Evolution is finished! December 25, 2007
Posted by John A. Davison in general.trackback
In 2004 I published a paper “Is Evolution Finished?” Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum 97: 111-116. I now rearrange the words and offer it as a challenge to those who claim otherwise.
It is my conviction that creative evolution is a phenomenon of the distant past. Just as ontogeny is a self-limiting process terminating in the adult organism and its subsequent death, phylogeny has had a similar history resulting in the current biota. I see no evidence for the emergence of any new life forms, only trivial variations in existing species. In the distant past creative evolution and extinction were occurring simultaneously. That is no longer evident. This idea is not original with me and has been suggested by such distinguished scientists as Robert Broom, Julian Huxley and Pierre Grasse. I have simply extended their conclusions to include true speciation. Stated another way, there is no longer a balance between creative evolution and extinction. Related to this sequence is the evidence that Homo sapiens seems to be the youngest mammal ever to appear which suggests a goal directed process, now complete. Extinction is rampant as fragile habitats are being destroyed by human activity and with them all those species restricted to those habitats. The exact number of known species is unknown with estimates ranging from one to ten million, but that tens of thousands of them have become and are becoming extinct cannot be denied. I know of not a single replacement. If others think they do, please use this opportunity to identify it along with its immediate ancestor and the cytogenetic mechansim by which it was produced.
I realize this perspective is in marked contrast to the Darwinian model. I present it confident that the Darwinians will ignore this opportunity to defend their paradigm in open discussion. The atheist Darwinian establishment has traditionally pretended that they had no critics and I offer this challenge primarily to demonstrate to the scientific community that little has changed in the century and a half since the publication of Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” a book which offers, in my opinion, absolutely nothing of substance relating to its title.
The reason that this challenge will not be met is because the “establishment” now realizes that their model is a dismal failure. Rather than admit that they have dedicated their professional lives to a phantom, they have chosen to lash out blindly at all that recognize that chance could never have had anything to do with the origin or the susequent history of either ontogeny or phylogeny.
“Neither in the one nor in the other is there room for chance.”
Leo Berg, Nomogenesis, page 134.
A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.
MERRY CHRISTMAS
http://www.iscid.org/papers/Davison_IsEvolutionFinished_022204.pdf
Here is the link to my 2004 paper.
This is the chart supporting Robert Broom’s observation.
Adaptive Radiation of Mammalian Orders:
http://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/Mammalian_Adaptive_Radiation.htm
Neodarwininists explain this adaptive radiation by “empty niches”. Obviously all mammalian orders existed in the middle of Eocene (except of Pinnipedia). That no new mammalian order arose since then indicates that evolutionary forces are not taking place anymore. “Empty niches” hasn’t played any role in evolution.
Thank you Martin.
Note that not a new Order has appeared since the middle of the Eocene, 45 million years ago. The other thing that is interesting is that with very few exceptions each Order appeared in very rapidly increasing initial numbers rather than in gradually increasing numbers as the Darwinian model might suggest. Some became extinct leaving no descendents .There is NOTHING in the fossil record to support Darwinian gradualism as this graph clearly illustrates.
EVERY evolutionary event was instantaneous, unambiguous and without gradual transitional stages. This was true for every taxon from phylum right down to species. That property is what makes it possible to identify every known living organism with a simple binary key, often with only a drawing or photograph. The entire Linnaean system of classification is based on this property.
“He (Otto Schindewolf) shows that the many missing links in the paleontological record are sought for in vain because they have never existed. ‘The first bird hatched from a reptilian egg.’” Richard B. Goldschmidt, The Material Basis of Evolution, page 395.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Hi John.
Congratulations on a new and very handsome blog, if I may say.
I thought you might find it interesting that Joe Gallian and Dave Scott / Springer are actively espousing “front-loading” on their respective pro-ID blogs. I look forward to your insights and will be stopping by frequently. I’d also like to thank Alan Fox for part in setting up this site.
As you would say, “Sock it to me!”
Thank you Richard.
It was Alan Fox who set it up.
I was publishing evidence for front-loading when those guys were in high school. Robert Broom, William Bateson, Reginald C. Punnett and Leo Berg were also even before I was born. My papers are published as are those of my sources. Springer especially, would like to rewrite history. That is why he removed (for the second time) all my evolutionary papers from the side board at Uncommon Descent. He is a beauty – ruthless, arrogant, brutal, unprincipled and of course dead wrong about global warming as well. Does Springer have his own blog now? Why Dembski keeps him is beyond me.
It doesn’t get any better than this.
I love it so!
“If you tell the truth, you can be certain, sooner or later, to be found out.”
Oscar Wilde
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
He has stated he does not comment on low-traffic blogs, so it is a bit puzzling why he continues to appear at Uncommon Descent. I suspect he suffers from ADD as he tends to end encounters with inconvenient posters there with bannination when he runs out of bloviation.
Speaking of DaveScot/David Springer, I recommend -
http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?s=477629eaedd54ff3;act=ST;f=14;t=5237
especially the post by keiths, the last on the page at the time of this message.
Since this blog is definitely on the low-traffic side I guess I will not have to deal with DaveScot/David Springer here. He is welcome in any event if he isn’t atraid to reveal his email!
What happens on the internet stays on the internet.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Let the record show that there has been not a single response from the Darwinian faction in support of their devout belief that evolution is going on all around us. Surely P.Z. Myers, Richard Dawkins, Wesley Elsberry or some one of their many devoted fans can produce one example of a new true species, its immediate ancestor and the cytogenetic mechanism explaining its origin. After all, Darwinism is Godless, purposeless, random and never ending isn’t it?
I propose that they can’t produce even a single example because, as the title of this thread proclaims, EVOLUTION IS FINISHED.
This silence also explains why Myers, Hitchens and Dawkins must now dedicate ALL their energies to the conversion of the entire intellectual community to universal atheism. They have no other choice because they are congenitally incapable of recognizing a planned universe even when everything demands such a conclusion. They have painted themselves into a corner from which there is no escape except to admit they have been chasing a phantom. That is inconceivable for the monumentally arrogant mentality that all devout Darwinians have always exhibited. They are living, “born that way,” “prescribed” proof that we are all puppets in a determined universe just as Einstein insisted -
“Our actions should be based on the ever-present awareness that human beings in their thinking, feeling, and acting ARE NOT FREE BUT ARE JUST AS CAUSALLY BOUND AS THE STARS IN THEIR MOTION.” my emphasis.
Some of us have been luckier than others for which we lucky ones should be eternally grateful.
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
I will give this thread one more week for the proponents of an ongoing, creative (Darwinian) evolution to present their case. If they don’t, I will conclude that the matter is resolved in favor of the title of this thread.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
One of the nice features of this format is that registered users can be reached so that I can thank them for their participation and encourage their further involvement. When I tried to reach Richard T. Hughes (comment #4), I discovered that his email address was inoperative. Hughes is a regular at “After The Bar Closes,” the inner sanctum of Wesley Elsberry’s “Panda’s Thumb,” a forum from which I have been banned. I will let others draw their own conclusions as to his loyalties and purposes.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
I am the culprit regarding Rich Hughes registration. I registered him as he expressed a desire to comment but was reluctant to register. Registration involves giving a valid email address and has, in the past, allowed spammers access to the user list.
I should say, Rich, like me, makes no secret of his views, but has always expressed them most civilly.
Thank you Alan.
The point is Hughes’ email address was not valid. I was just trying to thank him for participating. Actually I don’t care how people access and participate here. For the life of me though I cannot understand why anyone would not be willing to present a valid email address since I have no intention of revealing them. I also rely on WordPress to provide the security for the user list.
Participants here can say whatever they want, confident that I will not delete their comments. I am anxious to have a forum, not an ideological stronghold as so many internet blogs so obviously are. If that means very few will participate that is in itself revealing, and fine with me too. Blog Czars and Forum Sponsors that must ban their critics are obviously insecure. I am not insecure about anything and never have been. Neither was my mother and I have half her genes!
Remember -
“Everything is determined…by forces over which we have no control.”
Albert Einstein
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Incidentally, Richard T. Hughes is a regular on “Panda’s Thumb” and especially on Wesley Elsberry’s “inner sanctum” – “After The Bar Closes.” He joined that blog in January 2006 and, in the two years (730 days) that have elapsed he has produced three-thousand five hundred and ninety-six (3,596) messages at an average rate of over five per day!
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Arden Chatfield, another one of my many fans from Panda’s Thumb, has, over the same time period, produced four-thousand six-hundred and forty-five (4,645) messages!
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
I love it so!
“As past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Well folks, a week has passed since I gave a week to those who see “evolution in action” everywhere they look to come up with a single example of a new species with the identification of its immediate ancestor. As I anticipated, not a single example has been produced. Nevertheless, I will leave this thread open, confident that as far as we know, the present biota is terminal, fixed, and accordingly, in my opinion, like all those which have preceeded it, doomed to extinction.
In other words -
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
It is later than we thought and much too late to do anything about it.
Let the record show that after one month of existence not a single example has been brought forth from any quarter that creative evolution is any longer in progress. In other words, the title of this thread, “Evoluition Is Finished,” remains unchallenged. What can I say but -
I love it so!
and of course -
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
It doesn’t get any better than this.
Don’t worry all you cowardly Darwinians out there in cyberspace. I won’t close this thread. I will leave it open in the hope that some Darwinian mystic somewhere will screw up enough courage to offer a single example of speciation which has taken place in historical times. Now don’t forget that you have to name the immediate ancestor and the mechanism by which the new species was produced. That includes a laboratory test proving sterility between the parent and progeny.
Until until such evidence is produced the title of this thread will remain valid and so will my signature -
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.
Claptrap.
Just ask the mosquitoes of the London Underground, C.culex and C. molestus, which clearly have speciated in historical times, through the mechanism of reproductive isolation.
From the abstract:
Until until such evidence is produced the title of this thread will remain valid and so will my signature -“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
I think you’d better change the title of the thread.
I think Woot, whoever that is, better present the evidence that the two mosquito species he mentions cannot produce a fertile hybrid. Also, what is the cytogenetic mechanism through which this presumed speciation has occurred? Isolation is not a mechanism. It is a geographical reality and nothing more. If they are still isolated how do you know which gave rise to which? I suspect they are merely subspecies and neither will probably ever become a true species or become anything very different from what they are right now. Theodosius Dobzhansky, a Darwinian, provided a fool-proof criterion for speciation and until the laboratiory tests have been performed nothing can be concluded with certainty.
And even if this example should indicate true speciation, does that in any way support the Darwinan fairy tale that evolution is going on all around us? I don’t think so and neither did Julian Huxley, Robert Broom and Pierre Grasse. There is not a shred of evidence that any contemporary organism is capable of creative evolution. Just as the adult is the terminal result of embryonic differentiation, doomed to death, so it seems that the contemporary biota is the final product of organic evolution, doomed to extinction. Commenting on both ontogeny and phylogeny -
“Neither in the one nor in the other is there room for chance.”
Leo Berg, Nomogenesis, page 134.
Furthermore, there is not a scintilla of tangible evidence that natural selection, the cornerstone of the Darwinian model, ever had anything to do with organic evolution except to stabilize species for as long as possble. It has always been entirely anti-evolutionary as it still is today. How could natural selection conceivably have been involved in a structure which had not yet appeared? That is the question that St George Jackson Mivart asked 12 years after the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species and it has yet to be answered for obvious reasons. That unanswerable question alone is lethal to the Darwinian hypothesis.
Thanks for commenting. Get your hero P.Z. Myers to do the same. Not a chance I say! He is too busy attacking organized religion and peddling Tshirts, coffee mugs, and bumper stickers, all inscribed with the scarlet A! Don’t take my word for it. Go to Pharyngula, click on the scarlet A and enjoy Richard Dawkins’ spiel on the virtues of Universal Atheism.
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
I love it so!
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Toot, whoever that is,
Oh – you mean -
“This paper considers the processes that MAY establish reproductive isolation ….. etc etc.” Is that what you mean as proof of speciation? Surely you jest Toot. I am afraid you will have to do a lot better than that. I’m surprised you mentioned such a pathetic example. Of course if that is the best you can do …….
I bet that Pharyngula Z, Myers could do a lot better. Alert him to this challenge. I will look for it at Pharyngula and of course here. I bet he won’t mention my name. He is terrified of me and my predecessors. So are Wesley Elsberry, Richard Dawkins and every other Darwinian mystic of whom I am aware. So is Christopher “hiccup” Hitchens. What losers they all are. The Bible bangers are too!
“Davison is the Darwinans’ worst nightmare.”
Terry Trainor
“Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics, and it springs from the same source… They are creatures who can’t hear the music of the spheres.”
Albert Einstein
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
I love it so!
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Thanks for exposing yourself.
I think Woot, whoever that is, better present the evidence that the two mosquito species he mentions cannot produce a fertile hybrid.
I did. It’s in the link in my post. Maybe you missed it:
http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v82/n1/full/6884120a.html
Are you just making this stuff up as you go along?
Seriously.
I think Woot, whoever that is, better present the evidence that the two mosquito species he mentions cannot produce a fertile hybrid.
What the abstract says is:
“Breeding experiments show compatibility between the Underground populations but not with those breeding above ground. ”
Dude. You’re pwned.
I love it so.
Woot, whoever that is and I am sure we will never know. Anonymous cowards are all the same wherever they surface.
Whose property am I? Certainly not yours or Pharyngula Z, Myers or any other chance-happy, mutation-crazed Darwinian mystic. You can’t even spell owned right if that is what you meant and Dude is derogatory so don’t use it again.
I prefer MY selection from the Abstract, the one where I capitalized MAY.
Sorry, but no cigar. Now unless you can satisfy the conditions of the challenge go away. Where there is gene flow there is no speciation. Besides, just because two forms choose not to breed means nothing. I wouldn’t dream of breeding with a Darwinian but could in a pinch, and it probably would work!
However, knowing how much victory means to you, I will concede to you this magnificent example of progressive, creative evolution in action if you are able to get your lord and master P.Z, Myers to appear here or even to mention my name at Pharyngula. I think he is scared fecesless of me and all my sources. So are Wesley Elsberry, Richard Dawkins and Christopher (hiccup) Hitchens.
I want them so!
“Davison is the Darwinians’ worst nightmare.”
Terry Trainor
You better believe it!
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/01/hitchens_has_big_brass_ones.php#comments
Be sure not to miss this announcement of the upcoming debate between Christopher “hiccup” Hitchens and Jay Richards of the Discovery Institute. It should be a hoot, especially if Hitchens shows up plastered as some of Myers’ faithful followers predict.
I would love to take Hitchens on drunk or sober, and I refer to myself not Hitchens. It would be a walk in the park. I would also love to saunter with Myers and Dawkins but I doubt either will even dare acknowledge my existence. Cowardly ideologues are like that wherever one finds them. They prefer sending out their hired goons like “Toot” to attempt (and fail) to do their pathetic dirty work for them.
“Rooty toot, rooty toot.
We’re the boys from the Institute.”
I would also be delighted to waltz with Jay Richards or any other member of the “Discovery Institute: A Christian Institution.” It is invariably a mistake when a group purporting to represent science allies itself with a religious institution. It serves only to inflame their atheist adversaries. In any event I would never dignify such an encounter by calling it a debate. Absolute truth is not subject to debate, only to disclosure.
“The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and science lies in the concept of a personal God.”
Albert Einstein
“Let my enemies destroy each other.”
Salvador Dali
I love it so!
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Where there is gene flow there is no speciation.
Check the abstract again, slick:
The surface and subterranean populations were genetically distinct, with no evidence of gene flow between closely adjacent populations of the different forms, whereas there was little differentiation between the different populations of each form.
Double pwned.
They prefer sending out their hired goons like “Toot” to attempt (and fail) to do their pathetic dirty work for them.
Hired goons?
I’ll pwn you for free, homeslice.
