Cambrian and the multiple mass extinctions and re-radiations after the Cambrian?
I can’t find a single ID supported pushing Meyer’s DD who will address the question. Not a single one. It’s like they’re ashamed to have no answers.
Everything and you know it.
To Mike Elzinga, who also has not bothered to read Meyer’s book:
Mike:
Got you beat there Mike. Except for the ID books published in the 70’s. I missed those.
Mike:
You have no evidence for this assertion. I’m guessing that I was reading Life’s Ratchet before you even heard of it. You probably heard of it from me.
Mike:
You and the people here that are just like you are the abusers. Just look at all the abuse I’ve been subjected to in this thread.
Go back and read, if you dare:
About this site
Oh yeah, and then there’s this gem:
“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.”
An appeal that you, in your current condition, could never hope to make.
Insult me all you like, I don’t really care. To me, like water off a duck’s back. You reveal the true character of “skepticism” at this site and betray it’s founder’s intent, and the more it’s exposed for what it truly is (pure dogmatism) the better off we’ll all be for seeing it for what it is.
And Mike, what’s the function of a ribosome?
Well, Elizabeth, I’ve seen intelligent responses from you and Joe F.
And of the two of you I suspect only one has actually read the book.
Do what you can to encourage others to stay on topic, please 🙂
Elizabeth:
No, Meyer makes a clear distinction between disparity and diversity.
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/03/disparity-diver.html
thorton
100 million years of Ediacaran fauna? Meyer’s response would likely mirror mine.
Do you think that Meyer is a young earth creationist? If so, why do you believe that?
Aardvark:
heh. We’ll see. Ask yourself this: why didn’t my “skeptical” brethren jump on this bandwagon?
Joe Felsenstein:
Yes, hybridization experiments (particularly in plant species) provided empirical validation of the “fixation of species” before Darwin ever came along.
Joe Felsenstein:
Well, no. The data cannot be explained at all by Darwinism.
Sorry, I meant disparity. When you compare early generations in an evolutionary algorithm to later generations, you see more disparity in the early generations.
Meyer completely misses this point.
No need to “suspect” anything, Mung. Just ask. I have read the book. I think Joe said he hadn’t.
Elizabeth:
So what you meant to write was:
Just about the silliest thing in the book, in my view, is his gotcha! point that DISPARITY is greater in older strata, not less, as he seems to think evolutionary theory predicts.
And your “refutation” of this is that:
When you compare early generations in an evolutionary algorithm to later generations, you see more DISPARITY in the early generations.
Which seems entirely in keeping what what Meyer wrote. I’m sorry, but I absolutely fail to see what you found so silly about his argument. Disparity precedes diversity.
My OP was a “hit and run.”
Except it wasn’t
I offered to discuss Meyer’s book
Except I didn’t.
But I did.
I’m trying to adapt to “skepticism.” Do facts just not matter?
To many:
“I buy and read all sorts of books on topics I disagree with! I just won’t buy or read THAT book!”
right. good argument. now all you need to do is find a book espousing your position that I refuse to buy or read.
Feel free to open a discussion here at TSZ on it.
That’s not what I wrote. 100 million years of multicellular life including the Ediacaran. 2 1/2 billion years of life total before the Cambrian. Five major mass extinctions and subsequent re-radiations after the Cambrian.
Where in Meyer’s book are those rather important facts explained? Where do any ID-Creationists address them?
I notice you continue to tap-dance and evade the questions instead choosing to continue your funny little Gish Gallop. Well Mr. I Love Truth, why are you surprised that so many people view your offer to discuss as disingenuous?
Discussing Meyer’s book includes discussing the grievous errors of omission that Meyer made when offering his conclusion. Meyer and the DI have presented the ideas in his book widely in articles and videos. There’s no need to donate money to these anti-science charlatans in order to smell the stench of their offerings.
Your continued refusal to discuss the many problems with Meyer’s ideas speaks volumes about the hypocrisy in your so-called “search for truth”.
Fixed that for you.
Mung, if you can’t make a thread that people want to respond too nicely, maybe you should take that as a hint your thread is garbage.
Mung, you’re quoting-mining Agassiz for FSM,s sake. The science he did is, at a minimum, 140 years old! As already said up-thread he was a fantastic scientist but do you really think we haven’t learned something since then? That is a serious question. Please answer it. Has science acquired more data and theory in that 140 years or not? YES or NO. Any other answer is just a stupid attempt at evasion.
To pick just one phylum, your own, chordates exist in the fossil record about 17 million years before the start of the Cambrian. The explosion you are hanging your hat on is more of a fizzle than a bang.
I would have read the book, but this review point killed it for me:
Snort! All science so far!
