Thank you Elizabeth for this opportunity-
Good day- Over the past many, many years, IDists have been telling people that intelligent design is not anti-evolution. Most people understand and accept that, while others just refuse to, no matter what.
With that said, in this post I will provide the evidence (again) that firmly demonstrates that ID is not anti-evolution. I will be presenting several authoritative definitions of “evolution” followed by what the ID leadership has to say about evolution. So without any further adieu, I give you-
Intelligent Design is NOT Anti-Evolution
”.
In order to have a discussion about whether or not Intelligent Design is anti-evolution or not we must first define “evolution”. Fortunately there are resources available that do just that.
Defining “evolution”:
Finally, during the evolutionary synthesis, a consensus emerged: “Evolution is the change in properties of populations of organisms over time”- Ernst Mayr page 8 of “What Evolution Is”
Biological (or organic) evolution is change in the properties of populations of organisms or groups of such populations, over the course of generations. The development, or ontogeny, of an individual organism is not considered evolution: individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are ‘heritable’ via the genetic material from one generation to the next. Biological evolution may be slight or substantial; it embraces everything from slight changes in the proportions of different forms of a gene within a population, such as the alleles that determine the different human blood types, to the alterations that led from the earliest organisms to dinosaurs, bees, snapdragons, and humans. Douglas J. Futuyma (1998) Evolutionary Biology 3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc. Sunderland MA p.4
Biological evolution refers to the cumulative changes that occur in a population over time. PBS series “Evolution” endorsed by the NCSE
Biological evolution, simply put, is descent with modification. This definition encompasses small-scale evolution (changes in gene frequency in a population from one generation to the next) and large-scale evolution (the descent of different species from a common ancestor over many generations) UC Berkley
In fact, evolution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next. Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes, Biology, 5th ed. 1989 Worth Publishers, p.974
Evolution- in biology, the word means genetically based change in a line of descent over time.- Biology: Concepts and Applications Starr 5th edition 2003 page 10
Those are all accepted definitions of biological “evolution”. (Perhaps someone will present some definitions that differ from those. Most likely I will only comment on any differences if the differences are relevant.)
With biology, where-ever there is heritable genetic change there is evolution and where-ever you have offspring that are (genetically) different from the parent(s) you have descent with modification.
Next I will show what Intelligent Design says about biological evolution and people can see for themselves that Intelligent Design is not anti-evolution:
Intelligent Design is NOT Creationism (MAY 2000)
Scott refers to me as an intelligent design “creationist,” even though I clearly write in my book Darwin’s Black Box (which Scott cites) that I am not a creationist and have no reason to doubt common descent. In fact, my own views fit quite comfortably with the 40% of scientists that Scott acknowledges think “evolution occurred, but was guided by God.”- Dr Michael Behe
Dr Behe has repeatedly confirmed he is OK with common ancestry. And he has repeatedly made it clear that ID is an argument against materialistic evolution (see below), ie necessity and chance.
Then we have:
What is Intelligent Design and What is it Challenging?– a short video featuring Stephen C. Meyer on Intelligent Design. He also makes it clear that ID is not anti-evolution.