I am afraid I will have to ban Toot, whoever that is, from any further participation as he adds absolutely nothing to the purposes of this blog. He played the goon at One Blog A Day and he is doing it again here. However, if he can get his hero P.Z. Myers to show up, I will let him keep on threatening me as he just did.
I just hope that Toot remembers that what happens in cyberspace stays in cyberspace.
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Since Tootsie wootsie has threatened me, I feel compelled to discover his identity in case anything happens to me or my blog. All I know about him is that he seems to be associated with some academic institution which doesn’t surprise me in the least. Academe is crawling with atheist Darwimps. P.Z. Myers, the second biggest bully in cyberdumb, is associated with The University of Minnesota at Morris (UMM), some kind of community college in the Minnesota woods. The numero uno bully by far remains DaveScot/David Springer of Uncommon Descent fame.
If anyone can inform me of Tootsie wootsie’s real name and position, I would like to report him to his Dean as I did with P.Z. Myers some time ago. There is no place in cyberspace for such creatures who thrive on hate and denigration of their adversaries. If no one wants publicly to expose this animal, they may reach me at my University of Vermont email address available at my old home page or via private message at “Brainstorms” forum. I can assure you that your identity will not be revealed.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this most pressing matter.
Incidentally Tootsie wootsie, “arguments” are for lawyers, politicians and debating teams, never for real scientists. We prefer discovery followed by publication.
I love it so!
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
I will let him keep on threatening me as he just did.
I think you’re being paranoid. I’m not threatening anybody.
In this context, “pwn” means to win an argument.
As in, “I pwned John A. Davison when I demonstrated evidence of speciation in the mosquitoes of the London Underground.”
I think Woot is a Pharyngula scribbler whose mind has been deteriorated by excessive reading of neodarwinian articles. He is one of doctor Myers sycophants – or using doctor Myers newspeak: “a knowledgeable evolutionist who will rip you apart with his arguments”. Woot protected his mentor dr. Myers at One blog a day some times ago. He claimed that prolonged legs of some Australian frogs are evidence of “evolution of action”. Now the guy see “evolutuion in action” in London tube.
As usual Martin sees through Darwinian mysticism with great acuity.
Thank you Martin.
Hey, VMartin’s here! This’ll be just like old times.
You guys are still smarting after that whooping you got on One Blog a Day, huh? What was that, 900 comments before you finally realized you were beat?
Getting back to the topic at hand, in particular Davison’s post #17 in this thread:
That includes a laboratory test proving sterility between the parent and progeny.
You need to waive that requirement in the case of organisms that reproduce asexually.
By the way, Martin, you never did tell me how to say “fartcatcher” in Czech.
One more snotty remark from Woot and he is history. This thread is for the discussion of the evidence that evolution is finished. Woot has presented no evidence that creative evolution is still in progress and the paper he offers makes no such claim. He conveniently neglects the author’s use of that wonderful word MAY. His memory of One Blog A Day is pure mythology. Martin and I exposed the Darwinian fairy tale as it has never been exposed before on any internet blog. The man who arrogantly introduced the thread, P.Z . Myers, kept his cowardly mouth shut throughout the longest thread in the history of that blog and let Woot represent his Godless Darwinian dogma for him. All that Woot could come up with was this pathetic example with mosquitoes and some equally untested reference to leg length in the toad Bufo marinus. I still want to find out who Woot is so I can alert the institution with which he is affiliated of his shabby behavior in cyberspace just as I have already done with his lord and master P.Z. Myers. If he had an ounce of integrity he would tell us all exactly who he is and the name of the institution he so arrogantly represents. I predict he will never do that or if he does it will be a lie.
I have been very patient with Woot but I have no intention of letting this blog degenerate into the sort of flame pit that Pharyngula and Panda’s Thumb have always been. He has offered nothing but insult not only to me but to my friend Martin who knows more about the history of the evolutionary literature than Woot will ever know. Consider yourself warned Woot. One more personal insult directed at me or anyone else and you can kiss this blog goodbye. That goes for any other anonymous cowards that think they can invade this blog with similar ambitions.
I repeat, based on what has been presented here -
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Who is next?.
http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/2007/09/28/come-on-guys%e2%80%a6you-can-do-better-than-that/#comment-5832
I am coping with anonymous cowardly blowhards here as well. Anonymity should never have been allowed to become the standard for internet communication. It is a symptom of a decaying social structure just like rampant atheism.
You’ve got to wade a little further into the paper before the authors deliver the nail in the coffin to your diatribe, but it’s there.
When Oval males were crossed with one female from the Euston population a viable egg raft was produced; however, the F1 population failed to produce an F2 generation.
ZOMG! Two distinct populations can’t produce viable offspring! Pwnz0red!111!ones1!
Woot, whoever that is.
And this is creative evolution based on the progeny of a single female which is the way the sentence reads? And Woot wants me to abandon my Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis on these grounds? I repeat what I have claimed elsewhere in hard copy. There is not a shred of evidence that sexual reproduction can support creative evolution. All that it has ever been able to do is produce intrapecific varieties and subspecies, none of which are incipient species. That is all that Darwin was able to claim with his pigeons and all that has been shown to be true in the century and a half since the publication of his “Origin of Species,” a book in which there is not a shred of evidence supporting its title. Natural or artificial selection never had anything to do with the creation of any new life form. Don’t take my word for it as I have presented the judgements of several of the finest minds of the post Darwinian era, every one of whom has said exactly the same thing.
Woot, like Dawkins and Myers, lives in a fantasy world, a world to which all Darwinians, worshippers of the Great God Chance, are blinded, probably genetically, to that which is obvious to every real student of the natural world. There is now and never was any role for chance in either ontogeny or phylogeny.
“Neither in the one nor in the other is there room for chance.”
Leo Berg, Nomogenesis, page 134
“The struggle for existence and natural selection are not progressive agencies, but being, on the contrary, conservative, maintain the standard…. Evolution is in a great measure an unfolding of pre-existing rudiments…. Hereditary variations are restricted in number and they develop in determined direction.”
Leo Berg, Nomogenesis, page 406
“It is neither randomness nor supernatural power, but laws which govern living beings; to determine these laws is the aim and goal of science, which should here have the final say.”
Pierre Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisms, page 107.
Now these are just a few of the sources that have led me to the Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis. What sources compel Darwinians to continue to promote the most failed hypothesis in the history of descriptive and experimental science? I submit that such sources do not exist except in the minds of congenital atheists like Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers, Wesley Elsberry and the legions of their loyal “prescribed,” “born that way” followers of whom Woot is a typical example.
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
And this is creative evolution based on the progeny of a single female which is the way the sentence reads?
This isn’t a pair of scientists bent over a petri dish with tweezers, trying to get two mosquitoes to do the nasty. Read the sentence again:
…the F1 population failed to produce an F2 generation.
The population couldn’t produce viable offspring. Pwned j00.
Woot, whoever that is and of course we will never know.
I now formally concede that speciation and creative evolution is rampant in subway envronments, not only for mosquitoes but for Dipterans generally. It may even be generally true for all Metazoa. I made a terrible error claiming, as the title of this thread proclaims, that “evolution is finished.” and humbly beg your forgiveness for concluding with Pierre Grasse, Robert Broom and Julian Huxley that organic evolution is no longer in progress. I further apologize for their rashness for proposing such a ridiculous scenario. Since they are all dead, I act on their behalf by offering our sincere aplologies to our Darwinian colleagues, past and present, who have always been able to see “evolution in action” everywhere in the living world, a vision some few of us have been denied.
I am sincerely sorry that I, with all my several dead predecessors, have been so ignorant, so uninformed, and so unwilling to question the judgement of that overwhelming majority who continue to dominate the intellectual scene. I hope that Woot as their self appointed representative will accept this public apology on behalf of all of us who have failed to accept the Darwinian model for organic evolution.
Your humble servant, signed this 24th day of January, two- thousand and eight A. D.
John A. Davison, Ph. D.
copies to Wesley Elsberry, Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers and in memorium to the great Ernst Mayr, Stephen Jay Gould and of course Charles Robert Darwin.
I trust Woot will post this long overdue apology everywhere in cyberspace.
Neverthless, it remains my conviction that -
“Never in the history of human conflict have so many owed so little to so many.”
after Winston Churchill
and
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
So woot, darwinism has been proved in the London tube on your opinion. What kind of new species do you see there? Is it some kind of new insect? I would say mosquitos exist several millions years without changes. But who knows what happened in the London tube. What’s the name of the new species? And how do your toads with prolonged legs thrive? Have they been speciated already?
Martin
Thank you.
You mustn’t antagonize Woot. He will begin threatening us again if you do. Now that I have conceded to him that evolution is going on everywhere, maybe he will finally go away.
Let us pray.
While not a mosquito, another common insect prompted the following comment by Pierre Grasse -
“The fruitfly (Drosophila melanogaster), the favorite pet insect of the geneticists, whose geographical, biotropical, urban, and rural genotypes are now known inside out, seems not to have changed since the remotest times.”
Evolution of Living Organisms,page130
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
You are right John. I was only surprised by the case woot brought up. There are some horror films about human mutants from subway. I didn’t know that darwinist were able to find there some mosquitos’ mutants and use them as evidence for their fantasy of “evolution of action”.
The whole insect realm is mystery and only darwinists think that random mutation and natural selection is responsible for it’s evolution. If there is more time I will quote some interesting cases from butterfly realm studied by Theodor Eimer, the great proponent of orthogenesis. His observation is unpleasant and darwinists pretend his work doesn’t exist, or is outdated. But like Schindewolf explanations orthogenesis is ready to replace neodarwinism as soon as scientists realize that neodarwinism is nothing else as a naturalistic nonsense.
So woot, darwinism has been proved in the London tube on your opinion. What kind of new species do you see there? Is it some kind of new insect? I would say mosquitos exist several millions years without changes. But who knows what happened in the London tube. What’s the name of the new species?
The new species of mosquito is, surprise, a mosquito.
Its genus and species name is Culex molestus.
You’d know that if you’d bothered to read the abstract.
Now quiet down, son, the adults are trying to have a conversation here.
Also, you might find that a tomato juice and oatmeal rub is effective in removing pwnstank.
Martin
As usual you offer useful comments. Thank you.
wooT
Your abuse of Martin is unacceptable. You have until noon EST today to present an apology to Martin or you will be removed from the user list. Your comments will remain. This is not Pharyngula, Panda’s Thumb, After the Bar Closes, RichardDawkins.net or Uncommon Descent.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Martin’s not being abused, he’s being corrected. And if he’s half the thinker he claims to be I’m sure he can take care of himself.
By the way, I refer you to your post #12 on this very thread:
Blog Czars and Forum Sponsors that must ban their critics are obviously insecure. I am not insecure about anything and never have been.
I should point out that Martin’s never commented on the predictive value of the theory of natural selection and evolution, in particular with regard to increased leg length in Australian cane toads.
All I ever get from him is derision when I’m trying to have a conversation with a scientist.
Sorry Woot but that won’t wash. You still have four hours to apologize to Martin. I have no intention of allowing this blog to turn into a flame pit. Got that? Write that down.
Also what you call Australian cane toads are nothing more than transplanted Cuban Bufo marinus. Has anyone ever tested the two for hybrid sterility? Did anyone ever test Darwin’s finches? Finches are the easiest of all wild birds to domesticate. The canary is a finch!
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
You do realize that if you ban me, you’re providing the world with an excellent model for the theory of natural selection and evolution?
If we think of this thread as an environment and my online identity as an organism, then by banning me you’re applying a selection criterion.
I’ll mutate my identity strategy and return to the thread, at which point you’ll ban me again.
It’ll become a cat-and-mouse game where the predator (you) and the prey (me) are locked in an evolutionary arms race.
And at that point, “a present evolution” will indeed become un-undemonstrable.
I regard your comment as a threat and will repond to it as such. You have an hour to recant, apologize and admit that you have treated Martin unfairly. Don’t worry Woot, whoever that is, your comments will remain long after you have gone. Also I thank you for alerting me that you will return. You gained entrance to this blog through subterfuge and I am certain you will do it again. The internet teems with trash like you. Thanks for exposing yourself and give my warmest “freshly steaming” regards to your Lord and Master P.Z. Myers, the second biggest bully in cyberdumb.
Anyone who thinks selection ever had anything to do with the appearance of a new life form is a congenital damn fool. You still have 45 minutes to behave like a man.
I love it so!.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Unfortunately Woot insisted on ensuring that “Woot is no longer with us.” To memorialize his departure I offer the following little ballad in three quarter time. Verses and music by Andrew B. Sterling and Kerry Mills with a new chorus by yours truly.
“Meet me in St. Louis Wootsie, meet me at the fair.
Don’t tell me the lights are shining anywhere but there.
We will dance the hoochie coochie, you will be my tootsie Wootsie,
So meet me in St Louis Wootsie, meet me at the fair.”
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
You disappoint me John; giving ammunition to Dave Springer to claim with his typical chutzpah that you now have a higher percentage of banninations than the great banninator himself. Perhaps no one will notice.
It is also very bad form to gloat after banning someone when they cannot respond, especially since there is no evidence in the thread of “abuse” or “threats”and the recipient of the alleged abuse does not object. Ah well, it’s your blog.
Alan Fox
I hope everyone always notices every word that David Springer utters. He is the biggest bully in the history of cyberdumb and that is a matter of record. You may have noticed that he had to address me as ” grasshopper.” I thrive on trash like Springer. They are my bread and butter, arrogant , condescending, unprincipled and ruthless.
I love it so!
As for Woot, and my banishing him, I did so for the simple reason that he refused to apologize for the way he had treated Martin. If anyone from After The Bar Closes comes to this blog and behaves the same way, they will also be asked just once to apologize for their shameful treatment of him, me or anyone else who has posted here. Martin has a better grasp of the evolutionary literature than anyone else I know. This blog WILL NOT become a flame pit like Pharyngula and After The Bar Closes. Spread the word at Panda’s Thumb. I would do it myself if I could, but everyone knows I can’t. You can, so please do!
Woot, true to form, once again invaded this blog and I had to erase his comment, and his new email address. He has vowed to continue this strategy. I say all the more power to him and all like him.
“Walk into my parlour said the spider to the fly.” etc.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Woot once again for the third time has invaded and I have again deleted his comment and removed him from the user list. All this could have been avoided if he simply had been a gentleman and apologized to Martin. Rules are rules and I intend to enforce them. If he continues with this, I may remove all his comments as well as none of them were of substance anyhow. I recommend Pharyngula, Panda’s Thumb or RichardDawkins.net for Woot to peddle his brand of “evolution in action.” Let that be a lesson for others who choose to come into this blog full of arrogance and denigration. There are plenty of flame pits available for such types.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
I am sorry that Alan Fox, the co-sponsor of this blog, does not approve of my policies. I am doing my best to present a venue for civilized discourse. That will never be achieved if I admit and tolerate those like Woot whose only purpose is to embarrass me and Martin. Martin and I had a long experience with Woot on One Blog A Day where he represented the interests of P.Z. Myers.
There is another matter at stake here. I have been the subject of personal verbal abuse and wholesale denigration from members of virtually every major forum dealing with the question of the mechanism of organic evolution which is the only matter that has ever been in question. That abuse continues today against me and my allies, Martin and Daniel Smith, at After The Bar Closes and elsewhere on the internet. These are not conjectures as anyone who is at all familiar with internet blogs can verify. I fully expect them to continue but they will not be tolerated here!
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Hi John! Love the blog. I missed you.. Trust me, Dave Springer reads this blog – he has nothing else to do
I hope he starts writing in..
Dave is welcome even as he bans me from Uncommon Descent. So is everyone else. My only requirement is civility and I will even tolerate a certain degree of abuse if it helps define the user’s character.
As I used to say -
SOCKITTOME!
I love it so!
