Darwin’s Doubt

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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:

Signature in the Cell

Darwin’s Doubt

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:”

 

523 thoughts on “Darwin’s Doubt”

  1. thorton:
    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”.

    But… Mung loves truth! He is right and you are wrong!

  2. Mung:
    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.

    I started to reply to this, but found I needed a picture, so I have posted it as a new post here.

    The gist of it is that that Meyer seems to think that recent generations within a phylum, say, are as “morphologically distant” from the recent generations of a different phylum as their respective ancestors were when the lineages first diverged.

    It’s because he insists on categorizing every organism into a separate taxonomic box, instead of understanding that Darwin’s entire point was to say that the nested hierarchies we observe in extant organisms reflect a continuum that has the form of a bifurcating tree.

    In other words he doesn’t understand one of the most fundamental principles of the theory he purports to refute.

  3. Call me cynical, but I think he probably does understand it. Inaccuracies and misrepresentations have not harmed sales.

  4. The Theory of Evolution doesn’t offer “chance is the explanation”.

    Sure it does. That’s all it has. The “mechanisms” you speak of are not “mechanisms” at all, because they offer absolutely no predictability. Those “mechanisms” can produce both X and its opposite, and virtually anything else under the sun.

    They are nothing more than deceptive, semantic placeholders for “chance”. If gravitational theory was like Darwinism, nobody would have any idea what would occur if you dropped an object off of a building, and there would certainly be no way to predict how to get something into orbit around the Earth. It’s about as useless a “theory” as astrology.

  5. Your understanding of predictably is deficient. Casinos cannot predict what the next card will be or where the ball will land, and yet they consistently make money.

  6. WJM: Sure it does. That’s all it has. The “mechanisms” you speak of are not “mechanisms” at all, because they offer absolutely no predictability. Those “mechanisms” can produce both X and its opposite, and virtually anything else under the sun.

    You may want to stop before you embarrass yourself even further. Evolution is a process that has a random component (genetic variation) and a non-random component (selection). The selection part doesn’t have a uniform probability distribution. The non-uniform selection part makes the process into a tracking loop that follows changes in the environment and drives a population towards local fitness maxima.

    It’s no different than playing roulette at the casino. No one can predict the exact sequence of numbers that come up but since the numbers 0 and 00 give the house an extra 5% winning probability it’s guaranteed that in the long run the house will make money.

    Again, you really need to read and learn at least the basics instead of continually inserting your foot in your mouth.

  7. Take a look at Las Vegas. Every building is the cumulative result of chance. The predictable but very small difference in odds between the house and the customer.

    Sort of like the accumulation of very small differences in reproductive success.

  8. William J. Murray: Sure it does. That’s all it has.The “mechanisms” you speak of are not “mechanisms” at all, because they offer absolutely no predictability.Those “mechanisms” can produce both X and its opposite, and virtually anything else under the sun.

    They are nothing more than deceptive, semantic placeholders for “chance”. If gravitational theory was like Darwinism, nobody would have any idea what would occur if you dropped an object off of a building, and there would certainly be no way to predict how to get something into orbit around the Earth. It’s about as useless a “theory” as astrology.

    “Chance” is not explanatory at all. It is a “place holder” for what we don’t know. However, probabilities can be very precisely defined, and we can explain why a probability distribution has the shape it does. And when we know why a probability distribution has the shape it does, and that probability distribution is part of a general explanatory theory, then it is perfectly explanatory.

    For instance, we can explain why someone died of radioactive poisoning, because we know to a very precise degree the probability distribution of the decay of whatever radioisotope it was that emitted the dangerous radiation, even though we have no explanation at all for why any one particle was emitted at 7 ack emma and not a different one at 8 ack emma.

  11. Your batting average of not comprehending whatever I write stands at 100%

    That’s due much more to your vast subject ignorance than to anyone’s reading comprehension.

  12. What is the probability that it will be raining on Sept 1 next year in New York City? Flipping a coin would give as good an answer to that question. Yet, Darwinists think they can assign “probabilities” to macroevolutionary mechanisms that cover millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years? Of course they cannot. Can you predict what the weather will be like in 10 million years?