Next Dembski and Wells weigh in:
The theory of intelligent design (ID) neither requires nor excludes speciation- even speciation by Darwinian mechanisms. ID is sometimes confused with a static view of species, as though species were designed to be immutable. This is a conceptual possibility within ID, but it is not the only possibility. ID precludes neither significant variation within species nor the evolution of new species from earlier forms. Rather, it maintains that there are strict limits to the amount and quality of variations that material mechanisms such as natural selection and random genetic change can alone produce. At the same time, it holds that intelligence is fully capable of supplementing such mechanisms, interacting and influencing the material world, and thereby guiding it into certain physical states to the exclusion of others. To effect such guidance, intelligence must bring novel information to expression inside living forms. Exactly how this happens remains for now an open question, to be answered on the basis of scientific evidence. The point to note, however, is that intelligence can itself be a source of biological novelties that lead to macroevolutionary changes. In this way intelligent design is compatible with speciation. page 109 of “The Design of Life”
and
And that brings us to a true either-or. If the choice between common design and common ancestry is a false either-or, the choice between intelligent design and materialistic evolution is a true either-or. Materialistic evolution does not only embrace common ancestry; it also rejects any real design in the evolutionary process. Intelligent design, by contrast, contends that biological design is real and empirically detectable regardless of whether it occurs within an evolutionary process or in discrete independent stages. The verdict is not yet in, and proponents of intelligent design themselves hold differing views on the extent of the evolutionary interconnectedness of organisms, with some even accepting universal common ancestry (ie Darwin’s great tree of life). Common ancestry in combination with common design can explain the similar features that arise in biology. The real question is whether common ancestry apart from common design- in other words, materialistic evolution- can do so. The evidence of biology increasingly demonstrates that it cannot.- Ibid page 142
And from one more pro-ID book:
Many assume that if common ancestry is true, then the only viable scientific position is Darwinian evolution- in which all organisms are descended from a common ancestor via random mutation and blind selection. Such an assumption is incorrect- Intelligent Design is not necessarily incompatible with common ancestry.– page 217 of “Intelligent Design 101”
That is just a sample of what the Intelligent Design leadership say about biological evolution- they are OK with it. And the following is from “Uncommon Descent”:
9] “Evolution” Proves that Intelligent Design is Wrong The word “evolution” can mean different things. The simplest meaning is one of natural history of the appearance of different living forms. A stronger meaning implies common descent, in its universal form (all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor) or in partial form (particular groups of organisms have descended from a common ancestor). “Evolution” is often defined as descent with modifications, or simply as changes in the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population.
None of those definitions can prove ID wrong, because none are in any way incompatible with it.
ID is a theory about the cause of genetic information, not about the modalities or the natural history of its appearance, and is in no way incompatible with many well known patterns of limited modification of that information usually defined as “microevolution.” ID affirms that design is the cause, or at least a main cause, of complex biological information. A theory which would indeed be alternative to ID, and therefore could prove it wrong, is any empirically well-supported “causal theory” which excludes design; in other words any theory that fits well with the evidence and could explain the presence or emergence of complex biological information through chance, necessity, any mix of the two, or any other scenario which does not include design. However, once we rule out “just-so stories” and the like, we will see that there is not today, nor has there ever been, such a theory. Furthermore, the only empirically well-supported source of functionally specific, complex information is: intelligence. To sum it up: no definition of evolution is really incompatible with an ID scenario. Any causal theory of evolution which does not include design is obviously alternative to, and incompatible with, ID.
However, while many such theories have indeed been proposed, they are consistently wanting in the necessary degree of empirical support. By contrast, design is an empirically known source of the class of information – complex, specified information (CSI) — exhibited by complex biological systems.
They go on to say:
10] The Evidence for Common Descent is Incompatible with Intelligent Design ID is a theory about the cause of complex biological information. Common descent (CD) is a theory about the modalities of implementation of that information. They are two separate theories about two different aspects of the problem, totally independent and totally compatible. In other words, one can affirm CD and ID, CD and Darwinian Evolution, or ID and not CD. However, if one believes in Darwinian Evolution, CD is a necessary implication.
CD theory exists in two forms, universal CD and partial CD. No one can deny that there are evidences for the theory of CD (such as ERVs, homologies and so on). That’s probably the reason why many IDists do accept CD. Others do not agree that those evidences are really convincing, or suggest that they may reflect in part common design. But ID theory, proper, has nothing to do with all that. ID affirms that design is the key cause of complex biological information. The implementation of design can well be realized through common descent, that is through implementation of new information in existing biological beings. That can be done gradually or less gradually. All these are modalities of the implementation of information, and not causes of the information itself. ID theory is about causes.
And finally there is front loaded evolution (Mike Gene) and a prescribed evolutionary hypothesis (John Davison)- both are ID hypotheses pertaining to evolution.
Mutations are OK, differential reproduction is OK, horizontal gene transfer is OK. With Intelligent Design organisms are designed to evolve, ie they evolve by design. That is by “built-in responses to environmental cues” ala Dr Spetner’s “non-random evolution hypothesis” being the main process of adaptations.