Thanks for the comment.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Stephen Hutchings
http://www.iscid.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=6;t=000370;p=77
You will notice from this page that DaveScot/David Springer still dismisses a human basis for Global Warming and seems to think that the reason people are now dying from weather related events is simply due to the fact that there are more people now to get in the way of the same amount of flying debris that there used to be. This sort of mentality needs to be thoroughly aired which is why I just did so!
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
I love it so!
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Stephen Hutchings
Are you the Hutchings of art history or the lawyer or would you rather not identify yourself? In any event, best regards and thanks for commenting.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
If you were to grant, for the sake of argument, that speciation progresses just as current theories suggest it ought to, would you expect to have clear evidence of evolution, given the types of experimental designs that have been tried so far? If you were to personally try to show speciation, how would you design the experiment? It seems to me that even under the best laboratory conditions, speciation of a sort strong enough to satisfy your criteria would take centuries to accomplish. Am I wrong about this? Can you outline an experimental design that would show speciation more quickly, if it exists?
My thought is that your demand for a clear, recorded example of speciation in modern times is unrealistic. It would be like wanting a clear demonstration that giant asteroids are capable of hitting the earth in modern times. Sure, you can point to ancient craters, and you can point to small meteorite that have hit the earth recently, but can you point to any examples of big meteorites hitting the earth in modern times? The obvious response would be: Your demand is unrealistic. We might have to wait millions of years for the next major meteorite. But we are still confident that the “meteorite hitting process” is still on-going. Why couldn’t a big rock hit the earth? Similarly with evolution, if two populations of a species became isolated, why couldn’t genetic drift eventually create a new species? I’m sure you will ask: Show me how any NEW information could get into the gene pool. And I would say random mutations. Obviously most mutations are bad, but there is no logical reason that occasional good mutations couldn’t happen. So why couldn’t they lead to new species?
Personally, I do expect some radically new principles of evolution to come into play because, frankly, I’m not convinced that the currently known mechanisms can fully explain the incredible variety of species in the world, but I would not go so far as to say that speciation COULDN’T happen by currently known means, and I suspect that some speciation is in fact going on right now, even though the process is probably too slow to observe without some really, really long term studies. I see no good reason for an “all or nothing” approach. Logically, there could be a variety of causes for speciation, and I would grant the likelihood that some of the most powerful factors have not yet been discovered.
So I guess my bottom line is that I would like to hear your arguments for why speciation COULDN’T happen to at least some significant extent.
Galen Moore
What you or I think is of no consequence as it is the facts that matter and nothing more. Evolution has never been slow. All creative evolution took place instantaneously by dramatic steps (saltations) presenting no evidence for gradual transformations. Today, there is no evidence for a progressive ascending evolution.. Quite the contrary, we see only extinction without any replacements. A new Genus has not appeared in the last two million years and, as I repeat in my signature, a present evolution is undemonstrable.
I believe that speciation COULD possibly occur now and have proposed a mechanism, the Semi-Meiotic Hypothesis, (SMH) by which that could take place. That is also a major mechanism by which I believe past evolution DID occur. I do not believe that obligatory sexual reproduction is competent to produce new true species or any of the higher categories. If that were possible it would have been demonstrated long ago in the laboratory. In short, sexual reproduction and Mendelian genetics have played no role in creative ascending evolution, a phenomenon no longer in progress. Anyone at all familiar with the evolution literature would realize that I am not alone in reaching these conclusions.
The history of the fossil record is the history of the loss of evolutionary creativity. The first categories to cease appearing were the animal Phyla and the plant Divisions. Next followed the Classes, then the Orders, Families, Genera and now even new species are no longer being produced. Phylogeny, exactly like ontogeny, has proven to be a self-limiting phenomenon. Both are irreversible with the death of the individual comparable with the extinction of the species.
Evolution was a series of creative explosions, each less dramatic than its predecessor, until today there is no tangible evidence that creative evolution is any longer in progress.
I do not expect the Darwinian establishment to agree with my assessment and I predicted that they would not appear here to defend their views and they haven’t. They won’t. Their leaders don’t even discuss Darwinism any more. Instead, they have abandoned any semblance of science to dedicate all their energies to the destruction of the only conceivable alternative which is an evolution which was planned, one in which chance could never have played any role whatsoever. That is why they must now do everything in their power to promote Universal Atheism. The “establishment” is fully aware that Natural Selection, the heart of the Darwinian paradigm, could not possibly have played a role in a structure prior to its appearance, a reality fatal to their paradigm. All that Natural Selection has ever been able to do is to maintain the staus quo, and to prevent change for as long as possible. That is all that it has ever done or ever will do. Artificial selection cannot transcend the species barrier and only creates intraspecifc varieties and subspecies all of which are dead ends, doomed to extinction. As far as can be verified evolution is finished.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
stephen hutchings
DaveScot/David Springer will not start writing in here for the same reason that P.Z. Myers, Christopher Hutchings, Richard Dawkins, Wesley Elsberry, William Dembski, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells or any other prominent figure now dominating the “origins debate,” each with his private entourage of like minded followers will. The reason is fear, the fear to come to grips with the realization that there never has been any role for either chance or a personal God in the history of the universe. Instead they each, like the proverbial ostrich, buries his head in the sand and pretends that he has no adversaries except another, just like himself, an insecure ideologue whose only goal is to surround himself with as many followers as possible.
Who has the most popular forum, the most rabid following, is the goal. There is no question who leads in that contest. It is P.Z. Myers whose recent message concerning his experience being evicted from the “Expelled” preview has produced, to this hour, one thousand, one hundred and seventy nine (1179) comments from his like minded fans.
It all has to do with determinism. Every great scientist has been a determinist, dedicated to one end only which is the CAUSE of the phenomenon under investigation. What have the Darwinians discovered about the cause of evolution?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!
What have the IDists discovered about the causes of evolution?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!
Guided primarily by the science of a half dozen of the greatest biologists of the post Darwinian I have been able to offer a partial answer to the cause of organic evolution. First and foremost it was planned. There is no longer any question in my mind that both ontogeny and phylogeny were planned from the beginning or more likely beginnings to end. The second answer I have provided is that evolution is, for all practical purposes, finished. Both ontogeny and phylogeny are goal directed, irreversible, planned phenomena, the former terminating with death, the latter with extinction.
Neither of these two conclusions are acceptable to the powers that still dominate the current debate. That does not mean they are incorrect. It is the fear that I might be right that keeps them away. That suits me fine.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
I finally figured out my login name and password, so here I am!
This is just a “shameless plug” for my new book, “The Ten Facts of Evolution”, the color version of which can be ordered at http://www.lulu.com/content/1909895 (color PDF is free), and the black-and-white version of which can be ordered at http://www.lulu.com/content/1911155.
“The Ten Facts of Evolution” re-purposes the second half of my earlier book “Far From Equilibrium”, and advocates Robert F. DeHaan’s evolutionary theory of Macrodevelopment (which is in the same “family” as John Davison’s Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis). It also includes “evolutionary essays” that bring everything up-to-date. Enjoy!
Phil
Thank you very much for gracing my weblog with your presence. Phil Engle is one of my very few early supporters so I am looking forward to his new book. I hope everyone will read it as an antidote to Darwinian atheist mysticism.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
John, when you say there has not been any *recent* examples of Speciation, especially among large mammals, have you factored in the fact that when a population splits, it can take a long time (millions of years) before they become reproductively incompatible? Take for instance the Red Wolf, Canis rufus. It branched from the Gray Wolf population 1-2 Million years ago. It’s Conservation Status isCritically Endangered, and the biggest current threat is miscegenation with coyotes. One can argue that Speciation still has not occurred in Wolves and Coyotes. As for observed Speciation, the Wikipedia article on speciation specifies four types of speciation: Allopatric, Peripatric, Parapatric and Sympatric. For Allopatric Speciation, it cites the Galápagos Finches. For Peripatric, it cites Mayr bird fauna, the Australian bird Petroica multicolor and reproductive isolation occurs in populations of Drosophila subject to population bottlenecking. For Parapatric Speciation, it cites Ring Species such as the Larus gulls around the North Pole, the Ensatina salamanders round the Central Valley in California, and the Greenish Warbler (Phylloscopus trochiloides), around the Himalayas. There is a full list on the Speciation FAQ. There is also a somewhat famous experiment on artificial Speciation of Drosophila pseudoobscura after only eight generations by just using different food. Also, according to this video and this video, we share with chimps endogenal retroviral fragments at identical insertion points in our genome, and our chromosome 2 is a fusion of two great ape chromosomes, which seems to indicate common ancestry.
Recently, you said: “Furthermore, there is not a scintilla of tangible evidence that natural selection, the cornerstone of the Darwinian model, ever had anything to do with organic evolution except to stabilize species for as long as possble. It has always been entirely anti-evolutionary as it still is today. How could natural selection conceivably have been involved in a structure which had not yet appeared? That is the question that St George Jackson Mivart asked 12 years after the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species and it has yet to be answered for obvious reasons. That unanswerable question alone is lethal to the Darwinian hypothesis.”
I assume you are talking about Chapter II of the Genesis of Species. More generally, I assume you are talking about irreducible complexity, where life spontaneously forms system, like the eye or wing, in which all parts have to be useful at once. The answer is that complex systems do not have to be formed all at once. In the God Delusion, Richard Dawkins has this to say about the eye,
it is easy to imagine situations in which half an eye would save the life of an animal where 49 per cent of an eye would not. Smooth gradients are provided by variations in lighting conditions, variations in the distance
at which you catch sight of your prey – or your predators. And, as with wings and flight surfaces, plausible intermediates are not only easy to imagine: they are abundant all around the animal kingdom. A flatworm has an eye that, by any sensible measure, is less than half a human eye. Nautilus (and perhaps its extinct ammonite cousins who dominated Paleozoic and Mesozoic seas) has an eye that is intermediate in quality between flatworm and human. Unlike the flatworm eye, which can detect light and shade but see no image, the Nautilus ‘pinhole camera’ eye makes a real image; but it is a blurred and dim image compared to ours. It would be spurious precision to put numbers on the improvement, but nobody could sanely deny that these invertebrate eyes, and many others, are all better than no eye at all, and all lie on a continuous and shallow slope
up Mount Improbable, with our eyes near a peak – not the highest peak but a high one.
Now I have some critiques of your Dead God Theory. Now, I assume by GOD you mean a being who created the Universe in a Big Bang and set up the system so that matter would clump into various clumps, which would form galaxies, and then large stars would form, and create higher elements such as oxygen. These clumps would then form into smaller stars and planets, and intelligent life was created on Earth. In one of your posts about this theory, you said that the Creator probably died in the act of creation. However, for life to be designed, he probably would need to have been around to direct the process of abiogenesis. Now, I assume he could have died sometime after creating life on Earth, but why would doing a simple thing like creating life overtax his resources when creating the Universe did not? So, when do you think God died? Within the last 10,000 years? It is possible that knowing all the information about the system at a given time, he could have created the Universe just so it would lead to the present day. However, this theory does not take into account quantum mechanics, where the position and momentum of an object cannot be determined exactly simultaneously. This was what Einstein meant when he said, “God does not play dice.”So, even if there was a god, he must have been a gambler not a designer. Of course an omniscient omnipotent god may be able to determine the exact position and momentum of an object, so this may be moot, but there is no empirical evidence (that I am aware of) to support the possibility of exact determination, so it is definitely not science.
Let’s discuss Einstein for a minute more. You have used two of his quotations, ““Everything is determined…by forces over which we have no control”, and “Our actions should be based on the ever-present awareness that human beings in their thinking, feeling, and acting ARE NOT FREE BUT ARE JUST AS CAUSALLY BOUND AS THE STARS IN THEIR MOTION.” When he said these things, he was criticizing quantum mechanics, one principle is the afforementioned Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, where the momentum and position of an object cannot be exactly determined simultaneously. Einstein believed in a deterministic universe, where, if one has knowledge of the position and momentum of all the particles in the Universe at a specific time, one can determine the entire state of the Universe at any point in the past, present or future. He was NOT admitting belief in a Creator God. Here are some attributable quotations of Einstein on Religion, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings”, and “it was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
Given what we know, the most likely theory of intelligent abiogenesis and directed evolution is the theory of Directed Panspermia, which postulates that intelligent extraterrestrials seeded life on Earth and put in place measures to guide its adaptation (think 2001, but through the entire period of life on Earth). This is possible, but it only pushes the question farther back, since the extraterrestrials would have had to originate, and there are only 13.73 billion years to play with (given our current knowledge). The theory of Irreducible Complexity seems more of a blow to Creationism, since Creationism postulates that a being more complex than we can imagine somehow spontaneously formed and then created the Universe. This is Dawkin’s “Ultimate 747″ argument. Of course, there is the Last Question hypothesis as well, but that would require an oscillating universe, and current knowledge cannot answer that question.
For clarification this Phil is Philip Woods not Phillip Engle.
The notion of Directed Panspermia goes back to Svante Arrhenius, the Swedish chemist who proposed it around the beginning of the twentieth century. It has no foundation in fact and simply passes the buck to some other civilization. Furthermore there is no reason to assume that life exists now or ever existed anywhere else other than here on earth.
I do not agree that Behe’s Theory of Irreducible Complexity is in any way incompatible with Creationism. It certainly can not be reconciled with the Darwinian model driven by chance. If not chance then what?
My position has always been the same. One or more Intelligences far beyond our comprehension must have been involved in the beginning. That is all that has to be assumed. For all we know there may have been many subsequent interventions as well. The many gaps that characterize the fossil record have yet to be explained and until they are we must keep an open mind or at least I must.
I have the greatest respect for Leo Berg who presented his views without qualification. Among those were the following. Referring to ontogeny and phylogeny -
“Neither in the one nor in the other is there room for chance.”
Nomogenesis, page 134.
and
“Organisms have developed from tens of thousands of primary forms, i.e, polyphyletically.”
page 406
His polyphyleticism is in complete accord with everything we know for certain from the fossil record and morphology. Another possibility is that there may have been a single creation with several subsequent redirections. Either way a role for the supernatural cannot be be summarily dismissed by any rational observer of the natural world. Why some insist on a monophyletic evolution utterly escapes me when so much evidence pleads for the contrary. Life is a miracle and tens of thousands of miracles are neither more nor less miraculous than one.
As you have probably gathered, I regard Dawkins as a charlatan who has contributed nothing of substance to our knowledge of the animate world. Like his ftriend P.Z. Myers, he is a congenital atheist who has abandoned science to dedicate all his energies to the ridiculous prospect of converting the entire world to Universal Atheism. Neither Myers nor Dawkins have contributed a scintilla of tangible, experimentally derived information that bears on the question of the great mystery of organic evolution. Neither of them even discuss that question any more as they expend all their energies denigrating those of us who are convinced that there was a purpose in the origin and subsequent history of life. They cannot help themselves as they are congenitally incompetent to see what many of us see so very clearly.
“Men believe most what they least understand.”
Montaigne
Thanks for commenting.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Phil
I have no idea. If you are an approved user as you obviously are, your comment should appear with no delay. Try it again. I sure haven’t blocked you or any other registered user. I don’t hold any comment for approval either. This is a wide open forum with the only requirement being registration.
It did it again. Maybe the comment is too long. So, I will break it up into two posts.
John, when you say there has not been any *recent* examples of Speciation, especially among large mammals, have you factored in the fact that when a population splits, it can take a long time (millions of years) before they become reproductively incompatible? Take for instance the Red Wolf, Canis rufus. It branched from the Gray Wolf population 1-2 Million years ago. It’s Conservation Status is Critically Endangered, and the biggest current threat is miscegenation with coyotes. One can argue that Speciation still has not occurred in Wolves and Coyotes. As for observed Speciation, the Wikipedia article on speciation specifies four types of speciation: Allopatric, Peripatric, Parapatric and Sympatric. For Allopatric Speciation, it cites the Galápagos Finches. For Peripatric, it cites Mayr bird fauna, the Australian bird Petroica multicolor and reproductive isolation occurs in populations of Drosophila subject to population bottlenecking. For Parapatric Speciation, it cites Ring Species such as the Larus gulls around the North Pole, the Ensatina salamanders round the Central Valley in California, and the Greenish Warbler (Phylloscopus trochiloides), around the Himalayas. There is a full list on the Speciation FAQ. There is also a somewhat famous experiment on artificial Speciation of Drosophila pseudoobscura after only eight generations by just using different food. Also, according to this video and this video, we share with chimps endogenal retroviral fragments at identical insertion points in our genome, and our chromosome 2 is a fusion of two great ape chromosomes, which seems to indicate common ancestry.
