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.
In what? Your holy book?
Again, dear child, Lenski.
Please reference the alleged demonstrations. Thank you.
And you do not need a replacement model before canning a useless/ wrong model.
ID – no positive arguments, regressing as the gaps are filled. Poor Joe.
Again, your ignorance, while amusing, is meaningless.
However it is obvious that your position doesn’t have any positive arguments.
Again, dear ignorant one, Lenski supports baraminology
I have often wondered about this. My experience has always been that there is a current default explanation of everything, however weak or poorly supported, which is ONLY heavily modified or discarded when replaced by something more strongly supported. There MAY be an instance where a tentative explanation has been replaced by “beats the hell out of me” but I’m not aware of it. Certainly “goddidit” is regarded as a powerful replacement explanation, perhaps the most powerful possible (since it can’t be improved on with mere evidence).
You’re just unconnected to reality at this point. Evolution has massive experimental and evidentiary support. There is no support for the intervention of a designer in it.
Billy Squier is proud of you, Rich
Nice equivocation- there isn’t any support for evolutionism
Your creationist underoos are showing again, and it actually shows that in an changes can happen in timescales more than adequate for evolution. And baraminology is debunked by the fact, there just ain’t enough water.
Evidence? Your position doesn’t care about no steeenking evidence.
define evolutionism and what you’d consider support.
Evidence Richie and your ignorance of baraminology is not a refutation.
But again your continued equivocation is delightful…
Evidence Richie and your ignorance of baraminology is not a refutation.
But again your continued equivocation is delightful…
I already have-
Usually very reluctantly, and in some cases not at all it seems. Old habits die hard. It is interesting though to look back at some major religions and see that they have evolved somewhat. It would be real interesting to go a few thousand years into the future and see if religious beliefs are still around. I have a feeling they would be but not necessarily held by as many people as today.
Citation please.
What exact specific protein machinery were you thinking of?
For example?
Are you a baraminologist Joe?
But you are ashamed to recap or link to it. Understandable.
Is evolutionism the same as natural selection? Please stay on topic.
Is your “position” godism, jesusism, IDiotism, baraminism, designerism/creationism, psychoplasmism, immaterialism, supernaturalism, muslimism, allahism, mohammedism, religionism, caekism, CSIism, dembskiism, beheism, ghostism, alienism, stonehengeism, unrealism, irrationalism, tickism, projectile vomitism, or what?
Variation causes deviation from the norm. Natural selection promotes advantageous variations toward fixation (positive selection), and holds disadvantageous variations back (negative selection).
You clearly don’t understand the theory you want to attack. There’s a huge difference between positive selection for things being advantageous, and things being necessary.
If variation produces an addition to the phenotype that improves function in the environment, then that will be selected for, so yes, the theory does predict increases in complexity would happen even though complexity is not itself selected for.
I have a feeling that Joe is just a simplified version of ELIZA, picking up keywords and turning them around as insults.
But seriously, has anyone ever heard of a tentative explantion being discarded without ANY alternative available? Even if this has ever happened, would it be a good idea? Even the most tentative (or most hopelessly incorrect) hypotheses can lead to further testing, whereas “beats me” suggest no further investigation.
(Yes, I’m sure we all understand that JoeG’s claim to the contrary is as accurate and informed as everything else he says. But maybe the value of some testable hypothesis over none is worth noting. And of course, maybe it’s less entertaining than teasing the inmates).
LoL! But your position has no evidence.
There’s no “we”, “our”, or “us” where you’re concerned, joe. You aren’t a part of science in any way, and the support you imagine from other IDiots for your arrogant assertions is virtually non-existent. Your insecurities and over-compensation are obvious.
By the way, when did your designer god allah design and create all of the kinds/baramins? 6,000 years ago? And which kind/baramin was designed and created first?
Digital photography wasn’t necessary for survival either, until it was. Corporations that lived on film are bankrupt.
The necessities are constantly changing.
He has alluded to that in the past. If so, I wonder what his evidence is?
In that case religious/creationist beliefs should have been canned long before the ToE and other aspects of modern science came along.
Who claimed that “evolutionism” has peer reviewed support?
