Well let’s look at what natural selection is-
“Natural selection is the result of differences in survival and reproduction among individuals of a population that vary in one or more heritable traits.” Page 11 “Biology: Concepts and Applications” Starr fifth edition
“Natural selection is the simple result of variation, differential reproduction, and heredity—it is mindless and mechanistic.” UBerkley
“Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view.” Dawkins in “The Blind Watchmaker”?
“Natural selection is therefore a result of three processes, as first described by Darwin:
Variation
Inheritance
Fecunditywhich together result in non-random, unequal survival and reproduction of individuals, which results in changes in the phenotypes present in populations of organisms over time.”- Allen McNeill prof. introductory biology and evolution at Cornell University
OK so it is a result of three processes- ie an output. But is it really non-random as Allen said? Nope, whatever survives to reproduce survives to reproduce. And that can be any number of variations taht exist in a population.
What drives the output? The inputs.
The variation is said to be random, ie genetic accidents/ mistakes.
With sexually reproducing organisms it is still a crap-shoot as to what gets inherited. For example if a male gets a beneficial variation to his Y chromosome but sires all daughters, that beneficial variation gets lost no matter how many offspring he has.
Fecundity/ differential reproduction- Don’t know until it happens.
Can’t tell what variation will occur. Can’t tell if any of the offspring will inherit even the most beneficial variation and the only way to determine differential reproduction is follow the individuals for their entire reproducing age.
Then there can be competing “beneficial” variations.
In the end it all boils down to whatever survives to reproduce, survives to reproduce.
Evolutionists love to pretend that natural selection is some magical ratchet.
So what does it do?
The Origin of Theoretical Population Genetics (University of Chicago Press, 1971), reissued in 2001 by William Provine:
Natural selection does not act on anything, nor does it select (for or against), force, maximize, create, modify, shape, operate, drive, favor, maintain, push, or adjust. Natural selection does nothing….Having natural selection select is nifty because it excuses the necessity of talking about the actual causation of natural selection. Such talk was excusable for Charles Darwin, but inexcusable for evolutionists now. Creationists have discovered our empty “natural selection” language, and the “actions” of natural selection make huge, vulnerable targets. (pp. 199-200)
Thanks for the honesty Will.
Chapter IV of prominent geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti’s book Why is a Fly Not a Horse? is titled “Wobbling Stability”. In that chapter he discusses what I have been talking about in other threads- that populations oscillate. The following is what he has to say which is based on thorough scientific investigation:
Sexuality has brought joy to the world, to the world of the wild beasts, and to the world of flowers, but it has brought an end to evolution. In the lineages of living beings, whenever absent-minded Venus has taken the upper hand, forms have forgotten to make progress. It is only the husbandman that has improved strains, and he has done so by bullying, enslaving, and segregating. All these methods, of course, have made for sad, alienated animals, but they have not resulted in new species. Left to themselves, domesticated breeds would either die out or revert to the wild state—scarcely a commendable model for nature’s progress.
(snip a few paragraphs on peppered moths)
Natural Selection, which indeed occurs in nature (as Bishop Wilberforce, too, was perfectly aware), mainly has the effect of maintaining equilibrium and stability. It eliminates all those that dare depart from the type—the eccentrics and the adventurers and the marginal sort. It is ever adjusting populations, but it does so in each case by bringing them back to the norm. We read in the textbooks that, when environmental conditions change, the selection process may produce a shift in a population’s mean values, by a process known as adaptation. If the climate turns very cold, the cold-adapted beings are favored relative to others.; if it becomes windy, the wind blows away those that are most exposed; if an illness breaks out, those in questionable health will be lost. But all these artful guiles serve their purpose only until the clouds blow away. The species, in fact, is an organic entity, a typical form, which may deviate only to return to the furrow of its destiny; it may wander from the band only to find its proper place by returning to the gang.
Everything that disassembles, upsets proportions or becomes distorted in any way is sooner or later brought back to the type. There has been a tendency to confuse fleeting adjustments with grand destinies, minor shrewdness with signs of the times.
It is true that species may lose something on the way—the mole its eyes, say, and the succulent plant its leaves, never to recover them again. But here we are dealing with unhappy, mutilated species, at the margins of their area of distribution—the extreme and the specialized. These are species with no future; they are not pioneers, but prisoners in nature’s penitentiary.
Not such a powerful designer mimic after all.
But there is one thing it can do– it can undo what artificial selection has done.
You still said it.