Recently, you said: “Furthermore, there is not a scintilla of tangible evidence that natural selection, the cornerstone of the Darwinian model, ever had anything to do with organic evolution except to stabilize species for as long as possible. It has always been entirely anti-evolutionary as it still is today. How could natural selection conceivably have been involved in a structure which had not yet appeared? That is the question that St George Jackson Mivart asked 12 years after the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species and it has yet to be answered for obvious reasons. That unanswerable question alone is lethal to the Darwinian hypothesis.”
I assume you are talking about Chapter II of the Genesis of Species. More generally, I assume you are talking about irreducible complexity, where life spontaneously forms a system, like the eye or wing, in which all parts have to be useful at once. The answer is that complex systems do not have to be formed all at once. In the God Delusion, Richard Dawkins has this to say about the eye:
it is easy to imagine situations in which half an eye would save the life of an animal where 49 per cent of an eye would not. Smooth gradients are provided by variations in lighting conditions, variations in the distance at which you catch sight of your prey – or your predators. And, as with wings and flight surfaces, plausible intermediates are not only easy to imagine: they are abundant all around the animal kingdom. A flatworm has an eye that, by any sensible measure, is less than half a human eye. Nautilus (and perhaps its extinct ammonite cousins who dominated Paleozoic and Mesozoic seas) has an eye that is intermediate in quality between flatworm and human. Unlike the flatworm eye, which can detect light and shade but see no image, the Nautilus ‘pinhole camera’ eye makes a real image; but it is a blurred and dim image compared to ours. It would be spurious precision to put numbers on the improvement, but nobody could sanely deny that these invertebrate eyes, and many others, are all better than no eye at all, and all lie on a continuous and shallow slope up Mount Improbable, with our eyes near a peak – not the highest peak but a high one.
Recently, you said: “Furthermore, there is not a scintilla of tangible evidence that natural selection, the cornerstone of the Darwinian model, ever had anything to do with organic evolution except to stabilize species for as long as possible. It has always been entirely anti-evolutionary as it still is today. How could natural selection conceivably have been involved in a structure which had not yet appeared? That is the question that St George Jackson Mivart asked 12 years after the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species and it has yet to be answered for obvious reasons. That unanswerable question alone is lethal to the Darwinian hypothesis.”
I assume you are talking about Chapter II of the Genesis of Species. More generally, I assume you are talking about irreducible complexity, where life spontaneously forms a system, like the eye or wing, in which all parts have to be useful at once. The answer is that complex systems do not have to be formed all at once. In the God Delusion, Richard Dawkins has this to say about the eye:
it is easy to imagine situations in which half an eye would save the life of an animal where 49 per cent of an eye would not. Smooth gradients are provided by variations in lighting conditions, variations in the distance at which you catch sight of your prey – or your predators. And, as with wings and flight surfaces, plausible intermediates are not only easy to imagine: they are abundant all around the animal kingdom. A flatworm has an eye that, by any sensible measure, is less than half a human eye. Nautilus (and perhaps its extinct ammonite cousins who dominated Paleozoic and Mesozoic seas) has an eye that is intermediate in quality between flatworm and human. Unlike the flatworm eye, which can detect light and shade but see no image, the Nautilus ‘pinhole camera’ eye makes a real image; but it is a blurred and dim image compared to ours. It would be spurious precision to put numbers on the improvement, but nobody could sanely deny that these invertebrate eyes, and many others, are all better than no eye at all, and all lie on a continuous and shallow slope up Mount Improbable, with our eyes near a peak – not the highest peak but a high one.
Now I have some critiques of your Dead God Theory. Now, I assume by GOD you mean a being who created the Universe in a Big Bang and set up the system so that matter would clump into various clumps, which would form galaxies, and then large stars would form, and create higher elements such as oxygen. These clumps would then form into smaller stars and planets, and intelligent life was created on Earth. In one of your posts about this theory, you said that the Creator probably died in the act of creation. However, for life to be designed, he probably would need to have been around to direct the process of abiogenesis. Now, I assume he could have died sometime after creating life on Earth, but why would doing a simple thing like creating life overtax his resources when creating the Universe did not? So, when do you think God died? Within the last 10,000 years? It is possible that knowing all the information about the system at a given time, he could have created the Universe just so it would lead to the present day. However, this theory does not take into account quantum mechanics, where the position and momentum of an object cannot be determined exactly simultaneously. This was what Einstein meant when he said, “God does not play dice.” So, even if there was a god, he must have been a gambler not a designer. Of course an omniscient omnipotent god may be able to determine the exact position and momentum of an object, so this may be moot, but there is no empirical evidence (that I am aware of) to support the possibility of exact determination, so it is definitely not science.
Let’s discuss Einstein for a minute more. You have used two of his quotations, ““Everything is determined…by forces over which we have no control”, and “Our actions should be based on the ever-present awareness that human beings in their thinking, feeling, and acting ARE NOT FREE BUT ARE JUST AS CAUSALLY BOUND AS THE STARS IN THEIR MOTION.” When he said these things, he was criticizing quantum mechanics, one principle is the aforementioned Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, where the momentum and position of an object cannot be exactly determined simultaneously. Einstein believed in a deterministic universe, where, if one has knowledge of the position and momentum of all the particles in the Universe at a specific time, one can determine the entire state of the Universe at any point in the past, present or future. He was NOT admitting belief in a Creator God. Here are some attributable quotations of Einstein on Religion, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings”, and “it was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
John, when you say there has not been any *recent* examples of Speciation, especially among large mammals, have you factored in the fact that when a population splits, it can take a long time (millions of years) before they become reproductively incompatible? Take for instance the Red Wolf, Canis rufus. It branched from the Gray Wolf population 1-2 Million years ago. It’s Conservation Status is Critically Endangered, and the biggest current threat is miscegenation with coyotes. One can argue that Speciation still has not occurred in Wolves and Coyotes. As for observed Speciation, the Wikipedia article on speciation specifies four types of speciation: Allopatric, Peripatric, Parapatric and Sympatric. For Allopatric Speciation, it cites the Galápagos Finches. For Peripatric, it cites Mayr bird fauna, the Australian bird Petroica multicolor and reproductive isolation occurs in populations of Drosophila subject to population bottlenecking. For Parapatric Speciation, it cites Ring Species such as the Larus gulls around the North Pole, the Ensatina salamanders round the Central Valley in California, and the Greenish Warbler (Phylloscopus trochiloides), around the Himalayas. There is a full list on the Speciation FAQ. There is also a somewhat famous experiment on artificial Speciation of Drosophila pseudoobscura after only eight generations by just using different food. Also, according to this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmUGJ3Jh7fc and this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De-OkzTUDVA , we share with chimps endogenal retroviral fragments at identical insertion points in our genome, and our chromosome 2 is a fusion of two great ape chromosomes, which seems to indicate common ancestry.
Phil
Thank you for your recital of all the Darwinian arguments none of which I buy. All speciation and the creation of all the other categories were instantaneous events. Subspecies are not incipient species but only dead ends that never go anywhere and typically become extinct. Ring species have gene flow around the circuit which means they are at best subspecies which are not incipeint species.
I have never rejected common ancestry. I am a convinced evolutionist as were all my sources. I have only questioned that which is not yet established which is what every real scientist does. Dawkins never questions anything. He simply asserts. The simple facts are that we have no idea how many times life was created, where it was created or how many times, once created, life may have been redirected.
I realize what your position is and have rejected it as the CAUSE of organic evolution. I do not believe that natural or artificial selection have now or ever had anything to do with the formation of a new life form. It is only the CAUSE that has ever been in question and the Darwinian mechanism has no substance as an explanatory device.
All creative evolution was driven from within on a predetermined schedule. That is my position and I have presented the evidence for it in my papers and on this weblog. I do not expect others to agree with me and my sources, some of the finest minds of the post Darwinian era. I hope you will understand. but I will not be surprised if you do not.
I also do not regard Wikipedia as a valid source for anything dealing with the mechanism of organic evolution, a process I believe is no longer in progress.
Please do not try to tell me what Einstein meant. His words speak for themselves and were not referring only to quantum mechanics. He was a lifelong determinist and so am I.
Thank you for commenting.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
How could speciation be an instantaneous event in sexually-reproducing organisms? The organisms would need another member of their new species to mate with, and the likelihood of the same species arising at the same time seems low. It could mate with its brothers and sisters, but the deleterious effects of such close inbreeding would lower the species chance of survival.
Einstein’s determinism does not preclude Natural Selection. If you had all the knowledge of the state of all matter, you could determine how the genes will be mutated, which egg will be fertilized by which sperm, etc. Of course, the Double-slit Experiment has given us good evidence to support the idea that we do NOT live in a deterministic universe; instead, we seem to live in a universe determined by probability shaped by the fundamental forces and constants. So, Occam’s Razor would suggest a theory of speciation shaped by probabilistic change over time to be more, well, probable. This holds true especially if the Universe was ‘designed’ by a Deity, since it is consistent with the rest of his ‘design.’
Phil
You have out your finger on exactly what is wrong with sexual reproduction as an evolutionary device. There is not a shred of evidence that sexual reproduction is competent to produce new species. Dobzhansky failed to transform Drosophila into even a new member of the same genus. You seem not to realize that I have offered an alternative hypothesis for organic evolution which I have recently formalized under the published title “A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis.”
You do not seem to even be aware that I have rejected the entire Darwwinian model and offered an alternative interpretation of the great mystery of organic evolution.
I am not going to respond directly to this message until I am satisfied that you have read and digested my earlier published papers and my unpublished “An Evolutionary Manifesto.” In those papers I have presented my arguments and there is no reason I should have to repeat them again now. You will find all my papers at ISCID’s “Brainstorms” forum where I am currently active on the Evolutionary Manifesto thread. The Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis is there also as well as right here under that thread title. I recommend you read each of these papers before you interrogate me any further. It is apparent to me that you are unaware of my several papers or you would not be offering your present views.
Once you have framed your questions in such a way that indicates that you have familiarity with my convictions and the reasons I hold them, I will be happy to respond.
I am not trying to avoid responding to you because I have already considered those arguments and found them to be without merit. I do not believe you are familiar with my papers or you would not be asking the questions you have asked.
Thanks for commenting.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
John, I just wanted to introduce myself to this forum. I have not yet read all about the prescribe evolutionary hypothesis, but I intend to. I am very intrigued by the discussion so far.
I’ve just tried to reopen professor Davison thread at richarddawkins.net:
Edit postReport this postReply with quote Re: God or Gods are now dead but must have once existed.
by VMartin on Fri Jul 25, 2008 6:00 pm
A question to admin:
Professor Davison has been banned here. May I reopen the thread? His work about of nonhomology of germ cells has been quoted in the monography “Evolutionary Biology” (Academia of Czech Republic, 2005, page 240) written by professor Jaroslav Flegr Charles University Prague. Is it still possible to discuss issues outlined in professor’s Davison “Evolutionary Manifesto” ?
http://www.natur.cuni.cz/~flegr/
the link to the previous comment:
http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=341&start=275
Martin
I doubt if they will allow that thread to be reopened since I have been banned there. The questions you might ask are – Why was the thread ever closed? Why was Davison banned? Richarddawkins.net is no different than Pharyngula, Uncommon Descent, Panda’s Thumb, After The Bar Closes, EvC or ARN. They are all protectionist “groupthinktanks” where congenitally like-minded gossips naturally gather to stifle and then ridicule those with whom they disagree. Don’t waste your time with them. They are not worthy of your attention.
“Birds of a feather flock together.”
Cervantes
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/evolutionary_gems.php#comments
Be sure to check out this thread and especially the Nature article on “15 evolutionary gems.” Not one of the “speciation gems” listed is an evolutionary event because they are all reversible, something evolution has never been. I informed P.Z. of this via his one way communication system but I don’t expect a response. I signed off my message to P.Z. with -
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
The article starts off with the following -
“Most biologists take for granted the idea that all life evolved by natural selection over billions of years.”
Let this biologist say that NO life evolved by natural selection over billions of years. Natural selection, now as always in the past, is anti-evolutionary, serving to prevent evolution for as long as possible.
How do you like them apples P.Z. baby? I hope they give you the runs!
Evolution IS finished you know!
I love it so!
P.S. I sent this one on to P.Z. also. That is quite unnecessary because I’ll bet that Dawkins, Myers, Elsberry and Springer all visit this blog on a daily basis. They probably check on “brainstorms” too.
“Davison is the Darwinians’ worst nightmare.”
Terry Trainor
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/02/smoke-and-mirrors-whales-and-lampreys-a-guest-post-by-ken-miller/#comment-13596
just posted.
Quick, check this out because Carl Zimmer may delete it in a ft of pique.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/02/smoke-and-mirrors-whales-and-lampreys-a-guest-post-by-ken-miller/#comment-13610
As you can see, “anonymous benefactor” and I are having some fun with Carl Zimmer.
Enjoy!
The ball is now in Carl Zimmer’s court. Let’s see what he does with it.
The discussion on Zimmer’s blog shifted. I have had my post at the page 3. It is visible, but waiting for moderation and I am afraid it will soon be deleted.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/04/ken-millers-final-guest-post-looking-forward/#comment-13619
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/04/ken-millers-final-guest-post-looking-forward/#comment-13620
I just joined you there Martin.
I love it so!
Alan Fox just showed up. He follows Martin and I around like the TRASH he his, nothing but a one man “goon squad” for Myers, Dawkins and Elsberry.
John, anonymous benefactor and me have – using John’s words – good licks there. I wonder how long it will take. We haven’t abused anybody yet. But my prediction is this – some neodarwinian zealots start soon their abusive and denigrating campaign there. We will defend ourselves. Zimmer having pretext will ban us.
Martin
Remain civil and he won’t dare ban you. He will probably just ignore what is happening to the Darwinian myth. I offered him the opportunity to discusss the issues. That is all one can do. If he declines he will look weak.
I managed to comment at another of the Ken Miller threads as you can see below -
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/03/ken-millers-guest-post-part-two/#comment-13648
There is still no response from the opposition on any of the three threads where we have commented. You might expect something from Ken Miller at least.
There is nothing new in all this. The atheist inspired “establishment” has always ignored their critics. We simply are not allowed to exist.
I love it so!
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/02/smoke-and-mirrors-whales-and-lampreys-a-guest-post-by-ken-miller/#comment-13659
It is important to keep posting or Zimmer will close the threads. He probably will anyway. The silence from the opposition is both revealing and encouraging, especially as both the 150th anniversary of the Origin and the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth take place this year.
“If you tell the truth, you can be certain, sooner or later, to be found out.”
Oscar Wilde
I have been reading “Einstein: A Hunded Years of Relativity” by Andrew Robinson. One of the essays is “Einstein’s Search for Unification” by Steven Weinberg, a Nobel Laureate in Physics.
Here is the way Weinberg starts off his essay, page 102 -
“Albert Einstein was one of the greatest scientists of all time, a peer of Galileo, Newton and Darwin……..”
Can you imagine comparing Darwin with such giants as Newton and Galileo? There is not a word in Darwin’s opus magnus that ever had anything to do with the title of his book, not a word.
Weinberg serves to typify what we skeptics of the Darwinian hoax are up against. Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society and highly respected astronomer, is another one who reveres Charles Darwin. How this can be is beyond my comprehension unless it is true that we are, as William Wright has demonstrated in his book, “Born That Way.”