And didn’t you say that this thread is about natural selection? Please stay on topic.
Elizabeth
Whilst I think you are right to allow anyone of pretty much any shade of opinion, anywhere on the expert/ignorant spectrum, to start threads;
May I suggest that you obtain an undertaking from the “applicant” that he/she will properly answer most if not all questions relevant to the topic? And simply close the thread if the undertaking is not reasonably honoured?
This thread could and should be an interesting one, were it not for the non-answers, insults, and sloganeering of its starter.
I realise that a very strict application of such a rule would eliminate most if not all IDists, but maybe they can be trained!
Sorry, but having to scroll past such numbers of JoeG’s unsupported assertions, refusals to explain, self-contradictions, idiot repetitions, and insults, make me disinclined to read those threads in which he, or anyone like him, is prominent.
Or is there a possibility of an “ignore poster” facility?
Yes please. Then we’ll get better quality posts.
Flint-
I didn’t say anything about any tentative explanation being discarded.
I was talking about a model was that shown to useless or wrong.
This thread is interesting- it is interesting watching evos do everything they can to avoid the reality exposed in the OP.
Yes and what is advantageous or disadvantageous changes.
But anyway we are still waiting for positive evidence that natural selection can do what it is being claimed to do.
It is VERY noticeable that neither of you two start any posts. It is also very noticeable that neither of you two can do anything but whine and lie.
I agree to do that.
May I suggest that Elizabeth obtain an undertaking from the “responders” that he/she will properly ask questions relevant to the topic. First they have to demonstrate an understanding of the topic- still waiting for that.
Who gets to decide what “properly” means?
You have no idea what “natural” selection can and cannot do, because you have no means by which to vet which selections are natural. You can only assume they all are natural outside of those made by man. Without a metric that can determine which selections are not artificial, or what results can be expected without artifice, you have nothing but the empty assumption of your ideology.
What are all the books full of then?
If you want to call “our best effort at understanding” the empty assumption of the ideology that created it, so be it.
Still waiting for that *single* thing that your unique worldview has generated that would not have been possible for a Darwinist to discover.
Yes, and if you read my question, you will notice I said “however weak or poorly supported.”
So again, you raise what I consider an interesting question. You say “shown to be useless or wrong.” But to the best of my knowlege, nothing has EVER been shown to be “useless or wrong” EXCEPT in comparison with something else, which is shown to be superior in some way – make better predictions, explain more of the observations, use less special pleading, or whatever. I’m not familiar with anything being discarded without such a comparison. After all, “wrong” is a relative term – relative to some alternative explanation.
Now, let’s not play pretend here; you’ve made it abundantly clear that you reject evolution for entirely theological reasons, and you find perhaps the most useful, well-attested theory in the history of science to be “useless or wrong” because you find it directly incompatible with your theology. And that means you have NOT rejected it in a vacuum, you’ve rejected it in favor of a theological alternative.
And I will cheerfully admit that a model so solidly grounded on repeated observations and successful predictions is pretty well guaranteed to violate your particular theology. No matter what it explains.
What Elizabeth continues to miss is that she has presented no metric that can be used to validate any selection she refers to as “natural” (non-artificial). Oh wait, I think I’m wrong. I think Elizabeth has even equivocated “natural” to include humans artificially selecting, so “natural” doesn’t even have meaning in her view (except maybe in contrast to the old “supernatural” canard). Which makes one wonder why she even uses the term.
The fact is, the terms “natural” and “random” are baseless ideological claims – religious claims, as Dr. Hunter has repeatedly pointed out, masquerading as science but without any metric or means to verify.
Well, duh. What evidence is there to the contrary? Got any? Thought not, you just can’t help but being contrary. I could probably write you in Python with a suitable language processor. Just say you can’t prove a negative about whatever the subject is. Where would your free will be then?
Honestly, I know Joe can’t help himself but really William?
Conversations would take alot longer were we to preface everything we say with all our assumptions.
If you want to get precise, try writing a scientific paper and you can define your terms how you will. Then, perhaps, you’ll get round to telling me that single thing your worldview allowed you to discover that Darwinists could not, what with their assumptions and everything.