    Natural selection doesn’t even mean anything other than “what happens to have survived”; it’s not a “mechanism” or a predictor of evolutionary change. It’s a report on what has survived.

    Darwinism is anti-theistic self-deception based on blind faith in raw chance. Nothing more.

  13. That’s 100 percent of your readers misunderstanding you 100 percent. Close to Gary Gaulin’s record.

  15. Darwinism is anti-theistic self-deception based on blind faith in raw chance.

    LOL! There’s no ignorance quite so amusing as Creationist blustering willful ignorance.

  16. William J. Murray,

    What is the probability that it will be raining on Sept 1 nextyear in New York City?

    What is the probability that it will be cold in New York City next December? Pretty good.

    Flipping a coin would give as good an answer to that question.

    Completely untrue. We could provide a very good probability of its raining Sept. 1 next year. Certainly more unlikely than that it will be, definitely not the 50-50 of a coin toss.

    Yet, Darwinists think they can assign “probabilities” to macroevolutionary mechanisms that cover millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years? Of course they cannot.

    Of course they can. The probability of some design-like shift in metabolism or in basic tetrapodal structure of terrestrial vertebrates is known to be extremely low, and the probability of merely evolutionary shifts to be very very high. And what do we see? Evolutionary shifts, not revolutionary intelligently-caused shifts. A fact that you avoid by repeating your ignorant anti-knowledge of such science.

    Can you predict what the weather will be like in 10 million years?

    I can predict it within a range, assuming no enormous changes made by humans.. As in, it won’t have Venusian temperatures, nor be as cold as Pluto. You can’t predict anything at all with ID, since it depends solely upon an “unknown intelligence.”

    Natural selection doesn’t even mean anything other than “what happens to have survived”; it’s not a “mechanism” or a predictor of evolutionary change. It’s a report on what has survived.

    So, which is more likely to survive in a swift or swallow, aerodynamic efficiency, or two-headed mutations? No, NS means a lot, just not to people who only react against science that they don’t like.

    Darwinism is anti-theistic self-deception based on blind faith in raw chance. Nothing more.

    So, do you believe “anti-theistic” meteorology probabilities, or are you just a bigot against certain sciences?

    Glen Davidson

  17. William J. Murray: Your batting average of not comprehending whatever I write stands at 100%

    You seem frustrated.

    I can understand that. People seem to be laughing at you, and not taking you seriously.

    Look at it from our point of view. You have frequently come here hinting that you had a cogent argument to produce. But no cogent argument has been forthcoming. When people think they see the beginnings of a cogent argument, they raise questions. And your response seems to be to deny that you ever said what they took you as saying. And that’s why we are unable to see any actual cogent argument.

    Did you ever hear or read the story of the boy who called “Wolf”?

  18. William J. Murray:

    What is the probability that it will be raining on Sept 1 next year in New York City? Flipping a coin would give as good an answer to that question.

    Thanks. On the basis that your opinion is probably not that remarkable, you have given me a great idea for a money making scheme.

  20. William J. Murray:
    Your batting average of not comprehending whatever I write stands at 100%

    You said:

    William J. Murray:

    The Theory of Evolution doesn’t offer “chance is the explanation”.

    Sure it does. That’s all it has. The “mechanisms” you speak of are not “mechanisms” at all, because they offer absolutely no predictability.

    My reply was a direct refutation of that claim. Evolutionists do not offer “chance” as “the explanation” for the reasons I gave. And the mechanisms they do offer are not

    William J. Murray: deceptive, semantic placeholders for “chance”

    as you claim, again for the reasons I gave: a probability distribution is highly predictive.

    If you didn’t mean that the theory of evolution offers chance as the explanation for biology because its mechanisms are no more than “place holders” for chance, because they do not predict anything then why did you write stuff that sounded exactly like that’s what you meant?

  21. Perhaps it’s worth considering what evolutionary can and does predict, and what was never pretended that it could predict.