There is no question that, like P.Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins, Weinberg is rabidly anti-religious, so I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
“Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.”
Montaigne
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/08/of-protocells-and-warm-little-ponds/#comment-13662
Check this out before Zimmer deletes it.
I love it so!
John, I’ve sent my post there.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/08/of-protocells-and-warm-little-ponds/#comment-13664
We have had an experience with marxism in Central Europe. That’s why many people are suspicious of any “naturalistic” reductionism. Darwinism is of the same sort I dare say. Neodarwinian “evolutionary psychology” or “evolutionary sociology” are nonsense par excellence.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/04/ken-millers-final-guest-post-looking-forward/#comments
Look at who showed up at the Loom. More TRASH from After The Bar Closes.
My prediction was correct. I predicted that Alan Fox would invite his drunken cronies from AtBC who would start their abusive campaign. After a heated discussion we will be banned. I am surprised (or better – not surprised) that Carl Zimmer puts up with those idiotic abusive posts by Alan Fox and Erasmus.
Neverthenless it is an anonymous discussion without any real value. But I pay my respect to John who has dared to go to their anonymous neodarwinian dens using his real name. The poor guys do not realize that there is somebody who could help them open their eyes.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/10/blogs-resurgent/#comment-13716
I have just responded to the abuse provided by Alan Fox.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/10/swimming-in-a-sea-of-questions/#comment-13744
Here is my latest contribution to the Loom.
also here -
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/02/smoke-and-mirrors-whales-and-lampreys-a-guest-post-by-ken-miller/#comments
Excellent. Nothing makes greater sense than repattering karyotype (or genes). It is the position of genes, not their “function”. The same is valid for sentences in real languages. It depends on the position of word in a sentence or a chapter not on its meaning. Reshuffle words in any drama and you will obtain unreadable mess. But change some chapters or sentences and you will obtain parody (or monkeys).
I will follow responses. But I am afraid there will be only denigration as usually.
G.B.Shaw once said something like this: If people are ridiculing something there must be truth in it.
While I have been banished from the Loom, apparently I left a favorable impression there judging from the last comment by SkasParadigm -
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/10/swimming-in-a-sea-of-questions/#comments
Thank you SkasParadigm, whoever you are !
I love it so!
P.S. Zimmer has also closed those threads where Martin, “anonymous benefactor” and I commented. He hasn’t deleted them – YET! I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he did. He is obviosly desperate and desperate men do desperate things. He will probably just let them disappear off the bottom of the page into oblivion. I will check back to see and hold him accountable for whatever he does or doesn’t do.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2009/01/10/comment-policy/#comments
Note how Alan Fox is now sucking up to Zimmer. Zimmer wouldn’t dream of banishing Alan Fox. He needs creeps like Fox to keep his Darwinian mysticism alive.
I love it so!
Bingo! Carl Zimmer must have switched on some filters. My latest post has been intercepted. As I understand it correctly we are banned again.
Martin
Of course we are. Isn’t it wonderful? What is especially revealing is the lasting presence of Alan Fox as demonstrated in the link in my message #98. Any blog that will tolerate Alan Fox is TRASH.
TRASH – American Heritage Dictionary #4 – “A person or group of people regarded as worthless or contemptible.”
I love it so!
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/do-darwinists-acknowledge-flaws-in-origin-of-species/#comments
I see that DaveScot / David Springer is now defending Darwinism and Lamarckism too. Note especially #15 in which he regards it as perfectly possible for a bear to evolve into a whale.
Evolution is finished Dave. Get used to it. Pierre Grasse did, Julian Huxley did, Robert Broom did, Otto Schindewolf did, even I did.
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
If you insist on making a fool of yourself, please come here to do it.
Everyone is welcome here. I ban people AFTER they have proved to be incapable of civil discourse, never BEFORE. Got that? Write that down!
I love it so!
Maybe you should read the next article where I say what Darwin got wrong – gradualism. Where I said the indisputable testimony of the fossil record is one of saltation and where phylogeny was a planned process.
I forgot to add that evolution is finished. I should have as I’ve come around to your way of thinking on that too with the caveat that rational man is taking over where evolution left off only orders of magnitude faster.
The only thing we disagree about as far as I can tell are the details (mechanism/designer) and you don’t have much confidence that humans can steer evolution for their own ends. I don’t think the history of man is coming to an end like you do. I think it’s just beginning.
Thanks for showing up Dave. I took what you said literally. I aways do. If evolution is finished and I am convinced it is, then I can’t see how it can continue. No one is going to be making any whales out of bears. Words have meaning and you should be more careful about using them.
Evolution has been from the very beginning a LOSS of potential until today there is nothing more to lose. It is finished, over and done with exactly as ontogeny has always been. The extinction of each species is the counterpart to the death of each individual. Extinction is all that remains. Both ontogeny and phylogeny are irreversible as well.
Evolution was NEVER slow. It was always a series of instantaneous transformations (saltations) exactly as ontogeny always has been. The periods of instantaneous change were often widely separated in time but they were never gradual. My position is that such transformations are no longer occurring. I doubt very much if man can improve things. Quite the contrary, he is making everything much worse!
I think it would be grand if the present was the beginning of a whole new era but reality speaks otherwise. Our best days are far behind us and it is now all down hill. It shows in every aspect of our society, our literature, our music, our spiritual life and, most recently, in our politics. We have just elected the most dangerous person ever to reach the Presidency, the only truly dangerous President in the history of the Republic. That is of course just my opinion. I hate being right and hope I am wrong. If I am wrong then so is Robert Bork, author of “Slouching Towards Gomorrah.”
What I want to know is are you ready to join with Martin, “anonymous benefactor,” a few others and myself by going after scientific, ethical and moral TRASH like Paul Zachary Myers and Richard Dawkins? These altheist perverts are very dangerous and deserve all the attention that can be mustered. They have never contributed anything of value to society and they never will. They are “prescribed” losers, born to lose!
No matter what we might like to do, we are in a race against time because we are destroying our environment at an accelerating pace. I realize you don’t agree with me about that either and that is just fine. I welcome differences here, by far the most tolerant forum on the present scene. That is why my adversaries stay away.
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?s=4976fcdcb9cb310e;act=ST;f=14;t=5333;st=30
The animals at After the Bar Closes finally screwed up their courage enough to mention my name. I’ll bet Wesley Elsberry doesn’t care for that one little bit. I predict these recent comments won’t continue much longer. Der Fuhrer will intervene if he has to.
Kristine, whoever that is, is especially charming. The important point is that neither Martin nor I can respond to their cowardly tactics. They are all welcome to come here to vent their intolerance, their ignorance and their insecurity. But will they? I say they won’t.
I love it so!
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/rick_warren_and_his_fervent_no.php#comments
Check out #116 and #120 by someone posting as Is. #181 is fine too. So is #184 but you better hurry. P.Z. “randomly ejaculating” Myers will soon delete it. Imagine having to try to delete every comment from a non believer. It seems that is getting more and more difficult for the great “random ejaculator.” What a mess!
I love it so!
Not quite every aspect of our society is in decline. Technology is in ascent. That includes biotechnology.
Dave
I agree and have said as much. The Age of Technology is the last great age. I doubt if it will last as long as some of its predecessors. It is already approaching its limits and we are ensuring its premature end with our callous disregard for its devastating effect on our environment.
I hate being right.
Why don ‘t you start behaving like a real man and use your real name. – David Springer? You know how I feel about aliases.
What I want are warriors willing to go after the Darwimpians by invading their weblogs and taunting them with the truth. There are only a handful of us that are actually doing that. We are engaged in a war with the forces of evil and we are outnumbered. I don’t want to hear any more whining about what the enemy is doing. That accomplishes absolutely nothing except to irritate me. From now on I want only to see evidence that we are scoring heavy damages against these “prescribed” losers. Martin and I are doing our best and I expect the same from those who agree with us. If you can’t join us don’t bother commenting here. If you have scored against the enemy let us know here or by email. I will see you get all the publicity your efforts deserve, especially if you use your real name.
“The only good defense is to be as offensive as possible.”
John A. Davison
“I don’t want any cowards in my army.”
General George S. Patton
Neither do I George.
I have just purged this thread of material which I feel is not pertinent to its purposes. That includes my often lengthy responses. Lets keep the pressure on the enemy by going after him on his own turf. I am tired of being a Caspar Milquetoast. This is war and I intend to win it!
Evolution is finished and Darwinism never had anything to do with it! Got that? Write that down.
“If you are not fer me you are agin me.”
I forget who said it, but truer words were never spoken.
I love it so!
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/texas-mandates-teaching-the-trade-secret-of-paleontology/#comments
This is just too much.
DaveScot / David Springer starts off claiming that Stephen Jay Gould was the most famous paleontologist of the 20th century. Gould doesn’t qualify as a paleontologist of any sort as he never dirtied his dainty little fingers anywhere. He was glued to his endowed chair all his adult life just like his colleague Ernst Mayr was right down the hall at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. Gould was nothing but a popular science writer. He contributed nothing to our knowledge of the fossil record and nothing to our understanding of the mechanism of organic evolution. Neither did Mayr. Those two did more to inhibit progress in evolutionary science than anyone else since 1859. They were instrumental in keeping the Darwinian fantasy alive. Their influence is still potent. It is a disgrace to even mention their names.
You want some real paleontlogists of the 20th century David? Try Otto Schindewolf, Robert Broom and Henry Fairfield Osborn for starters, not a Darwinian in the lot. Gould and Mayr both were arrogant atheist snots who spent most of their time denigrating anyone who didn’t buy their warped, atheist inspired, Darwinian interpretation of the real world.
Gould, in the Preface to Schindewolf’s “Basic Questions in Paleontologist” referred to Schindewolf’s saltational evolution as “spectacularly flawed,” the most revealing demonstration of Gould’s blindness. His pathetic Punctuated Equilibrium, which he co-authored with Niles Eldredge, is nothing but the abuse of two words that had meaning until they got hold of them. Gould was arrogant, pompous and overbearing. So was Mayr. Neither contributed a scintilla to the only question which has ever been involved – the mechanism of a past organic evolution, a process no longer in progress.
They remind me a lot of David Springer who has many of the same endearing qualities – intolerance, verbose pomposity, and self importance.
Otto Schindewolf was without question the greatest paleontologist of the 20th century, every bit as important as Cuvier and Owen were in the 19th. They weren’t Darwinians either.
“It is abhorrent to me when a fine intelligence is paired with an unsavory character.”
Albert Einstein
“No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.”
Thomas Carlyle
You sure know how to piss me off Springer. Keep up the good work. Keep on kicking the dead Darwinian nag. That is about all that is going on at Uncommon Descent. I have better things to do myself.
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
I love it so!
http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=68663&p=1702722#p1702722
Friday, January 30, 2009, 10:12 AM
also
http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=40293&p=1702794#p1702794
Friday,January 30, 2009, 10:55 AM
Alan’s neodarwinian mission has been completed succesfully today.
I hope he will inform also his drunken friends at AtBC venue about his today’s neodarwinian mission on rd.net. Good opportunity for celebration.
That didn’t last long. I have just been denied any further comment at Dawkins’ “groupthinktank.” Now I can’t even view the threads to which I contributed. My links are also no longer operative.That is cowardice and insecurity raised to a whole new level.
To draw a comparison between richarddawkms.net and a scientific journal, imagine a journal that can be contributed to, and read by only those who subscribe to its contents. It cannot be found in any library and exists only for the gratification of a herd of cowardly intellectual TRASH who are incapable of any degree of rational discourse. At least I just had the enormous pleasure of demonstrating that is exactly what richarddawkins.net forum is! That places Dawkins’ sickofans in a class even beneath what one finds at Pharyngula, Uncommon Descent, Panda’s Thumb, ARN and After The Bar Closes where I still am allowed to observe the proceedings of the cowardly, mostly anonymous, unfulfilled dregs of a monumentally ignorant, infinitely insecure and useless conglomeration of intellectual bigotry.
“A doctrine which is unable to maintain itself in clear light, but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind with incalculable harm to human progress.”
Albert Einstein
So much for all the internet forums I just mentioned and all others who practice the same tactics.
Everyone is welcome here which is why they do not come. They are afraid to sally forth from their ideological ghettos where they are surrounded by like minded intellectual lightweights.
I love it so!
John, debunking creationism is invisible for non-participants. It is internal venue no one from outside sees – unless Google robots make them accessible via archive. So ideas there presented are almost completely buried like Antlantide.
Martin
I can’t observe what I recently posted at richarddawkins.net forum. The only way I can know what goes on there is if you transmit those contents to this forum or to me via email. Please do that so everyone will know what a miserable excuse for a forum it really is. Also let me know if my comments have been erased so I can tell the world about that as well.
As a matter of fact I can’t see any of the proceedings at Dawkins’ forum. Can others or is it just I who is so priviliged? Do you have to register to only observe?
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
Like HELL it is!
There is nothing interesting John. Alan Fox is again choking any discussion there with his void contributions.
John,
Is there anyway you and Martin can copy your battles and post them? It would be fun to see prior to them deleting them? Just a question. It’s funny if they really were secure in their position they wouldn’t try to censor you.
I won’t waste my time with such nonsense. The important thing is the way we are being treated by the enemy. That is the proof of their desperation. Others should do as Martin and I have always done. Go after them in their own smelly lairs. The only good defense is to be as offensive as possible.
“I won’t have any cowards in my army.”
General George S. Patton
“If you ain’t fer us yer agin us.”
anonymous
Got that? Write that down!
http://richarddawkins.net/article,3545,The-Genius-of-Charles-Darwin-wins-Best-Documentary-Series-at-the-British-Broadcast-Awards-2009,RichardDawkinsnet
This is the kind of nonsense that we are up against. Charles Darwin was about as much a scientist as Richard Dawkins is now. What kind of scientist is a man who never speaks on his own forum, who never acknowledges a critic, who has always lived in a fantasy world entirely of his own construction? I ask anyone to name a single tangible contribution this man has ever presented that relates to the only question that has ever been at stake: the mechanism of a past organic evolution which, as far as can be ascertained, is no longer in progress.
As for Darwnism and its most vocal and influential supporter -
“It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatsoever for believing it to be true.”
Bertrand Russell
“Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World.”
William Golding
“Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconciousness.”
George Orwell, 1984
I hope you are listening Richard.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
The Darwinian establishment posed a example of evolution in the form of nylon eating bacteria which they claim is living proof that the evolution mechanism can not be denied? They claim that the novel proteins are causing the flavobacterium to evolve? But that really doesn’t make sense to me? Do you have a opinion on this John or Vmartin?
The reason this is not evolution is because the capacity of the nylon degrading bacteria will be lost if they are presented with another source of energy. Any system which is reversible is not evolution because evolution has never been reversed. They also are obviously morphologically indistinguishable from the bacteria which were their immediate ancestors. The whole concept of species disappears with prokaryotes. These organisms are mere phasic, reversible variants and certainly not new species by any objective criterion.
Furthermore, I see no evidence that any organism now living is capable of further evolutionary change. In short -
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
You may quote me.
I will sir!
A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble. ~Charles H. Spurgeon
Dublin
It is useless to mention your experiences with the Darwimps unless you can present a link to what you refer.
John I am going to e-mail you about it I don’t know if I should post.
email is always a good idea if there is any question of academic survival.
***ATTENTION DARWINIOPHILES EVERYWHERE***
Today is the 200th annivesary of the birth of Charles Robert Darwin. I say disinter him from Westminster Abbey and cremate the remains, to be cast to the winds with as little ceremony as possible. He, more than any other mortal being, has inhibited progress in the study of the great mystery of organic evolution. His silly ‘Natural Selection’ is a disgrace to British science. I suggest replacing his slot in the Abbey with William Bateson, a real scientist, who pointed the way to an evolution in which Mendelism played no role whatsoever.
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
Not any longer it isn’t!