That’s the part I find most amazing about Meyer and his sycophantic groupies like Mung. Meyer ignores 99% of the data we have on the evolutionary history of life on Earth, cherry-picks the remaining 1% to try and make his case, then wonders why he gets laughed at by real scientists.
Mung, if I pretended to be a historian and wrote a book claiming the Axis powers actually won WW2 because the U.S.S. Arizona was sunk at Pearl Harbor would that be good research? Should people be required to buy my book and read it uncritically before discussing its claims?
Virtually any data is allowed by darwinism; virtually none of it is explained by Darwinism.
That makes zero sense. Data are the raw information we find – the fossils we recover from the ground, the genome sequences we empirically map. It’s there for anyone to offer an explanation.
Actually virtually all of it is explained by modern evolutionary theory to science professionals who study and analyze the data. Of course not all the details are known but the overarching explanatory framework is exceptionally solid.
That said, I can see how a scientifically ignorant untrained layman might not understand the strength of consilience in the explanation.
That’s an odd statement William, and thus I’m not entirely certain what you and Mung mean. Evolutionary Theory, by it’s very premise, provides an explanation for some data.You may not like or agree with the explanation, but it’s certainly there. To wit:
And lo and behold, the Theory of Evolution provides an explanation for the data of inherited characteristics. Or are you suggesting there is no such data? Elaboration on your statement would be helpful when you have the time. Thanks!
There are thousands of books published every year that I will never read or even become aware of.
We all rely on reviews and internet discussion to surface those we actually read. For example, I read Shapiro’s book and Koonin’s book after they were recommended at UD. Oddly enough, I couldn’t find anyone at UD who read them.
Although they were touted as friendly to ID, I didn’t find anything in them that supports a theory of design. Koonin’s book covers much of the same ground as Meyers without noting any discontinuities.
So when I see a book claiming to have found a discontinuity in the Cambrian, and none of the reviews — not even those from the Discovery Institute — mention any new arguments or evidence, I see no reason to buy the book.
All Darwin offers is a **chance** that X occurs; it doesn’t predict it, and cannot predict it. In fact, an almost infinite number of other things could have occurred besides X, including not-X (convergent & divergent evolution, stasis & rapid change, common ancestry & orfan genes, complexity & simplicity, high and low birth rates, etc.).
Chance is not an explanation. It is the abandonment of an explanation. Darwinism doesn’t explain any data, it just allows a big enough pool of chance for virtually any data to fit in.
Well, Darwin (and Wallace) start with observation. They both go quite far from normal everyday experience for the norm of the time They note things as they see them. They think. They then suggest an explanation. What if there were change over time and organisms were related by a particular pattern of descent. And bingo. It all seems to fit.
The Theory of Evolution doesn’t offer “chance is the explanation”. The ToE provides the mechanisms which explain the empirically observed data for the history of life on Earth.
You really should make an effort to understand at least the basics before you begin blindly attacking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precambrian_rabbit
Except that, of course. Yet Intelligent Design allows it.
So if Darwinism does not explain any data then following your strictures ID does an even worse job.
I know, difficult to understand the sheer multi-dimensional nature of it all, right? Yet I still prefer all that to “it was designed” which is all you offer, along with your incredulity.
Evolutionary processes offer a rather narrow range of chances which may occur. It is not limitless, like IDiot “design,” it predicts that only quite limited changes can occur in present-day organisms, that wholly novel complex features will not appear, like airplane wings, or bird wings in bats.
If we saw an organism which was running the rather usual metabolism, then it got a gas turbine to power it through the skies, we’d have reason to suspect design, as design sometimes makes entirely revolutionary plan shifts. We don’t even get any common aerodynamic design in bats and birds (there are many homologies, but not homologous flight adaptations), like any normal designer would be expected to produce (even just accidentally), we simply get modifications of the terrestrial forelimbs that bat and bird ancestors had.
Your portrayal of evolution is extremely incorrect, if typical from anti-evolutionists.
Glen Davidson
I have seen only smallish amounts of material from the book. My comments on the Cambrian and Precambrian fossils were general thoughts about what we know about common ancestry and those phyla, and whether common ancestry rules out intervention by a Designer. It doesn’t, entirely, but creationists and ID types seem to be very reluctant to admit common ancestry.
And to answer Mung’s earlier silly question:
I said I am not a paleontologist, so no, I am not an expert on the fossils of these periods. However I am currently working on projects that aim to provide statistical methods that paleontologists can use. And for that reason part of my current NSF grant is funded by NSF Division of Earth Sciences.
I have done decades of work on common descent, so I think I am fully qualified to comment on what evidence we have for common descent for fossils like those in the Cambrian.
Since Meyer apparently does make statements about common descent, the evidence for it, and the implications of that, I should ultimately read what he says and comment on it. But the arguments I presented above will do until then.