We can observe natural selection in action. It was not invented, it did not need to be. It was observed.
Likewise Newton did not invent gravity….
Joe,
If everything you are asked is off topic, a quote mine or is “irrelevant” then what is your purpose here?
Do you want someone to convince you of the power of NS? Why? Do you have doubts about your own position?
Or do you just want a round of applause for clever Joe and how he annoyed the evos? To be honest, I don’t blame you. I doubt you get much appreciation in your real life.
That’s another interesting X & ~X claim about NS; it supposedly promotes deviation from the norm and prevents it. IOW, NS does whatever is necessary, in any specific case, to validate the Darwinist concept that it is the only “sorting process” (even though, as Joe points out, it’s not a process at all, but the net result of random events) in action.
If the results of otherwise “random events” pointed towards an organizing process, for it to be an “organizing process” there would have to be an organizational mean. What is the “organizational mean” of NS? Survival? If so, NS says absolutely nothing about the creation of wings, minds, hooves, skin, lungs, sight, etc., because none of that necessary for survival.
This is the simple concept that reveals some more fundamental disconnect; if NS doesn’t necessarily predict more complex features, it is not any more of an explanation of those features than chance. IOW, if there is nothing inherent about NS that skews the process towards X, NS doesn’t explain X. That it allows X to come into existence, and doesn’t necessarily prevent it, is not an explanation.
It seems to me that most darwinist, in their mind, confuse “possibility” with “explanation”; as long as X is possible, then it is explained. It’s possible that I can roll 20 7’s in a row with a pair of dice, but because it is possible is not an explanation for the occurrence. Because it is possible for RM & NS to build functional wings over hundreds of millions of years, and it is possible that those wings (and all proto-wing versions in-between) conferred some procreative advantage, doesn’t explain the emergence of wings. It just allows that it could have possibly happened.
Which of your claims, joe? The Iraq war hero one? The all kinds of floors one? The falling out of tree one? The programming GAs one? The 300 pound bench press one? The ticks prefer watermelon one? The caek CSI can be calculated by counting the digits in the recipe one? The I’m not a religious muslim creationist one? The I am a muslim creationist one? The I’m a muslim but do not follow islam one? The I’ve engineered things and flown planes without a license one? The parking lot one? The internet tough guy ones?
You cannot observe natural selection any more than you can observe random events. You can observe selection; you can observe any event. The quality of naturalness or randomness (or artificiality or non-randomness) is inferred by examining the distribution of outcomes. You can assume what you are observing occurs without purpose or intent, but you cannot observe such a thing directly.
This is demonstrative of the logical breakdown I’ve observed in many Darwinists that mistake their ideological assumptions as de facto reality.
Perhaps we can get him a thread where he argues with himself? It would be entertaining.
Then your understanding is incomplete and seriously flawed. And it shows how disconnected you are from people who actually doing science.
However there is one specific case where “possibility” is all that is required, and that is to refute “Irreducible complexity”. All that is required is to show that a pathway is possible in principle and Behe is refuted:
Job done.
Here is Joe G elsewhere:
It is still completely germaneto the discussion and truthfully captures what you said.
Great flip flop there. Do you just like to argue? Do you have a clue?
In the real world we don’t preface words like “random” with “it could be angels, gods or demons doing it, it just looks random”.
When there is evidence that a distribution is non-random then there will be evidence that it is non-random. Until then it is a reasonable assumption.
So yes, you assume reality is reality until shown otherwise. What other way is there?
What have you, with your superior grasp of logic, discovered? What new data have you brought to the table William?
Awww, he’s confused. Bless him!
Yet you’re bringing up text that people said or allegedly said elsewhere. Strange that. Go figure.
Please stay focused and on topic, joe.
For a man who is stuck like a broken record, Joe G has an awfully short memory.
And I repeat, what have you, William, with your superior grasp of logic discovered that Darwinists would not have been able to?
Unless you can name something tangible, then to me you are just another Joe, albeit one better able to express himself. But otherwise, Joe.
In the real world, one never observes “natural” selection; what they observe is selection they metaphysically assume to be “natural”. On the other hand, we readily observe artificial selection as humans (intelligent agents) deliberately breed organisms towards a purpose.