Hi John,
I was having a discussion and thought I may be out of my field. So I decided to consult you and Martin. Albert Einstein? Was he or was he not a believer of a creator? According to several Darwinian’s creationist take this out of context and he was indeed a atheist? The same have argued that your sources ie; Broom, Troll, etc would have changed their minds if they had observed the remarkable break throughs with DNA?
Dublin,
I can’t think of a single great scientist that was ever so stupid as to declare himself to be an atheist. Some few of the lesser great may have but Broom and Einstein were both very devout believers, each in his own way of course. I shouldn’t have to tell you that because that is the sort of thing one can find out for himself.
Neither Myers nor Dawkins are even scientists because scientists ask questions of the Creator(s) and how “it” or “they” did their work. They have both excluded any consideration of the supernatural to waste their lives defending the most failed hypothesis in the history of science by never mentioning it at all! Now they both are engaged in a silly game of attempting to convert the whole world to the congenital atheism which they are both so severely afflicted.
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
The blowhards never tire of citing Richard P. Feynman as an atheist, conveniently ignoring that he once compared scientific discovery to a religious experience. I know that feeling too and those who have shared it are not atheists.
The voluminous work by Adolf Portman and Jakob von Uexkull has been ignored as well. Oddly enough there appeared in Czech Republic last year two books regarding their work commented by biologists and philosophers (who have very relaxed opinions regarding “darwinism”).
http://www.pavelmervart.cz/pages/umwelt.php
http://www.pavelmervart.cz/pages/portmann.php
Darwinists are unable to explain coloration of animals – especially insects. The Uexkull concept of “Umwelt” – the word cannot be simply translated into English or Slavonic languages – it is of course not “the environment” – is another problem how animals perceive their own reality.
Nothing is more ridiculous explanation of the phenomena than “natural selection”.
The questions are evidently open. It’s fine that free venue like this one exist.
But of course there is no doubt that your Manifesto is an extraordinary work that everyone who seeks answers regarding the mystery of evolution should study. That evolution is finished is a great idea, an eyes-opener.
Thank you Martin.
Darwinians don’t feel the necessity to explain anything because they think they already have. They already have all the answers which is why they never ask questions. They are not scientists. It is as simple as that!
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
Not at all. It is a matter of record!
#
Hello,
What about the fossil called IDA?
1. All heritable morphology is the result of genetic factors.
2. Genetic factors change over time in both random and selected ways.
3. There is no limit to the amount of genetic change that can occur over billions of years.
Sam
I see that you do not choose to disclose your identity. That is in direct violation of my stated policy. Aside from IDA you have asked no question. Rather you have stated what is obviously a Darwinian position. I see no point in responding to your statements as I have rejected the Darwinian thesis on which your statements rest. I recommend that you read my papers where you will find an alternative explanation for phylogeny.
As far as we know IDA is just another organism which in all probability left no surviving descendants and accordingly is not a missing link although that cannot be ruled out.
“We might as well stop looking for the missing links as they never existed….The first bird hatched from a reptilian egg.”
paraphrased after Otto Schindewolf.
Like Otto Schindewolf and Richard B. Goldschmidt, I too am a saltationist because that is what the fossil record indicates.
I suspect that you will find this perspective unacceptable.
You don’t know how many times Professor I’ve been misunderstood. I have tried to explain myself and people essentially confuse my motives. A few times I’ve come across people who have essentially decided what my motives were before they would give me a chance to explain them. I am sorry about the post I was a bit upset of late, my name is Sam Barns.
After I earned my degree in biology I started studying historical works by scientist such as Otto Schindewolf, Leo Berg, St George Jackson Mivart, and Richard B. Goldschmidt after I read my perspective changed. I was told about you from an admirer of P.Z. Meyers, he claims you gave him a “ulcer”. I read your works and bio and thought we had much in common.
But what warranted my question to you was this fossil “IDA” I disagreed with an associate from my work that it was of anything of significance. You would of thought I had just kick him in the groin, I was marched into my superior’s office where I was told I could not have an opinion.
The questions I asked were “POSTED TO MY STATION” attached to a Darwin books origins of life. For a force in science that has no evidence it seems they attack anyone who questions there “Idol Worship”.
Thank you Professor Davison for your time and once again I apologize.
Sam Burns
Thanks for the explanation. As for giving Darwinian mystics an “ulcer,” I think that is a grand idea. A friend of mine had this to say about the Darwinians -
“Davison is the Darwinians’ worst nightmare.”
Terry Trainor
Nightmares, ulcers; how about nervous bteakdowns? Actually, I think Dawkins already had one long ago.
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
Not at all.
I love it so!
Let us pray.
Thanks for the comment.
John A. Davison – there is an interesting blog going
on at the Daily Mail newspaper website in the UK.
If the link does not work go to the home page and
scroll right down to the bottom to find Peter Hitchens.
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/
See Peter Hitchens 1 Aug ‘Harry Patch…’ comments at the
end. I put a bit in about sexual reproduction being
anti-evolutionary.
I would add that this blog is moderated but in general
is tolerant of different opinions.
I found the forum and prepared a lengthy comment. When I tried to post it I was informed immediately that “We cannot accept this idea.”
They obviously have some clown “policing” comments as they are being prepared.
The “idea” they found unacceptable was that evolution was finished and had been planned.
So much for that forum.
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
Not at all. I just documented it.
It doesn’t get any better than this.
I love it so!
John A. Davison – I am positive they do not vet the posts live because there is usually about a two hour delay before they appear.
I have often got the same message that you received. It is simply that you are timed out after ten minutes or so. Very annoying. Why they cannot at least change the message slightly to make that clear I do not know.
Yesterday morning I sent about 5 messages and only one appeared. Late in the evening I sent two of the same messages again and they appeared! A different moderator? Lost in the sytstem? I don’t know.
I used your quote about Einstein’s beliefs and that one got through – I hope you don’t mind.
I also mentioned your PEH but I omitted your name to make sure it got through. It should appear in a few hours, by the time it is morning in the USA in fact.
By the way, no point mentioning your website address in your post as links are cut out. Just put in something that people who are interested can Google.
Another hint: COPY all the typed work before pressing SUBMIT. Then if it fails, go to Word and PASTE.
Or, type into Word’ to begin with and go to the site. Select REFRESH on the site then PASTE.
Billy Hippo
Thanks for the advice but I make no concessions to being censored. If they don’t like what I have to say, that reflects on them, not on me. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Meanwhile, I am holding forth on newscientist.com and will continue there for so long as I am allowed.
http://www.newscientist.com/commenting/browse?id=mg20327202.700
Apparently my most recent message there evoked such vitriol that the management had to delete several messages from my adversaries. I say good for newscientist.com as that places their forum a cut above a number of other venues whose names I need not mention. They may be deleting me now too for all I know. The important point is they let my basic thesis stand. I hope it gives my enemies the runs!
It is perfectly clear that Carl Zimmer will not permit anything that challenges the Darwinian hoax. So much for Carl Zimmer and Discover Magazine. They are definitely in the atheist Darwinian tank. That suits me just fine. I hope they stay there. They are no better than the religious fanatics. A pox on both factions. The truth lies elsewhere and I believe that I know where that is.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
I am encouraged by the way newscientist.com forum has dealt with me and apparently with my adversaries as well. I finally see signs of hope for a real evolutionary science which can be free of the atheist ideology which has dominated it for now a century and half. I told them as much in my last comment.
They often remove my comment after it has been there for some time. That suits me fine too. That is infinitely better than never being allowed to speak at all. Any port in a storm!
Billy Hippo, whoever that is.
Send me the link to the discussion.. What are you using as an alias? I hesitate getting into dicussions with unknown adversaries or friends for that matter. I hope you understand. Why should I trust you when I don’t even know who you are?
My alias / name – Billy Hippo on the ‘Mail’ site
My previous comment about PEH 10 Aug 11:
The Prescribed Evolution Hypothesis. This states that ALL the original DNA required for ALL life forms was packed into the earliest organisms, eg the codes for wings, eyes brains. Over eons, segments have been released without any further divine intervention being required. Natural selection was able to operate on these larger segments of chromosomes as they became revealed by chance mutations, and so gradual evolution towards the more complex occurred. Requires asexual reproduction (in the past) to pass on new features. Eventually sexual reproduction takes over and inhibits further change. Predicts that the unravelling of the genomes might reveal, for example, undisputed vestiges of the genetic codes for an eye or brain buried in the middle of an amoeba or a plant.
==============================
The link
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2009/08/harry-patch-didnt-go-to-war-so-plodder-bob-could-give-the-orders.html#comments
===============================
A comment of one of the other contributors:
Several contributors persist in ridiculing evolutionary theory by referring to their inability to accept the notion of the spontaneous generation of life. How many more times do they need to be told: evolution says precisely NOTHING about how life came to start. It is only once we have some self-replicating entities – please note, Steven Armstrong, that these entities will have been far less complex than cells – that Darwin’s theory can be used to explain how these entities evolved over geological time into the amazing diversity of life that we see around us.
If you must insist on having God the creator, by all means have Him: Darwin’s theory does not exclude Him. It is only once life has started that Darwin takes over. Those of us that prefer to avoid supernatural explanations will obviously not want to invoke a creator, as doing so then requires us to explain Him too.
As I stated previously, it is not worth debating evolution with Billy Hippo until he has read up on the subject. There may however be non-contributors observing this debate who are, if they know as little as he does, being swayed by his contributions. They should be aware that almost everything he says about Darwinism in his most recent posting (10th August 11:39) is complete nonsense.
As I previously said, Darwinism has NOTHING to say about the creation of life, and anyone who thinks scientists are ever likely to create life spontaneously in a test tube has no grip of probability. Darwinism does NOT predict that simpler forms of life get replaced by more advanced ones – humans could not exist without insects,bacteria and trees. As for the “barrier of sexual reproduction”, which he has mentioned several times now, I would like to know what on earth he is talking about. Sexual reproduction actively encourages change, by insisting that the next generation grows from a single cell which has a mixture of genetic information from two parents. Evolution would be much slower without sex.
I could now go on to list the things that Darwinism successfully predicts – Wesley Crosland has already helpfully listed many of them – but what would be the point? Readers with an open mind and an interest can read about them in a book, while those with a closed mind will not accept them whatever I say, so I have no intention of wasting any more time on those that will not see what is right in front of them.
You cannot pick and choose which bits of science you accept – it is all or nothing. Of course scientists get things wrong sometimes, but as a society we fund scientists to investigate things on our behalf and we must trust them to do so with rigour and honesty. Peer review and verification of experimental results weed out most of the mistakes, and what is left – to the best of our race’s collective current understanding – is the truth. If you don’t like it, then I hope you manage to find a cave that is not too uncomfortable.
Posted by: Andrew Platt | 10 August 2009 at 11:28 PM
========================
Previously this poster Andrew Platt said he thought Einstein was an athesit and I gave your quote as follows:
On Einstein’s beliefs:
“My comprehension of God comes from the deeply felt conviction of a superior intelligence that reveals itself in the knowable world.”
Alice Calaprice, The New Quotable Einstein, page 195.
===========================
I gave your PEH as one of several alternatives to Darwinism
=============================
Extract from original article by the Mail journalist Peter Hitchens:
I hope it rains on Professor Dawkins’ atheist summer
Some unfortunate children are being subjected to an Atheist Summer Camp. I hope it rains and rains and rains. But they have another problem. Professor Richard Dawkins is said to be in favour of this.
Yet Professor Dawkins said recently: ‘What I really object to – and I think it’s actually abusive to children – is to take a tiny child and say “You are a Christian child” or “You are a Muslim child”. I think it is wicked if children are told “You are a member of such and such a faith simply because your parents are.”’
Why then is it all right to tell a child it should be an atheist?
======================
Professor Dawkins’? What contribution has he ever made to Biology. Also the man is in mortal fear of a debate with Professor Davison always has been and for the matter Martin as well. Any sane person would realize the man is a joke, a new age guru he has no resemblance to a scientist especially a biologist. Why does his fans attack Professor Davison’s character and work? Because it reveals Dawkins as the intellectual fraud and new age guru he really is.
billyhippo
You have misrepresented me. I have never claimed that evolution was gradual and I have never claimed that DNA was the seat of all information. Quite the contrary I have stated that EVERY evoluionary event, from the appearance of species to the appearance of phyla, was an INSTANTANEOUS event.
No one is going to pay any attention to you anyway because you insist on anonymity. I recommend that rather than attempt to interpret my work or that of my sources that you just point others to my papers and webpage.
I hope you will correct yourself on that Mail forum because I probably will not participate there. You can tell them that too. I prefer forums where I can speak without restraint. I am tired of playing games with fools and intractable enemies. That is why I refuse to use aliases or proxies. I am quite willing to be regarded with contempt by trash like PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins.
It doesn’t get any better than this.
I love it so!
dublin evans
Thanks for the support. I do not debate, I enlighten, and those who cannot hear me are doomed to intellectual oblivion. Neither Meyers nor Dawkins will confront me because they KNOW they will not survive. It is as simple as that. You may tell them that if you have the opportunity.
I love it so!
http://www.newscientist.com/commenting/browse?id=mg20327202.700
My comments still largely remain including my terminal one which remains unanswered now for some time. I take this to be an encouraging sign for the future of evolutionary science.
billyhippo
I sent the following message to the Mail forum.
There is not a word in the Darwinian creed that HAD anything to do with organic evolution. Natural selection, sexual reproduction and Mendelian genetics are all anti-evolutionary, serving only to maintain the status quo. That strategy resulted in ultimate extinction without which creative evolution could never have taken place. All available evidence indicates that progressive evolution is finished with only the extinction of the present biota to be expected. For the evidence I refer all to my papers and website. The whole thing was apparently planned from beginning to end.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
John A. Davison
jadavison.wordpress.com
I will be surprised if it appears.
.
While it has appeared, it is being ignored which is my usual fate when I opine on evolutionary matters. The thread has completely ignored the substance of Peter Hitchens’ thesis and has now degenerated into a discussion of aliens. I have been informed by the management that they cannot accept my additional comments. The Darwinian hoax is still alive and well at least on that forum. That does not surprise me.
John Davison – you say ‘I have never claimed that evolution was gradual and I have never claimed that DNA was the seat of all information. Quite the contrary I have stated that EVERY evoluionary event, from the appearance of species to the appearance of phyla, was an INSTANTANEOUS event.’
I meant gradual in the sense that according to the PEH you have simpler animals and plants first, gradually progressing by the release of information until you end up with mankind at the end. Admitedly not in small steps, but gradual nevertheless as it occurred over millions of years – stage 1, stage 2, stage 3. I think my phrase ‘larger segments of chromosomes as they became revealed’ indicates an instantaneous evolutionary event, and when I said the code for an eye could be in an amoeba this also implies quite a large segment waiting to be revealed.
And where was this information if not in DNA?
If I cannot understand your theory, I cannot issue a correction, as I only write things that I understand, an a language that others will also understand. But, if no-one is taking any notice of me anyway as you say, a correction will not be of any value.
One of the posters in a discussion asked why is sexual reproduction an inhibitor of evolution, and as I thought this was your area of expertise I gave you the opportunity to explain. This was an opportunity for you to explain your ideas in a language that people understand, but instead you made a somewhat cryptic reply, which was maybe why it was not responded to. Eg I am puzzled by the comment: ‘There is not a word in the Darwinian creed that HAD anything to do with organic evolution’. In these kinds of discussions I think you have to explain things so everyone can understand what you are saying.
You seem to think a lot in terms of enemies and friends. You do not seem able to handle the idea of simply a free exchange of ideas in a reasonable debate amongst open minded people – there are more people like that around than you imagine.
George Orwell used an alias, so that was not his real name. Does that make what he said in his writings of no value?
And no-one is allowed links on that site, whatever side they are on.
Carry on billyhippo whoever you really are. The simple fact is that my science is unacceptable at the Mail forum. I have been repeatedly told that my views are unacceptable, including this, my latest attempt to communicate at the Mail forum.