    Continuity, the lack of revolutionary changes, is one of its best predictions. In a way, this is boring, and easily ignored by the typical anti-evolutionist, but it is a powerful ruling principle in biology, what makes experiments on laboratory rats important to human medicine. Well, couldn’t design be simply evolutionary as well? One supposes that it could be, but one only has cause to expect at least occasional rational leaps from an intelligence. How is the gasoline engine of the Wright Flyer related to kites and gliders of the past? It isn’t, it’s just technology recognized as valuable for flight, so it’s put onto the wing and hooked up to propellers using bicycle chains.

    Innovation isn’t particularly within the realm of evolutionary prediction, except that certain possibilities are obviously going to be exploited. That is, no one 60 million years ago could have predicted the evolution of the lion, but the evolution of clawed tetrapods with credible dentition would have been a reasonable prediction (assuming life does well, rather than earth being constantly pummeled by extreme disasters). Predators, herbivores, and parasites can be predicted to evolve in a flourishing earthly biosphere, and they’ll be seriously constrained by their inherited genetic material.

    I do not see how any of this could be predicted using ID, including by those who accept common descent. Evolutionary processes coerce evolutionary constraint, design does not–nor is there any apparent design reason for parasites, predators, or even herbivores. Indeed, why bother with “material” at all, if somehow you’re opposed to “materialism.” Why not the purity of souls?

    I’m not saying that the above is an exhaustive list of what is predicted by evolutionary theory, but it gets to what evolutionary prediction is, and all that it actually needs to be. Of course one might like more, just as one might like weather predictions for the next million years, but science only does what it can. However, the constraints of evolution inform us about the patterns of life that we see, while evolutionary opportunities inform us of why we’re afflicted with diseases

    What we know about biology comes largely from physics, crucially including chemistry in that, plus evolutionary processes. Physics without evolution tells us almost nothing about why life exists in the patterns and interactions that it does, however, aside from some constraints that it places upon evolution. Essentially, all form and function of life is understood in an evolutionary context, or it is not understood at all.*

    Glen Davidson

    I should just qualify this statement by noting that form and function can be understood in a proximate sense without evolution, but only evolution can reveal why it is this form and function, and not quite other form and function that would have been as about as good, or even possibly better.

  22. I know there are many papers with computational predictions, but as an amusing one:

    “In each great region of the world the living mammals are closely related to the extinct species of the same region. It is therefore probably that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee; and as these two species are now man’s nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere.”

    Charles Darwin, Descent of Man.

    I imagine a creationist might not accept that man came out of Africa, because… reasons, maybe Ham.

  23. Yes, Darwin’s “it is somewhat more probable” statement directly translates into a formal prediction:

    Evolutionary theory predicts that we will find fossils of our early progenitors on the African continent.

    There’s even a potentially falsifying prediction to be drawn from Darwin’s statement:

    IF we find fossils of the immediate ancestors of Hominins on another continent, say North America, as well as in Africa, that could be a major problem for evolutionary theory.

    And surprise, surprise, Darwin’s prediction did indeed come true once the fossil-hunters got serious about looking where they should.

    Hooray! Evolutionary theory passes another test! What predictions do ID “theory” / creationism make? Any? If any made, have their predictions been borne out by discoveries after the prediction? Any?

    ∗crickets∗

  24. thorton: That’s due much more to your vast subject ignorance than to anyone’s reading comprehension.

    Murray is indulging in hyperliteralism. A mechanism MUST be mechanistic. More specifically it must be Laplaceianly mechanistic. Call me a cynic too but I’ll regard hyperliteralism as a form of rhetorical evasion*.

    .

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    *(I’d like to call it dishonesty but yeah yeah yeah that would be going to far.)

  25. The whole use of “chance” as a description of evolution is a misleading tactic that started with creationist debaters. If you tell your audience that evolutionary biologists think that all these adaptations are there because of “chance”, you win. You win because your audience realizes that random messing about with an auto engine won’t make it much better, that random flinging of paint won’t make the Mona Lisa, that typing on random keys won’t make David Copperfield.