Therefore, we directly know that artificial selection exists; we can only assume or, at best, infer that non-artificial selection exists by extrapolated comparison. However, in order to support that non-artificial selection exists, one would have to provide a falsifiable theory about what does, and how one can distinguish it from known artificial selection. There is no such predictive, theoretical model for NS (to my knowledge); in fact, most Darwinists insist that no metric exists that can discern between what natural selection can do, and what artificial selection can do. If that is true, then natural selection can only be an assumption; it cannot even be a proper scientific inference.
I think you’ve laid your finger on the problem. Emphasis mine.
What have you discovered with your superior logic that Darwinism have not discovered?
So far all you’ve said is that random numbers might not be random after all, if we knew every detail about how the universe operated and everything that operates in it.
That’s trivially true. It’s not a revelation.
Yes, it might turn out that “natural selection” is in fact being driven by a god of some sort who just makes it look as it it’s not only happening naturally but within expected boundaries.
But so what? Until you have some positive evidence that it is it’s not an unreasonable assumption. That it can’t be “proven” seems to be more of a problem for you then the scientific endeavour.
I’ve got a teapot to sell you!
William J Murray – do you think ‘natural’ exists at all?
PotW!
The real world? Are you sure about that? Don’t you mean whatever worldview you happen to be using today? As your worldview overrules the actual world, remember?
Why don’t you join joe in that naked hike in Yellowstone? You’ll be able to observe natural selection.
Hey, maybe your psychoplasmic worldview and a prayer can save you from being selected by a grizzly bear. You have faith, don’t you?
Joe’s more well-read than I when it comes to ID and is certainly a far more determined protagonist. I think that I would be considered pretty loopy when it comes to what most ID advocates argue, so while I don’t have an issue with such a comparison, it might not be a comparison Joe would appreciate.
But, all the same, thanks for that comparison.
Also, I don’t need to “name something tangible” when simple, direct logic exposes the underlying problems with the NS proposition.
But, that’s not what it looks like. It’s never looked like that, as many of the top evolutionary theorists throughout history have said, in effect: they must constantly keep in mind that the design that is apparent is not real.
They must constantly remind themselves not to assume purpose and design, and to try to keep such language out of their papers.
Darwin’s entire theory was generated to explain the apparent design in terms of non-design. So no, life has never appeared to be “non-designed” or “natural” until those following Darwin’s footsteps deliberately expunged that view. It is ironic that the view that life is not designed is an intentionally manufactured perspective that must constantly fight against against the inherent inclination to view life as designed and purposeful.
Nope- you may have inferred I meant only one thing, but the OP was to find out what else it can do. And apparently it can’t do much of anything.
We do we observe natural selection doing?
Yes and what else can it do? Anything? Anything at all?
The confusion and cowardice are all yours…
As I said belligerence driven by your ignorance is all you have.
Strange that, but I don’t see where Mayr has posted any text in this thread. And yes, it is an appeal to authority, twice so far. Heck, go figure.
Are you going to hike Yellowstone naked, covered with barbecue sauce, joe? Do you need a gun to make you a big man with black bears? Black bears are like cuddly kittens compared to grizzly bears. Come on joe, show what a man you are and that “nothing in nature selects” by hiking Yellowstone naked, with no weapons.
Oh, and are you saying that the designer doesn’t design the weather? How about the origin of weather and the “factors” that determine it from minute to minute, day to day, or season to season? Did or does the designer design the “factors” that cause weather? Did the designer design and front load the software/programming/information/algorithm in weather in the beginning or does the designer intervene in the weather and design it from minute to minute, day to day, or season to season? If weather was not originally designed and there’s no intervention by the designer, where did weather come from in the first place and how does it occur? Is it natural? Is it random? Is it stochastic? Is it by chance? Does it evolve?
Did the designer design the weather that caused the biblical flood? In your opinion, when did that flood occur?
Oh, the design is real enough. But it’s attributed to natural “unintelligent” processes, which have been demonstrated to be sufficient in so many ways.
Thanks for coming clean, Joe. Attaboy. 🙂
Are you’re claiming that every person who lived before Darwin saw nature as being intentionally designed, and that some people now see nature as not being intentionally designed only because they blindly follow Darwin’s “intentionally manufactured perspective”?
“as many of the top evolutionary theorists throughout history have said”
Name the “many”, and provide references to their exact words.
WJM
Like Joe, you have become a broken record. Both of those claims are factually, historically inaccurate.
Darwin’s theory takes account of the natural fact that many more offspring are produced than can be sustained (after Malthus), and that they vary in their capacity to survive. That must lead to a reproducing population tending to become enriched in those qualities that helped the parents survive, and impoverished in those qualities that hindered. Do you deny even that simple fact?