____________________________________________________________
Speaking of Genesis, the fossil record is in no way fatal to the independent appearance of “kinds.”
Until reproductive contniuity is proven to exist between the various taxa of plants and animals we should give careful consideraion to the conclusion reached by Leo Berg, without question the greatest Russian biologist of his day and certainly no religious fanatic. He never mentioned God or the Bible.
“Organisms have developed from tens of thousand of primary forms, i.e, polyphyletically.”
Nomogenesis, page 406
The simple truth is that no one knows how many times life originated or how many times, once present, it may have been subsequently guided. There is not a shred of proof for the monophyletic evolution which is the cornerstone of the Darwinian atheist model. Quite the contrary, the fossil record is teeming with profound discontinuities which may never be bridged by reproductive continuity. Personally, I don’t believe they ever will be. Life is miraculous and ten thousand miracles are no more miraculous than one.
It is only within the taxonomic level of the animal Order that one can account for the radiation observed on the basis of the rearrangement of a common original chromosomal structure. Such a mechanism is all that I have ever proposed to explain the origin of the members, for example, of the Order Primates to which we belong. The moment we attempt to explain the origin of the various Orders or higher categories we encounter profound unexplained discontinuities.
We are hampered by the reality that creative evolution is apparently no longer in progress. In any event, I am certain that chance played no role in either ontogeny or phylogeny.
“Neither in the one nor in the other is there room for chance.”
Leo Berg, Nomogenesis, page 134
———————————————————-
You can criticize my methods and attitude till the cows come home and it will not alter the fact that my science is not acceptable in the current scenario just as my sources have never been accepted either. Evolutionary science is still dominated by an atheist mindset in which the notion of a guided or planned evolution is totally unacceptable.
I am also tired of being lectured to by someone who cannot even disclose his identity. I do not regard such a person as an ally.
If someone is interested in a “debate” they won’t get one from me because there is no room for “debate” in science. That includes billy hippo.
Now go tell everybody within cybershot what you have told me here, that it is my fault that I’m treated with contempt. Good luck. If you expect to be heard here again it will follow an apology from you for your arrogant assertions conerning my character and my methods.
People who are interested in open discussion do not block the opinions of a published scientist like myself. Got that? Write that down.
P.S. In a way I am grateful that you called my attention to the Mail forum as it has reinforced my convictions about the futility of attempting to communicate with homozygous “born that way” ideologues.
Darwin’s fantasy persists in the works of talented wordsmiths like Richard Dawkins not because it has substance but because Dawkins is congenitally unable to accept the only conceivable alternative, which is a guided, goal-directed process which I believe terminated with the appearance of Homo sapiens. Dawkins has published a series of books each more bizarre than its predecessor until at present he no longer even addresses the question of phylogeny and its causes. During that long period he has managed to attract a huge following of like minded followers and disciples. To get some idea of his current purposes I recommend going to Paul Zachary Myers’ Pharyngula forum and click on the big red A that adorns each days edition of Myers’ hatespeech who, like Dawkins now has also abandoned any pretense of science to dedicate all his energies to the desecration of the Judeo-Christian ethic on which Western Civilization was founded.
I submit that the reason they must do this is due to one thing only. They are each victims of their “prescribed” destiny to be atheists.
There is no longer any question that EVERY aspect of the human condition has a demonstrable congenital basis. William Wright’s “Born That Way” has summarized that evidence as his title indicates. One iof the most difficult concepts to accept is that we are not free, yet that is precisely what carefully controlled observations have made unmistakably transparent. Einstein’s lifelong determinism has been vindicated with scientifically controlled observations by scientists who did not expect to find those results.
I add one more of Einstein’s convictions to those provided by Andrew Plait. -
“Our actions should be based on the ever-present awreness that human beings in their thinking, feeling, and acting ARE NOT FREE but are just as causally bound as the stars in their motion.”
Statement to the Spinoza Society of America. September 22, 1932, Alice Calaprice, The New Quotable Einstein, page 200. My emphasis in caps.
There is about as much chance of converting Dawkins and Myers to Christianity as there is of transforming Pope Benedict XVI into an atheist.
The above message was also rejected by the management of the Mail forum. They make no bones about it, rejecting the message immediately and without explanation.
Furthermore, I informed them where they will find the messages they refuse to present – right here!
Let me repeat for the benefit of those who have difficulty understanding me –
There is not a word in the Darwinian scheme that ever had anything whatsoever to do with the appeaance of new species or of any other taxonomic category, not a word. That has become a fact, not an opinion, and facts are not to be questioned. They can only be accepted; until they are, progress in evolutionary science will be impaired.
“If you tell the truth, you can be certain, sooner or later, to be found out.”
Oscar Wilde
Here is my latest message which was rejected immediately by the Mail forum.
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2009/08/harry-patch-didnt-go-to-war-so-plodder-bob-could-give-the-orders.html#comments
__________________________________________________________
This is my last attempt to return to the subject which Peter Hitchens introduced with his original comments.
Richard Dawkins and his New World disciple, Paul Zachary Myers, each suffer from the same congenital deficiency. They are incapable of recognizing that chance could never have played a role in either ontogeny or phylogeny. Just as everything that takes place during the development of the egg was predetermined in the nucleus and the cytoplasm of the fertilized ovum, so apparently was all of evolution predetermined in those forms with which evolution began.
It should be noted that we have no idea how many such beginnings were involved, although the present evidence would suggest that there were a great many. I am not alone with that proposal.
“Organisms have developed from tens of thousands of primary forms, i.e, polyphyletically.”
Leo Berg, Nomogenesis, page 406.
The strategy of the Darwinian atheists has always been the same. From the very beginning they refused to acknowledge the existence of their critics, from Mivart to Osborn, to Bateson, to Punnett, to Berg, to Goldschmidt, to Schindewolf, to Broom and Grasse among many others. They have remained in a state of denial for 150 years, and continue still on a predestined path which will lead to their ultimate demise as valid interpreters of the natural world. Godless atheism is a congenital malaise for which there is no present cure. So is Biblical or any other form of theistic fundamentalism. The truth lies elsewhere with the realization that chance has never played a role in the origin(s) and subsequent evolution(s) of the living world.
I concur with Robert Broom -
“I believe there is a Plan. and though in the slow course of evolution there have been ups and downs, and what look like mistakes, the plan has gone on; and we may feel sure that it cannot fail to reach its final goal.”
Robert Broom, Finding the Missing Link, page 101.
I further believe that the organic “plan” largely terminated with the appearance of Homo sapiens. All present evidence indcates that creative evolution is a phenomenon of the distant past with the present biota being the plan’s ultimate goal. It seems that like every great epoch which preceeded our own, that ours too may become extinct bringing the history of life on this planet to an end.
I “hate being right” and pray that I am wrong.
“Here I stand. I can do no otherwise.
Martin Luther
____________________________________________________________________________
It is obvious that this venue, like so many others, has firmly allied itself with the atheist forces led by Richard Dawkins and Paul Zachary Myers.
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
Not at all. It is a matter of record.
Hi John,
I am a contributor to the Hitchens Blog and I’ve been attacking evolutionists there for weeks now. Everything I have said has been posted except on two occasions. Both times, there was an error with the blog so I merely re-submitted the original entries and they were posted. Even the author of the blog, Peter Hitchens, encounters problems posting to it occasionally. Incidentally, he is no evolutionist – far from it.
Anyway, just thought you should know that. There are some particularly foul forums where evolution is debated, we’ve both had first hand experience in them. The Hitchens blog is not one of them.
All the best,
Chris
PS. I just registered to make the previous comment. CLouD5776 is my Username and that was automatically displayed. My real name is Chris Doyle. Just thought I should spell that out to you as I know fake names irritate you (me too).
Chris Doyle
I can only record the facts. The last three comments which I have reprinted here were summarily rejected before they were even sent. They have let me make short comments, even those proving that they have rejected my longer messages all of which are critical of the atheist Darwinian myth. Please do not try to tell me that I am not being muzzled as the facts speak otherwise. It is clear that the management of the forum is in bed with Darwinian mysticism. I have proved it beyond any doubt.
Incidentally I am very definitely an evolutionist just as were all my distinguished sources.
I just sent the following brief message to the Mail forum. It was not summarily rejected so it may appear.
Darwinian atheists like Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers, Ernst Mayr and Stephen J. Gould have never defended their hypothesis because they intellectually always knew it was indefensible. What they have done instead is pretend that it must be so because they are congenitally incapable of accepting the only conceivable alternative, a purpose driven phylogeny. These people are not scientists.
It appeared. Now lets see if it has any effect.
Hi John,
I don’t mean to state a stupid question here John, but I think they need to revamp the names of groups
Creationist and Evolutionist. I know you would be considered a creationist but you are definitive a evolutionist as well.
So wouldn’t it be politically correct to say you are a true Evolutionary Scientist and that Darwinian are new age evolutionist? Or would you be a Evo-creationist? I think your works stand very much on it’s own and challenges the other camps so I would suggest independence ain defining your position.
Just a thought.
Thanks Dublin.
I prefer to remain uncategorized, except to say that, like every one of my sources, I am neither an atheist nor a religious fanatic. The truth lies elsewhere and I think I know where that is.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Below is my latest attempt to communicate at the Mail forum.
________________________________________________________________________
Below is the response which is offered to every comment that is submitted.
_________________________________________________________________________
Your comment has been saved. Comments are moderated and will not appear until approved by the author.
_________________________________________________________________________
That statement is ridiculous. How can an author approve his own comment?
I hope I am not alone in calling attention to this pathetic abuse of ordinary sentence structure.
Apparently there are unknown moderators who have the sole responsibility of deciding which messages will appear and which will not. These unknowns have decided that three of my lengthy comments will not appear. They have further deleted the comments of some of those who reprinted those rejected comments. Those policies are unacceptable.
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2009/08/harry-patch-didnt-go-to-war-so-plodder-bob-could-give-the-orders.html#comments
As you can see, I am finally being allowed to speak; for example, my comment August 20, 4:39 PM, 2009. But am I being heard? That remains to be determined.
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2009/08/harry-patch-didnt-go-to-war-so-plodder-bob-could-give-the-orders.html#comments
And still allowed! What a contrast with Pharyngula, richarddawkins.net, Uncommon Descent, EvC, Panda’s Thumb, After The Bar Closes and all the many other internet forums where I am persona non grata.
I also was allowed to express my disdain for anonymity.
It doesn’t get any better than this.
I love it so!
Econimist.com reviews Dawkins’ newest book.
EconOmist.com*
Richard Dawkins is an egomaniacal atheist who has done more to retard progress in evolutionary science than any other figure in the post Darwinian era. He lives in a fantasy world entirely of his own construction. He has contributed NOTHING to our understanding of the only isssue which has ever been in question – the mechanism of a long ago terminated organic evolution.
Dawkins, and his New World ally Paul Zachary Myers have amassed a huge army of like minded congenital atheists. These people collectively are intellectual terrorists, jihadists if you will, intolerant of any dissension from their godless, purposeless view of the world as they imagine it. They have reduced themselves to little more than hate mongerers, attacking any and all dissenters from their ridiculous insistence on an ascending sequence driven by random biochemical events. Neither has contributed a scintilla to our understanding of the great mystery of phylogeny. Quite the contrary, they prevent progress by assuming that there is no mystery, that we already know how evolution took place.
Unfortunately for them, they have painted themselves into a corner from which there is no escape except to recant which they are genetically incapable of even imagining.
Others have categorized such pathetic souls better than I -
“Science commits suicide when she adopts a creed.”
Thomas Henry Huxley
“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, page 28.
Please feel free to quote me.
http://news.independentminds.livejournal.com/4134730.html
I just commented at the above site.
I’ll look at it, but I am getting tired of being a dart board for Darwinian zealots. Why don’t you just direct them to my weblog?
http://www.jadavison.wordpress.com
“I get no respect.”
Rodney Dangerfield
I presented a couple of comments and anticipate all sorts of vitriol if they appear. If that happens they will hear no more from me.
My lengthy comment, devastating to the Darwinian fairy tale, has appeared and so far is being ignored.
Billy hippo, whoever that is, cluttered up this thread with several serially delivered messages which contributed nothing of value to the purposes of this blog so I deleted them. I am tired of trying to deal with other blogs. Let the record show that I am happy to answer any questions that others may bring here. I only ask that they identify themselves. Messages from anonymous sources will most likely be deleted after I have reminded the user that he has violated my standards. I have been banished from all too many “forums” (I use that term very lightly) and have come to the conclusion that most of those where I am still allowed are more interested in debating than in science. I am a lousy debater with a tendency to lose my temper with those immune to reason. All are welcome to come here, even those who want to abuse me. I thrive on abuse but expect it to come from a real person like for example Paul Zachary Myers, Wesley Elsberry or Richard Dawkins none of whom will ever appear here I am certain. I can safely say that the only abuse I have ever absorbed was from an anonymous blowhard. Cowards are like that don’t you know.
“I’m an old campaigner and I love a good fight.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
I am also a blasphemer, aware of George Bernard Shaw’s quip -
“All great truths begin as blasphemies.”
“War, God help me, I love it so!”
George S. Patton
So come one, come all. Gird your loins as I gird mine. Let’s get into a serious discussion of the great mystery of organic evolution, especially how it REALLY took place.
“Lay on Macduff, and damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough’”
Shakespeare
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2009/09/a-postcard-from-brighton.html#comments
I am no longer able to speak here. Apparently it all depends on who is manning the delete button. So much for this blog, just another debating society. It should be no wonder that I am thoroughly disgusted with the internet as a vehicle for rational communication.
So I say to whoever is running this pathetic groupthink, good luck and enjoy one another if you get my double entendre..
Billy Hippo, whoever that is. You are no longer welcome so please do not send any more messages to this blog. They too will be deleted as they arrive. You have caused me enough trouble. You have misrepresented my science for which there is no excuse. Intrude somewhere else. That goes for any other anonymous trouble makers.
Incidentally, Peter Hitchens is the younger brother of Christopher Hitchens which presents a clear explanation for why I am persona non grata on his arrogant, pompous blog.
This is for Chris Doyle
I am now unable to comment on Peter Hitchens’ blog which should surprise no one as he is the younger brother of Christopher Hitchens, bosom buddy of two other homozygous atheists, Paul Zachary Myers and Richard Dawkins. Furthermore, Peter, exactly like his brother, strikes me as a pompous, arrogant, hyper-opinionated ass.
http://news.independentminds.livejournal.com/4134730.html
I have managed to present comments supporting a planned evolution, which is, of course, the only conceivable alternative to the Darwinian fairy tale. So far I am the only one to respond on that thread. It will be interesting to see if my comments produce any reaction.
John Davison – you continue to leave up comments against
me whilst denying the right of reply
Disgraceful and underhand behaviour.
Why don’t you just get the blogsite to ban me if
that is how you want to run your site?
Meanwhile, you complain on other sites about being banned youself!
Billy Hippo
There is a big difference between deleting an anonymous users’ denigration of my character which you have done before and continue to do now on the one hand and outright banishment. I have banished very few people from this weblog. First of all, it is very difficult to accomplish anyway as you well know. I don’t care for the way you misrepresent my science with such nonsense as “virgin births” for example. Such a statement is bound to inflame certain ideologues, notably Christian bashing atheists like Myers and Dawkins.
My Semi-meiotic Hypothesis does not depend on “virgin births” at all. It results from mistakes in conventional sexual reproduction. If you knew anything about the subject you would realize this. As a matter of fact the sperm is necessary to activate the egg and without it the egg will never develop. In the experimental production of gynogenetic frogs, the sperm are irradiated so that they turn the egg on but do not further participate. The second step requires the suppression of the second meiotic division which leaves the egg with a diploid, normal chromosome complement which can then develop into a normal frog which is the only animal in which the process has been experimentally demonstrated. There is strong evidence that this could occur naturally in sexually mediated reproduction, although probably at a low frequency. For example, occasionally triploid frogs appear in conventional sexual reproduction. These are the result of a failure of the second division to take place. I proved that way back in the 1960’s and published my findings. Higher ploid animals can be produced when both meiotic divisions fail to take place. It is also well known that often defective sperm may activate an egg but fail to fuse with the egg nucleus. A combination of these two rare events would spontaneously produce a diploid, gynogenetic, normal, zygote, and could, with the proper cytogenetic preconditions, produce a new species in a single step.