    Those audiences don’t realize that natural selection (or if you are allergic to calling it a mechanism, differential viabilities and fertilities) can bring about a strong tendency to change in the direction that is adapted. The creationist debaters depend on this ignorance when they trot out the word “chance”. It is one of the most dishonest things they do.

    For William Murray to do the same does not speak in his favor.

  26. I also think it’s important to distinguish between a prediction that, for example, says what kind of pattern we should see and the details of the pattern.

    Darwinian evolution definitely predicts that with a few minor exceptions, “solutions” to environmental problems have to be re-found in every lineage. The exceptions are can arise when some system is deactivated, and then reactivated, but they are usually in closely related lineages (I’m thinking sonar in bats and whales).

    Darwinian evolution may not have longitudinal limits but it has very tight lateral limits – you might get a human from an ancient fish, but you won’t get another human from a modern fish, although you might get something equally odd. And yo won’t get a fish from a bird, although you might get a flying fish from a fish, or a penguin from a bird.

  27. William,

    The “mechanisms” you speak of are not “mechanisms” at all, because they offer absolutely no predictability.

    Then that rules out design as a mechanism as the results of design cannot be predicted either.

    You can design it so it looks designed.
    You can design it so it does not look designed.

    I’m sure you’d agree with all that, right?

    Yet it seems that your comrades at UD would disagree, at least some of them.

    http://tinyurl.com/pv2l8lc

    site:uncommondescent.com “design is a mechanism” About 1,170 results

  28. William J. Murray:
    What is the probability that it will be raining on Sept 1 nextyear in New York City?Flipping a coin would give as good an answer to that question.Yet, Darwinists think they can assign “probabilities” to macroevolutionary mechanisms that cover millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years? Of course they cannot.Can you predict what the weather will be like in 10 million years?

    Natural selection doesn’t even mean anything other than “what happens to have survived”; it’s not a “mechanism” or a predictor of evolutionary change. It’s a report on what has survived.

    Darwinism is anti-theistic self-deception based on blind faith in raw chance. Nothing more.

    Is that why there are plenty of theistic believers in evolution?

  29. William,

    Yet, Darwinists think they can assign “probabilities” to macroevolutionary mechanisms that cover millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years? Of course they cannot.Can you predict what the weather will be like in 10 million years?

    Then presumably it won’t trouble you to give some example of Darwinists making such claims? Then we can all have a good chuckle at the impossibility of what they are claiming, right?

    It’s ok if you don’t have an answer right away. I’m prepared to follow you round till the end of time asking the same question over and over, linking to where you made this claim.

    Your claim. Support it or retract it. Or ignore the issue, which I’m sure would be the moral thing to do.

  30. At the risk of causing a titter for a superficially engaged creationist, if there were any event that occurred at way beyond astronomical odds would that be evidence for a multiverse?

  31. Looks like Mung has cut and run from his attempts to defend Meyer’s incompetence and lies of omission in Darwin’s Doubt. Maybe he’s not as dumb as he comes across. Or, since he LOVES the TRUTH maybe he’s out searching. I’m sure he’ll be back as soon as he’s done helping OJ find the real killers. 😉

  32. Aardvark:

    Mung, you’re quoting-mining Agassiz for FSM,s sake.

    Did I, or did I not, post a link to the complete Agassiz article, the one that Meyer was quoting from?

    Here. let me answer that for you. I did.

    Maybe Meyer was quote mining, but I wasn’t.

    Apology accepted.

  33. Maybe Meyer was quote mining, but I wasn’t.

    LOL! Gotta love the excuses given by Creationists:

    “It’s not quote-mining if I just repeat another Creationist’s dishonest quote-mine!”

    That Mung, he sure does LOVE the TRUTH.

  34. petrushka:

    There are thousands of books published every year that I will never read or even become aware of.

    I assume you don’t therefore don’t pretend to be a critic.

    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.

    I regularly post at UD. I use the same name here that I use there. I seem to recall quoting from both of them. Maybe you just overlooked me. 🙂

  36. Robin:

    I would have read the book, but this review point killed it for me:

    Right. 18 chapters of science you can just ignore because of two chapters that you haven’t even read for yourself! In True Skeptical Ztyle!