Forget what long runs of such generational change can do:
1) is it an ideologically motivated metaphysical position to hold that this simple process will occur in nature, all by itself?
2) Is it an ideologically moticvated metaphysical position to hold that this simple process, having happened in 1 generation, will also happen in the next?
3) Is it an ideologically motivated metaphysical position to hold that this simple process, having happened in 2 generations, will also happen in the next?
4) Is it …
At what approximate point do our metaphysical blinkers come into operation?
Which part is that? Can you demonstrate it? Who or what designed that part? How, when, and where did the designer design that part? How, when, and where did the designer get the knowledge, energy, matter, and ability to design and create that part? And how, when, and where did the designer originate?
Another clear indication of the faultiness of the logic of Darwinists. If Rabbits were found in the pre-cambrian strata, it would do nothing – absolutely nothing – to prove natural selection not up to the task of having allowed the generation those rabbits, although it might force a reorganization of the timeline of common descent – as many unexpected fossil finds in history have done.
This isn’t quite true, William. What it would do is cast grave doubts on common descent – to incorporate a mammalian fossil into the phylogenies that support common descent would be virtually impossible.
And without common descent, Darwinian mechanisms would have no – or a much more limited – explanandum.
What Joe – and William – seem to miss is that “natural selection” is not separable from the variance that is “selected”.
There aren’t two separate parts to the Darwinian process, pace Monod. The are two sides of the same coin: heritable variance in reproductive success is natural selection. As Joe rightly says – it isn’t an agent, it’s a result.
That doesn’t mean that it’s not a vitally important result, and what it’s a result of is the fact that some genetic variants confer phenotypic attributes that affect probability of reproductive success, in certain environments.
In any system of self-replicators that replicate with variance, if the variants sometimes differ in their probability of reproductive success, the population will tend to adapt to its environment, the more successful genotypes becoming more prevalent, and successful variants accumulating.
We know this happens. To make the case that it isn’t responsibility for the diversity and adaptation of life on earth, you need to show that it isn’t enough, not that it’s “not creative”. Clearly, demonstrably, it is.
Try applying that same skeptical scrutiny to the possibility that your chosen god exists and that it did or does all the things you believe it did or does.
It’s funny to see you bringing up possibilities as though they’re a bad argument when much of what IDiots do is push intentionally manufactured improbabilities and impossibilities based on bogus calculations and bald assertions to attack evolution and the theory of evolution, and to push ID.
There is a lot of testable, well established evidence that supports the claims of evolutionary scientists (biologists/paleontologists/geologists/etc.). Evolution is much more than a possibility. Do you have any testable evidence of the existence and deeds of your designer god?
Do you have any testable evidence that shows that the god you believe in is any more possible than Zeus, the FSM, or Fred the giant frog god? Do you really believe that just because you believe in a designer god that that explains and substantiates its existence and the occurrence of its alleged deeds?
William J Murray,
How can you, someone with a “free will” worldview that precludes logic, use logic?
I have found a lot of fossils in my time and I can assure you that if I were to find rabbit fossils in pre-Cambrian (or Cambrian or Ordovician or Silurian, etc.) sediments (in situ) I would be amazed, excited, and very public about it. The theory of evolution would be in a world of hurt.
I can also assure you that no rabbit fossils will ever be found in pre-Cambrian sediments (in situ). It just ain’t gonna happen. If you or anyone else can ever prove me wrong, I’ll eat my words.
Can you point out any fossils that have seriously contradicted the theory of evolution? You do realize, I hope, that the ToE is adjustable as more fossils and other evidence is found. Scientific theories are subject to change. The ToE would not withstand something as extreme as rabbits in the pre-Cambrian though.
Yes, there’s a difference between discarding a model and re-parameterising it.
Evidence Allan- we know the propaganda but we are still waiting for evidence.
Strange, that…
Yes natural selection happens. That is we do observe differential reproduction due to heritable random variation.
We observe differential reproduction due to other factors also.
And you need to show that natural selection or any other blind, undirected process, can actually construct protein machinery or produce the observed diversity. Clearly you have not done so.
Are you talking about the DI, Joe? what is their ‘OP / press release’ to ‘peer reviewed article or experiment’ ratio?
Something that even religion seems to have got to grips with..
All it would do is cast doubt on our current time-line.
No Rich, I am talking about evolutionism, which has zero peer-review support…
Looks like I am correct, again. And you are left holding yourself, again…