As Dembski/ Wells said Intelligent design only has an issue with materialistic evolution- the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through an unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms. (Also known as the blind watchmaker thesis)
Intelligent Design is OK with all individuals in a population generally having the same number and types of genes and that those genes give rise to an array of traits and characteristics that characterize that population. It is OK with mutations that may result in two or more slightly different molecular forms of a gene- alleles- that influence a trait in different ways and that individuals of a population vary in the details of a trait when they inherit different combinations of alleles. ID is OK with any allele that may become more or less common in the population relative to other kinds at a gene locus, or it may disappear. And ID is OK with allele frequencies changing as a result of mutation, gene flow, genetic drift, natural and artificial selection, that mutation alone produces new alleles and gene flow, genetic drift, natural and artificial selection shuffle existing alleles into, through, or out of populations. IOW ID is OK with biological evolution. As Dr Behe et al., make very clear, it just argues about the mechanisms- basically design/ telic vs spontaneous/ stochastic.
Now we are left with the only way Intelligent Design can be considered anti-evolution is if and only if the only definition of evolution matches the definition provided for materialistic evolution. However I cannot find any source that states that is the case.
So the bottom line is Intelligent Design says “evolved, sure”. The questions are “evolved from what?” and “how did it evolve?
I’m not talking about OOL. A GA starts with a population of self-replicators, in other words, it starts from the position that we already have [primitive] life forms that self-replicate with variance.
And there is no “ID oracle” in a GA that is not the direct analog of the natural environment in real life.
Unless I’m not understanding your point (which is possible). If so, could you clarify?
Joe,
This has been a long thread but I think we’re finally getting somewhere.
Would you kindly summarise the evidence, as you see it, for the existence of this “GA” that provides “programmed responses to environmental stimuli” in a single post and perhaps we can take it forward based on the contents of that post?
Rich,
But Joe is right, strictly speaking, when he says “Intelligent Design is not anti-evolution”. ID is not anything. It is a name without a content, a vapid concept, a sales pitch without a product. Granted, ID advocates seem united in their abhorrence of the theory of evolution but that stems from a political or religious motivation in the individuals concerned rather than any ability to propose a theory that remotely (or at all) approaches ToE in explanatory power.
Claimin’ ain’t demonstratin’.
Are you saying that the fitness function in a GA is not the analog of environmental hazard and opportunity in real life? If so, can you demonstrate how it differs?
I think I’d like to say at this point that this has become (maybe always was) a sterile debate. It seems that no two people can agree on a strict definition of either ID or of evolution – maybe those definitions are not even possible, given the histories of the two, and the games we play with the meanings of individual words. I personally don’t particularly care whether ID is “anti-evolution” or not. In my PERSONAL opinion ID is in large part an attempt to ground evolution (in its broadest sense) in religion – for, although JoeG himself does not appear to be a religious man, one only has to read UD for a few days to realise that virtually everyone there believes firmly that the Intelligent Designer is/was God, whatever they say about ID not being about the identity of the designer.
No. What ID is, is anti-science, because each advance in science tends to exclude gods from whatever is under investigation.
It’s very noticeable that very very few working scientists (as opposed to working engineers, who seem disproportionately attracted to ID) espouse ID – even though a significant proportion of such scientists are in some form “theistic evolutionists”, but manage to reconcile their theisms with their science without devaluing either.
Most proponents of ID- the ID of UD- are not scientists. Educated, usually; highly intelligent, often – but not in science. And the study of biological evolution is hard science.
This means that it is most times pointless for scientists to discuss with IDists the various bits of scientific evidence, old and new, for non-intelligent evolution.
As we have seen above, the most common response to any such is borne out of visceral anti-science feelings, and is to flatly deny, ignore, or wilfully misconstrue whatever it is. The IDist will NEVER engage in reasoned discussion about any scientific evidence for evolution-without-intelligence.
In the vast majority of cases that’s because they know they know too little about the subject to be able to argue effectively. They do not carry in their heads a running overview of the relevant literature, as the working scientist does. They are completely unfamiliar with biology laboratories and the techniques and methods used in them. They have no idea how to determine the meaning of any set of experimental results, or how to criticise them meaningfully. Show them papers describing novel functions in randomly assembled proteins – no meaningful response. Try and engage in a discussion of the work on the evolution of ribosomes – no response. Point out that there are testable hypotheses for the evolution of flagella – get called a liar. Show them the flawed logic in Dembski’s work – flat denial.