    You folks here kill me, you really do. Can someone please start a thread on just what it means to be a “skeptic” at “The Skeptical Zone.” Apparently I’m just too skeptical to belong here.

  40. Right. 18 chapters of science you can just ignore because of two chapters that you haven’t even read for yourself! In True Skeptical Ztyle!

    Right. 18 chapters of recycled Creationist lies and bullshit with the same ideas that have been published elsewhere on the web by the author himself.

    Claim to LOVE the TRUTH then lie about answering questions and run from all attempts at discussion in True Creationist Style!

  41. petrushka:

    Perhaps you’ll tell us how either one supports ID.

    Meyer addresses Shapiro’s alternative to Darwinism. I’m not sure that Koonin offers an alternative so it would be outside the subject matter of this thread.

    Feel free to start your own thread.

  42. Sorry, too good to pass up.
    thorton:

    All I’ve seen to date from Meyer and the ID camp is:

    1. There is clear unambiguous evidence for Precambrian evolutionary ancestry in some Cambrian lineages.

    If this is true, then you know that your claim that Meyer ignores pre-Cambrian life is false:

    I want you to deal with the major lies by omission in the book, like the 2 1/2 billion years of life before the Cambrian.

    Since you haven’t read the book, you can’t intelligently discuss what it omits. You can’t know that Meyer ignores 2 1/2 billion years of life. And your quoted claim that you’ve seen from Meyer that there is “clear unambiguous evidence for Precambrian evolutionary ancestry” reveals a curious contradiction in your argument.

    thorton: not a skeptic.

  43. Joe Felsenstein:

    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.

    A commendable attitude, and one worthy of emulation. Meyer discusses the “deep-divergence hypothesis.” Probably right up Joe’s alley. 🙂

  44. Poor Mung. He tries not to lie but he just can’t help himself.

    Meyer put out several short videos with his same stupid Cambrian claims in DD a few years back. He briefly mentioned the Ediacaran fauna (about 20 seconds worth) and hand waved them away as an evolutionary dead end. He never explained how they fit into his ID scenario. He never mentioned the rest of the 2 1/2 billion years of life before the Cambrian.

    Face it Mung – you backed the wrong horse on this one. Your efforts to lie and cover for Meyer’s ineptitude are just making you look more dishonest every day.

    Now why did you lie and say you covered the explanation for the 2 1/2 billion years of life in this thread when anyone can easily check and see you’re lying?

  45. Glen Davidson:

    Evolutionary processes offer a rather narrow range of chances which may occur.

    Not really. A new form of life might appear, suddenly, with no ancestors. Evolutionary theory does not and cannot preclude this.

  46. petrushka:

    Your understanding of predictably is deficient. Casinos cannot predict what the next card will be or where the ball will land, and yet they consistently make money.

    Who cares what casinos can predict? Why do they ban card counters? Is it because they can predict that if they don’t they will lose money? I’m guessing yes, that’s it.

  47. petrushka:

    Take a look at Las Vegas. Every building is the cumulative result of chance.

    This “argument” is just so absurd it’s appalling. Stay in “chance constructed” skyscrapers often?

    And earlier, we heard from petrushka that casinos to not rely on chance, while here it is argued that everything in Vegas is the cumulative result of chance!

    You just have to love the shell game, since none of this has anything to do with Evolutionary Theory.

  48. Elizabeth:

    “Chance” is not explanatory at all.

    Isn’t that precisely what William is arguing?

    And yet people are arguing that chance explains why casinos make money and how Las Vegas hotels are constructed. Can it get any more absurd?

  49. Meyer says in his DD claims “of the 26 phyla that we see in the fossil record, 20 come in during the Cambrian explosion”. Where did the other 6 come from?

    Meyer also says there are 3 phyla known in the pre-Cambrian but asserts that none of them are ancestral to Cambrian phyla because “you can’t go from sponges to compound eyes in just 5-10 million years”. Why not, and where did the 3 pre-Cambrian phyla come from?

    Question questions questions for the IDiots but never any answers.

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