William J Murray,
Here’s an example.
Q: What colour are your shoes?
Proper Answer: My shoes are black.
Improper Answer: LOL!! You evotards have no evidence that colour even exists in a material world!
See the difference?
WJM:
Well, it’s interesting that you should pull out a probabilistic illustration. The ‘modern’ theory includes a great deal of probabilistic mathematics. Now., Joe G will immediately chime in with some guff about wild populations – essentially, he sticks the middle finger at abstractions, which means, effectively, that all simple models of ‘wild’ processes are likewise tainted (ie most experimentation). Nonetheless, ‘real’ populations are finite and in principle countable, and hence can be subject to mathematical abstraction. And mathematics is simply a variant of logic.
So …
The BASIC process of replicating a population is indiscriminate – the only factor in operation is creation of offspring, and every member of a population has the same fundamental chance of being the parent of the next offspring born. If you pick randomly from any finite set, with replacement, some members will be picked more than others, due to random chance alone. This process, by itself, will cause evolution. For a steady state population, an average of about 0.367879441 of the total fails to breed. That is 1/e.
Now, what you call an ideological bias stems directly from this – the mathematical logic is inescapable. Of course, generational elimination is never exactly 0.367879441. Populations fluctuate, and random effects (particularly in small populations) allow for departures from probabilistic expectation. But what they do not allow for are any old values that might suit your purpose. EVERY member of the ancestral population having the same number of offspring, for instance, is an equivalent of your ’20 7’s in a row’, unless additional factors supervene. The (strong, mathematical, non-ideological) expectation is that variation will be reduced, each generation, even in the absence of selection, in relation to this ‘attractor’, the mean loss of 1/e per generation in steady state. Reduction of variation equates to increase in frequency for survivors in the pool, ultimately to 100% (fixation). Without new variation (mutation), a population would eventually ‘freeze’. With it, it evolves.
So your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to explain to the Darwinists why they are wrong. Why does the mathematical expectation not pan out in real populations? It is lazy, and insulting to someone’s intellect, to suggest that they only hold a position because of ideological blinkers. When they can demonstrate mathematically what is to be expected in a population, and you want alternative positions to be taught in schools, you have to explain why the maths is itself wrong, or has been incorrectly applied.
This is the baseline. Before we get any further with selection, it helps to understand the process in operation when there is none. Given an input of new variation, sampling alone gives evolution, inexorably. Selection is a discriminatory layer upon this basic process. Only history makes us concentrate on Selection without recognising that it is part of a wider process: variant concentration by population sampling.
So – what prevents this process from carrying on indefinitely? We aren’t talking particularly of major evolutionary novelties, which are comparatively rare, but the workaday processes that dominate the picture of cladistic branching. It is not just that we say ‘evolution is possible’, but that non-evolution (at the genetic level) is impossible! Indefinite genetic stasis is your ’20 7’s in a row’, in a finite reproducing population with mutation.
What a terribly mixed up person you are.
It’s you, isn’t it? I bet you are C.H. Must get ronely over there right? You want to have a discussion but all the supporters on Darwin’s God are, well, somewhat usual in their ability to converse.
Thus neatly illustrating part of the point
It’s not my job to prove the contrary, because I haven’t claimed the contrary. I’ve only challenged the Darwinist claim about NS. It is incumbent upon those who make a claim to support it, not to shift the burden to those who challenge the claim. When you use the term “natural selection” as being capable of X or that it does Y, you are asserting that the selections in question are natural and are categorically up to the task.
But, as your “well, duh” indicates, you have no such evidence; you only assume such selections to be “natural”. You have no idea if “natural” selection is up to the task or not. That it is “possible” is enough to satisfy your ideological conviction – as I have already pointed out.
William J Murray,
What you miss is that your worldview does not allow you to make distinctions between anything.
Since you are free to believe anything you want, your are also free to disregard any evidence which might make any one view more “valid” or “real” than the other.
Therefore, if I was to accept your worldview, there is no argument you could make to me, that wouldn’t be acceptable for me to ignore.
Have you taken a position, and if so, why were you not free to take the other instead?