But ask them for evidence for their stance, all you’ll get is “show me yours first” or flat refusal.
Long story short – yes ID is antievolution, because the study of evolution is science – exciting and fruitful science, too – and ID is, above all else, anti-science.
The more science discovers, the less room or need for Designers aka gods
No, I’m saying that your equivocated, convenient, concept-stealing definition of “Darwinism” (which would include intelligent agencies programming GAs for specific purposes) is not the “Darwinism” that Joe, I, or most other people argue about. Just as your equivocated, convenient, and concept-stealing definition of “morality” is not the same definition that people have argued about for centuries, and which current philosophers argue about.
While you are certainly free to redefine terms however is convenient to you, you can hardly expect others to enjoy debating those who insist on inserting those ad hoc definitions as if they establish a particular definition as the neutral or standard position. There are not any Darwinists (other than you, apparently) that would agree that intelligently-designed GAs in organisms fall under the umbrella term “Darwinism”.
Morris’s misconceptions and misrepresentations are fundamental to all ID/creationist misconceptions.
As is the case with most followers of ID/creationism, you appear to know absolutely nothing about your ID/creationist intellectual roots. All of the misconceptions and misrepresentations of the fundamentals of science originate back with “scientific creationism” and its morph into “intelligent design” (cdesign proponentsists) in 1987.
All of your arguments about what you think ID is and what evolution is are based on those misconceptions. If you can’t even read a high school level biology, chemistry, or physics book, there is no way you have the ability to evaluate the stuff you copy/paste here.
These are simply historical facts that you are avoiding. What you think you understand of science and intelligent design are built on misconceptions and misrepresentations that were originally used by members of the Institute for Creation Research to taunt scientists into public debates.
Since that time, ID/creationism has become a huge, messy concoction of assertions and misrepresentations designed to get around court decisions and to be used in organized socio/political tactics to flood the general media with ID/creationist beliefs. Sectarianism is and always has been the prime driver of this political movement.
The bottom line in all this is that neither you nor any or those you follow can pass any exams in even the most basic introductions to any of these subjects.
Copy/pasting without comprehension from the writings of others has become the standard operating procedure of all followers of ID/creationism, none of whom know their roots or the basic subject matter of modern science.
You are no exception. I am simply informing you that those of us who have followed this since the 1970s know this, and apparently you don’t.
What is more, you don’t seem to care. That’s a bad sign.
This is not about you, Joe; you will never become a lionized guru anyway. Learn some real science before you waste away your life on stuff you don’t understand and can’t evaluate.
Hi Kevin,
You have a wild imagination but you never demonstrated in any way that ID is anti-evolution- as I have already told you, and others, you are conflating the theory of evolution with the evolution, the thing.
IOW you are clueless, just as I have been saying.
Yes Rich, I undersatnd that you have equivocation issues.
Again ID is anti- blind watchmaker evolution, but blind wqatchmaker evolution ain’t the only player.
IOW Rich, you can’t address what i am saying
If you’re using a word interchangeably for concepts, how do I have “equivocation issues”? Methinks you have precision issues.
There ya go Elizabeth- that is great- how would YOU do it- that is a great way to start! That is how I thought about it too.
And it isn’t Darwinian evolution if it is guided by a GA.
Also, as I have told you many, many times- ID is all about the origins because the origins directly effects any subsequent evolution- ie desogned to evolve/ evolved by design.
And right- the solution is what the GA finds- all you need to do is progam in the specifications that you need to match, ie the target-
Did you read that SciAm article?
Please explain why you think the Darwinism you think I am talking about is different from the one that Joe et al argue about. And “equivocated” is meaningless. I am not equivocating. I do not accuse you of equivocating. If we mean something different by the term, let’s get that difference out on the table.
Same applies. I have been explicit about what I mean by the term. Ergo, I am not equivocating.
I’m doing no such thing. What I want is for you to tell me why the fitness function in a GA is not the analog of the hazards and opportunities the natural environment offers to a biological population.
I’m saying nothing about any “standard position”. I simply asked for clarification of yours.
I’m not saying they do or don’t. I’m trying to find out what an “intelligently-designed GA in organisms” would actually mean.