True speciation WAS always probably a rare event but there is absolutely nothing mysterious that must be assumed to account for it.
This is why I don’t like to see non scientists, like yourself, trying to promote my science. They invariably prove to be counter productive. If you really wanted to be useful, which I doubt, you would simply refer my adversaries to me directly.
It is obvious that you don’t know anything about basic biology and I am pleased that Chris Burns has reminded you of that fact on the very forum where you are holding forth.
Now I will let this further attack on my integrity stand as proof of your character, but if you come back here again under the alias Billy Hippo, your message, like your earlier ones, will be deleted. I am fed up dealing with illiterate cowards who can only function from behind the shield of anonymity. They are the enemies of rational discourse.
“For fools rush in where angels fear to tread….A little learning is a dangerous thing.”
Alexander Pope
Billy Hippo returned with insults and was deleted accordingly.
twice.
I am presenting this essay for comment here on the “Evolution is Finished!” thread. Feel free to do so.
FREE WILL IS A MYTH
by
John A. Davison
I open this essay with an assertion: Free Will is a myth. I am deliberately being provocative because I am convinced that my assertion has merit. The notion that the human animal is capable of an objective analysis of his world is, in my studied opinion, without foundation. I recognize that my thesis must be supported with ascertainable facts and I am prepared to present those facts in due order. In all fairness I have a responsibility to make clear that there is little that is original in my position, so I will begin by giving credit to another who reached the same conclusion.
One of my most treasured sources is Albert Einstein. I regard his understanding of the human condition as every bit as significant as his physics and perhaps even more so. Relativity was incipient at the dawn of the 20th century and I believe it would have emerged even if Einstein had never lived. Others may disagree but that is of no consequence as it is Einstein’s lifelong belief in a determined universe that is of importance here. He made his convictions indelible as the following excerpts illustrate. My source unless otherwise noted is Alice Calaprice, The New Quotable Einstein, The italics are mine.
“Everything is determined…by forces over which we have no control.” page 196.
“Our actions should be based on the ever-present awareness that human beings in their thinking, feeling, and acting are not free but are just as causally bound as the stars in their motion.” page 200.
“Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics, and it springs from the same source…They are creatures who can’t hear the music of the spheres.” page 204.
This last quip is the most important because Einstein offers an explanation for the intolerance of the fanatics – they “can’t hear the music of the spheres.” Without identifying its cause he has identified fanaticism as a deficiency, a fundamental defect in ones ability to interpret his world.
With his characteristic candor Einstein adds -
“I am a determinist. As such I do not believe in Free Will. The Jews believe in Free Will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine philosophically. In that respect I am not a Jew.” page 130.
Since most Christians also believe in Free Will, I will have to join with Einstein by declaring – In that respect I am not a Christian. Since I became a Roman Catholic late in life at the age of 72, I hope I will be forgiven for this relatively minor heresy. Besides, I do not insist, as some do, on personal infallibility. Richard Dawkins, and Paul Zachary Myers, his New World ally, come to mind!
Einstein’s lifelong determinism was anticipated in 1882 (when Einstein was three) with the staging of Gilbert and Sullivan‘s Iolanthe and the sentry’s soliloquy -
Every boy and every girl
That’s born into the world alive
Is either a little liberal
Or else a a little conservative.
William Wright, Born That Way, page 262.
It is in William Wright’s book, “Born That Way,” that we find scientific support for Einstein’s assertion that fanatics are deaf to the “music of the spheres.” It is there that we find the explanation for religious fanaticism as well. As his book title suggests, the controversy between Nature versus Nurture in influencing ones outlook has been won hands down by Nature. What makes that conclusion so very meaningful is that it was not expected by the researchers who studied the question. The research, led by Thomas Bouchard, a psychology professor at the University of Minnesota, took advantage of a natural experiment, the reuniting and interviewing of monozygotic (identical) twins that had been separated and put up for adoption as infants to be reared often in quite different cultural environments.
“Bouchard would later insist that while he and his colleagues had fully expected to find traits with a high degree of heritability, they also expected to find traits that had no genetic component. He was certain, he says, that they would find some traits that proved to be purely environmental. They were astonished when they did not. While the degree of heritability varied widely – from the low thirties to the high seventies – every trait they measured showed at least some degree of genetic influence. Many showed a lot.”
William Wright, Born That Way, page 40, the author’s italics.
Of course it came as no surprise that physical characteristics such as hair and eye color, and I.Q. were shared, but what was surprising were such correlations as style of dress, preference for toothpaste and beer brands, jewelry styles, pets, wives, and many other features previously and naturally assumed to be acquired.
Among predispositions, shared by identical twins, pro or con, are the following: Belief in a creator, atheism, the death penalty, political leanings, abortion. Based on my half century in academe I believe that political liberalism and atheist Darwinism are closely linked and may even be expressions of the same congenital predisposition.
The findings as summarized in “Born That Way” plead that a general question be asked. Is there any feature of the human condition that does not have some degree of congenital predisposition? If there is I do not believe it has yet been identified.
I am hesitant to assume that congenital is synonymous with genetic as the history of many families does not support that conclusion. Very often genius has popped up unexpectedly only to dwindle and disappear in subsequent generations. Friedrich Gauss and Johann Sebastian Bach come to mind. Since so little is known concerning the genetics of genius, it is safer to use the term congenital rather than genetic in describing predispositions. The important point is that monozygotic twins share the same prenatal environment, even the same placenta. It is conceivable that environmental factors affecting the mother could influence critical developmental steps in the development of her identical twins.
I realize the resistance with which my position will be met and I am at a loss as to how to deal with it any further than with what I have presented here. It is a bitter pill that each of us must swallow as I discovered about myself. Nevertheless, it can be a liberating influence as it offers an intellectual escape from the congenital bigotry with which we all must be afflicted to some degree or other. Some of us seem to have that ability, some others apparently not. Again, Paul Zachary Myers and Richard Dawkins come to mind. They seem incompetent to shake off the atheism with which they are each afflicted.
Most important, accepting that Free Will is a myth remains in accord with my proposal that all of organic evolution was also predetermined just as are our personal prejudices. There would be no role for chance in such a world, a conclusion reached long ago by Leo Berg, the greatest Russian biologist of his day and, in my opinion, the most significant evolutionist of all time. Commenting on the twin mysteries of ontogeny and phylogeny -
“Neither in the one, nor in the other is there room for chance.”
Leo Berg, Nomogenesis, page 134.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Is Free will a myth?
First of all, what do we mean by free will?
1) If we mean the ability to choose our destiny in a manner that has no relationship with our family, our culture, or our personal childhood, such books as Born That Way would make it seem no more than a myth, and even the Bible would not support it, since it has plenty of remarks about the children of the wise and of the foolish, and about the manner in which a good father and mother are blessed by their children, even for many generations. We do have antecedents!
2) If we mean the ability to choose our destiny in defiance of “fate” – in defiance of prophetic utterance – that would be an interesting proposition. It’s an idea that the Greeks wrestled with, as we see in the drama of Orestes, and seemed to conclude that it could not be done. In that world view, free will is a myth, a mockery of the gods. We feel as if we were free, but we are gripped by destiny as a pea is gripped by its pod. It cannot get out unless the pod rot, and destiny never rots.
3) There is, perhaps, another meaning which merits attention. Free will could mean the capacity to choose our thoughts, and though this seems to entail choosing also our destiny – surely a man who chooses his thoughts will choose his direction in life according to those thoughts! – it is not necessarily so fully entailed. Prescinding, for the moment, from this consideration, let us consider the matter of choosing our thoughts.
First of all, if our thoughts are determined, then it would seem that they are not thoughts: they are merely bodily (or mental) reactions which occasionally appear spontaneous because they take our consciousness by surprise in some degree, or because they present themselves as “mine own” by being interior. But in fact, if thoughts are determined then they are not a response to a personal consciousness of truth, but a response to impersonal factors within the total environment, interior and exterior.
If we once accept this latter proposition, then we should cease to be concerned about persuading anyone to change his thoughts; they are inevitably what they are. Logically, one might change anothers’ thoughts by changing something in his environment (interior or exterior) and certainly behaviorists (not to mention jailers, not to mention schoolteachers) have had such purposes in mind when they were not merely angrily punitive.
But the anger is so often there for the determinist thought changers. There’s always this feeling that: “I should be able to change their minds. The world would be better if I could. I despise their stupid thoughts and mine are superior so they must triumph. I don’t believe in truth, but I believe in the superiority of my rejection of truth.” (!)
Of course the free-willers mock this anger: you’re forgetting free will, they say. You’ll never get everyone to agree with you no matter how you change environments. A trail of blood leads to the martyrs of this opinion.
Now, before going on, it is worthy of note that the men who have actually built culture – fostered learning and the arts and joy in relationships – have been free-willers, have believed that the interior life of another man must be respected by other men, because (1) only in freedom does love have meaning (2) only in freedom does assent have reality (3) even God respects freedom.
Oops!
I think we just stumbled onto something. If love, intellectual assent, and divine relationship are entailed in the definition of freedom, then it could be a deeper mystery than, say, the ingredients in Coca Cola. It might be that there are infinite vistas involved and that they cannot be manipulated like the arithmetic of integers. Infinity imposes odd rules, even on the mathematician.
Put yourself in God’s position; or, not believing in God, put yourself in the position of creator. You design this incredible complexity, including the whole scene of unfolding life forms, and you step back. At the end of evolution is a creature who rolls over the looks you in the eye. You wink. He winks back. You both start laughing. You laugh because it is so absurd that the mud and guts should come to this, but you did it! He’s got a mind! He’s got the infinite vista, the one that sees the absurdity in things. Ab surd – Arabic for incalculable.
4) Free will might not even mean choosing our thoughts in the sense of: “eenie meenie miny moe; here’s my thought, others go.” Our thoughts might be constrained by logic and by information, the former being largely (though not wholly) dependent on education, the latter being environmental although, again, we have some degree of control over our environments; but still, thus: the consciousness of our selves and of our thoughts as personally owned might be the definition of freedom.
I think you are conscious of your self. I think you own your thoughts. You just see lots of people over-estimating their independence from antecedents, and it annoys you. Join the club. We’re all trying to change the thought-antecedents of others so they will have better thoughts.
Luigi Giussani defines freedom (in one place) as the capacity to have a personal relationship with destiny. That is, he says that freedom means that we are always persons walking into a personal future, never just motes manipulated by gravity and pressure. I think you want people to live in the truth. Where does that desire come from?
The abyss of your source, surely?
I am reading Tom Bethell’s superbly provocative book, Questioning Einstein: is relavitity necessary? It is, in a sense, a report on all the eminent physicists – Michelson of Michelson Morley, Dirac, Lorentz, and many others ending with Petr Beckman, who never accepted relativity. Bethell asks us to consider, in Beckman’s terms, whether it makes sense to say, to believe: “Because I move, your clock slows down.” This is the assertion of relativity.
Einstein was not a philosopher. Beckman says that everything useful in relativity can be had much more simply without this absurdity. He wrote Einstein Plus Two to explain his thoughts. You write: One of my most treasured sources is Albert Einstein. I regard his understanding of the human condition as every bit as significant as his physics.
Yeah, probably as significant – and as mistaken. Read Bethell; fascinating !
Yes, we are as causally bound as the stars, since we are made of the same stuff. But we are as free as the creator of the stars because we are als made of that same stuff: that is the meaning of being made in his image. Can we be both? That is precisely the mystery of being an intellectual creature in a physical body, an infinite vista in a flicker of time and physics.
Do you have a mind? Do you seek truth? I do not think you seek only to control me; I believe in your search for truth. But in that case, I must be free, however hidden that freedom may be with respect to things like my digestion!
Cheers!
Thank you Mary for responding to my message which is more than most are willing to do. I obviously struck a nerve which was my purpose.
Mary Daly is an old friend and she responded because I sent my essay to her in the form of an email. She has presented her case with conviction and fervor which pleases me very much. I wish I could accomplish as much with my intellectual enemies who are obviously terrified of confronting me and my sources here or anywhere else.
I have no interest in controlling or convincing anyone as I regard that as quite impossible. You see I believe, with Einstein, that each of us was predestined to be what we are. That is the message that no one wants to hear, yet I am convinced of both its reality and its unacceptabilty to most who receive it as Mary Daly’s reaction has made abundantly clear.
Here is the question I pose. Does anyone believe that there is any means by which Richard Dawkins could be cured of his egomaniacal atheism? There is about as much chance of that as there is of converting Mary Daly to Dawkins’ Darwinian, godless, purposeless interpretation of the great mystery of phylogeny. That is all that I am suggesting.
Mary is right when she says that Einstein was not a philosopher. He had contempt for philosophy and so do I!
“Upon reading books on philosophy, I learned that I stood there like a blind man in front of a painting. I can grasp only the inductive method…the works of speculative philosophy are beyond my reach.”
“Isn’t all of philosophy like writing in honey? It looks wonderful at first sight, but when you look again it is all gone. Only the smear is left.”
Alice Calaprice, The New Quotable Einstein, pages 193 and 209 respectively.
The purpose of my essay was to remove the philosophical mantle from the question of Free Will and examine the “scientific” evidence for its existence. Having done that I come away still convinced that we are largely puppets in the infinite scheme of things, that as Shakespeare put it, we each are -
“…a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.”
With Robert Broom I am convinced that all of phylogeny was planned from beginning to end and the present biota, including ourselves, is the terminus of the evolutionary sequence, apparently doomed, like all prior biotas, to extinction.
I hate being right and pray I am wrong.
‘A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
Very incentive thoughts presented here by John and Mary!
As I agree with John regarding “prescribed” way of evolutionary processes , the problem of free will is another issue in my opinion. Odly enough in the wake of Luther’s and Calvin’s teaching of the predestination the greatest democracies like those of Switzerland and USA have arisen…
On the other hand great Russians filosophers like Nikolay Berdayeff of even Fyodor Dostoevsky were proponents of free will. But there was
no “free society” in Russia (oddly enough again). Great Christian Dostoevsky even recommended in his “The diary of a writer” to beat children at schools… Living in Slovakia where both traditions(orthodox christianity and lutherism) are alive I don’t dare judge this complicated theological problems. But any opinions like those presented here indicate
that the problem is of great importance for our perception of our lives and our human destiny.
http://cadra.wordpress.com
Martin and Mary too.
I have no intention of turning this blog into a venue for either theology or philosophy, neither of which has any place in science. Theological and philosophical discussions never go anywhere and have never played a role in the progress of science.
Scientific progress has come from every culture, every religious denomination, from deists, humanists, atheists, agnostics and devout Catholics like Louis Pasteur. Any attempt to inject a particular philosophy into the discussion here will be met with deletion. I do not regard a planned universe as a philosophical position. I regard it as established science in which chance has played at best a trivial role. Accordingly, Darwinism does not qualify as science and it will be treated with the utmost contempt. So will be all attempts to force empirical evidence into any religious dogma, Protestant, Catholic, Hindu or otherwise. My own biases are well known and play no role in the search for the truth. I should have known that my challenge to Free Will would be met with strong opposition. Nevertheless, that challenge was based on controlled scientific observation by competent investigators who had no philosophical axe to grind. That is what makes their findings so very significant.
I deleted a second message from Mary Daly for the reasons I have explained. Just as I had used email in contacting her, she can use email to contact me. If that is unacceptable, that is just too bad. This weblog is for ascertainable truth, not to proselytize concerning matters about which we know nothing for certain.