In my understanding of the term, a genetic algorithm is an algorithm that utilizes the basic Darwinian principle of replication with variation within an virtual environment that offers hazards and opportunities for reduced or enhanced reproductive success. If your understanding is different, or Joe’s, please explain what it is.
I was suggesting to Joe, that one coherent ID position might be that the Intelligent Designer did exactly what GA designers do, which is to create a starting population of relatively simple self-replicating organisms that replicate with variation, and let them evolve in an environment that offers hazards and rewards.
If that is “front-loading” then essentially it is the view that Darwin was an IDist:
And that the ID “originally breathed [life] into a few forms or into one”, and then let evolutionary processes evolve “endless forms most beautiful”.
I have already explained that also- you are using evidence for “evolution” as evidence for blind watchmaker evolution.
You are full of smelly stuff, Mike. And you cannot support anything you just said.
Housekeeping note – is thread length starting to hurt everyone’s load times? Should we consider a new, continuation thread?
“you are using evidence for “evolution” as evidence for blind watchmaker evolution.”
Okay – how is Lenski’s E-coli experiment evidence for anything but that? Please give details and mechanisms.
If you already have a target what’s the point in faffing about with a GA?
Just build the thing.
Of what? So now you DON’T think that immaterial means artificial? Or you do?
I have never heard of a definition of “immaterial” as “not reducible to matter, energy, necessity and chance”. Where did you find that and what does it mean?
Merriam-Webster’s definition of “immaterial”: not consisting of matter, incorporeal.
So, back to the point I was trying to address: ID contends that organisms have largely originated through guided, intelligent, purposeful, IMMATERIAL processes?
Quite the opposite, there, ace. There more we know and figure out, the better the design inference looks.
All ID/creationist debates have to end up in mud-wrestling over the meanings of the meanings of the meanings of words. It is an infinite labyrinth of word-gaming.
The mere fact that this always happens betrays the roots of ID/creationism in exegesis, hermeneutics, etymology, and sectarian apologetics in general. This is how followers of ID/creationism have learned to learn.
The simple notion that there are huge amounts of science out there that has withstood the test of time and can be studied, learned, and understood always appears to be completely irrelevant to those pushing these notions of ID/creationism. They don’t even bother to learn their own history.
It’s like trying to argue with someone who is on the New Jersey side, standing with his back to the Hudson River, denying the existence of New York City, refusing to turn around and look, and then mud-wrestling endlessly with you over the meaning of the meaning of the existence of New York city.
You don’t know how to get it- all you have are some specs- Read about the GA that was written to create a specific antenna- no one knew what the antenna would look like all they knew is what it had to do.
Mike- ID can trace its roots back to Aristotle and perhaps even before.
However it is obvious that you didn’t know that.
“Reproduction” isn’t a mechanism Joe, any more than “design” is a mechanism.
The only known mechanism of carrying heritable traits over generations is by DNA replication. But you told us your GAs don’t involve DNA, remember?
What is the specific mechanism by which your GAs are carried over between generations of organisms?
Evidence please. Where specifically in the cell? Which cell? There are 230 different types of cells in the human body. Do they all have the same GA, or different GAs?
You keep making stuff up and avoiding questions here Joe. Doesn’t bode well for you GA hypothesis.
How is it? YOU need to provide the reasoning.
Also the experiments demonstrate the LACK of power for evolution. 50,000+ generations and only trivial changes. Changes that fit with baraminology.
Reproduction is a mechanism for passing down heritable traits- ALL traist even those NOT in DNA- you do realize that there is more to germ cells than DNA?
Ya see thortard, this is your problem- you are ignorant of biology and too cowardly to support your position.
OK, let’s stop equivocating about equivocation. From Merriam-Webster:
It’s intransitive, so “equivocated meaning” has no meaning. heh.
And it is used to imply that someone is exploiting ambiguity in order to either deceive or evade commitment.
It is not synonymous with “ambiguous”. Many of the terms used in these debates are highly ambiguous, and different people associate the same terms with different referents.
There is no right or wrong of course (and dictionaries only describe usage, they do not prescribe it, although M-W provides only two closely related usages for “equivocate” so using it in any other sense should be accompanied by a clarification IMO).
So I repeat my request for clarification to Joe and William:
How does the fitness function in a GA differ from the natural environment in real life?
Well materialism is the claim that all is reducible to matter, energy, necessity and chance- so you figure it out…
What traits get passed down that aren’t carried in DNA Joe? Please be specific and supply your references.
Sorry, I don’t understand the question.
Are you asking why we need a GA as opposed to letting the environment doit?
What epic, bad, spin!
Again, sorry they didn’t change into pigeons! If you expected somthing else, you don’t understand evolution. PERIOD.
The ability to adapt to a new environment – both in regards to optimal organism size AND citrate absorbtion and metobilzation supports undirected evolution, because we can see a lot of trial and error occured genomically before the organisms got there. And it was stochastic, because taking old cultures didnn’t always give the same results.
Complete blind-watchmaker support. Zero design suppoert. So, what’s your case?
You do realize there is more to germ cells than just DNA?
Yes or no
Yet you can never present any evidence in support. Strange, that…
Hey look if all you have to is throw eons of time around then you have left science.
50,000+ generations- how many does it take to get something other than E coli?
You didn’t answer the question Joe.
What traits get passed down that aren’t carried in DNA Joe? Please be specific and supply your references.
Main Entry: equiv·o·cate
Pronunciation: i-‘kwi-v&-“kAt
Function: intransitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -cat·ed; -cat·ing
1 : to use equivocal language especially with intent to deceive
2 : to avoid committing oneself in what one says
Evolution has several meanings*:
1. Change over time; history of nature; any sequence of events in nature
2. Changes in the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population
3. Limited common descent: the idea that particular groups of organisms have descended from a common ancestor.
4. The mechanisms responsible for the change required to produce limited descent with modification, chiefly natural selection acting on random variations or mutations.
5. Universal common descent: the idea that all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor.
6. “Blind watchmaker” thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through an unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms.
With the above in mind it is easy to see that the theory of evolution is really a theory of equivocation. That is any and all evidences for evolution 1-5 are always used as evidence for evolution #6.
For example- the varying beak of the finch, anti-biotic resistance in bacteria, and genetic similarities (including alleged shared mistakes but regardless of the physiological & anatomical differences), are all used as evidence for evolution #6.
It should also be noted that evolution #6, ie culled genetic accidents, does not produce any predictions beyond perhaps change and/ or stasis, nor is it objectively testable.
Until you answer my question we cannot get to yours
Reducible, yes, but not without loss of information.
An organism may consist solely of matter and energy, and have come about by natural forces and hazards, but it still has properties that are not possessed by its parts, and which are destroyed even when its parts survive.
I’m happy to stipulate that organisms are systems of matter and energy, and if you consider that patterns and systems are “non-material” then I’m not a materialist.
But I wouldn’t be anything different from any other materialist.
Nice projection- typical
There more to ANY cell than “just DNA”. Much, much more.
I’ve just laid a bet with the cat that you won’t be telling us what you mean, Joe.
So tell us what you mean, precisely and without equivocation, and Sapphire gets a chicken leg!
Cowardly evasion noted. Please answer my question Joe, I asked mine first.
What traits get passed down that aren’t carried in DNA Joe? Please be specific and supply your references.
Ah but information is neither matter nor energy…
No. The fact that a theory is expressed in words that have more than one meaning in general usage does not make it a “theory of equivocation”.
Joe, could you address my question about GAs, please?
What I mean about what?
It does seem to demonstrate, however, that ugly, rude behavior on the part of ID/creationists generates long threads of convoluted mud-wrestling and gets them lots of attention for practically no intellectual effort on their part.
This has been a trick of demagogues for centuries; and the ID/creationists have learned the tactic well.
Oops what questions? I asked you to clarfy. Did you?
I see we’ve reached the “Joe G runs away” stage of the discussion. Just like clockwork.
Ooh, me, me, ask me!
Epigenetic traits for one. Also culturally passed down traits (for example habits, language facility etc).
Lamarck wasn’t all wrong.
And do, everyone, if you haven’t before, or haven’t read the book, listen to this lecture by Denis Noble.
Then how does information push atoms and molecules around?
Fine. I don’t deny information. Does that make me not-a-materialist?