What is the case against Evolution?

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by Seattle, Jun 15, 2019.

  1. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps, somewhere in here, we should address subspecies, species, speciation, and (lest we forget) epigenetics.

    eg
    same species. same dna, different result via timing of expression and switching genes on or off(epigenetics)---If the core dna remains unaltered, is that evolution?
     
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  3. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Well,
    - nature doesn't know or care about species and subspecies - those are human taxonomic labels,, necessarily inaccurate, historically based on superficial traits, - and they change.
    - for the most part, no two creatures have the same DNA
    - don't know what "core DNA" is.
     
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  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    If the change is inherited regardless of circumstance, it is an example of a prospective evolutionary change. If it spreads within the species - the breeding population - over generations, becoming more frequent and eventually characteristic, then it is an observable evolutionary change.
     
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  7. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    except......................................................................................................................
     
  8. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Fall asleep?

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  9. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Shhhhh................
     
  10. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    Well said Dave!!!! Nice also how evolution and Abiogenesis go so well together.....
     
  11. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    back to epigenetics for a moment

    is there any proof that epigenetic action can change(has changed) DNA
    or
    is changing dna just via random mutation(s)
    and/or by acquisition of dna from cousin subspecies?
    or....................................?
     
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    It obviously abets change in DNA, in various ways (Baldwin Effect, for example).
    If something directly alters the DNA code it is no longer "epigenetic", by definition: mutagenic, maybe.
     
  13. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    I'd say the only ''case'' against evolution would be creationism. It's the only other ''opposing'' view that I've ever seen presented. How it would be ''resolved'' is that people who believe in creationism have a completely different worldview than those of scientists. So, they tend to refute carbon dating, and any other potential facts that support evolution.

    That said, spirituality shouldn't deaden one's respect for science, but that mainly happens in organized (fundie) religions. I'm not sure why many religious types feel that they have to forsake one belief, for another. Science and spirituality can coexist, imo.
     
  14. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Not refute so much as deny.

    These people never do any research of their own. All their efforts are spent in trying to pull down the science.
     
  15. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    They tend to refute those concepts that aren't applicable. They refute carbon dating and ignore radiometric dating.
     
  16. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    I'm not sure that word - "refute" means what you think it means.
     
  17. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    Depends on what "evolution" is taken to mean. There's 'evolution' in the sense of change over time, there's 'evolution' in the sense of natural selection, there's questions about the pace and rhythm of evolutionary change (saltationism and punctuated equilibrium), there's ecological and population approaches and cladistic and genomic approaches, there are all kinds of controversies revolving around the hugely complex problems of reconstructing phylogenies, the problem of how much of evolutionary theory is really based on empirical observation and how much is armchair philosophizing, questions of precisely what is being selected by natural selection, problems of taxonomic classification, and many many more.

    Here's a short little account of the 20th century developments in phylogenetics written by an outspoken proponent of Hennigian cladistics from the U. California.

    http://ib.berkeley.edu/courses/ib200/readings/Mishler 2009 (Taxon).pdf

    There are probably questions about and arguments raised about just about every aspect of evolution with a whole variety of views proposed. What looks to the layman like (and is often presented to the layman as if it were) a simple open-and-shut case gets tremendously complicated and even controversial when seen from a professional point of view. That's what evolutionary biologists spend much of their time arguing about in the journals.

    But I take it what isn't what this thread is about. You aren't asking about controversies within evolutionary biology (which may result in much of it being questioned at one time or another in that context, where phylogenetic change-over-time and natural selection are pretty much givens) but about criticism of evolutionary biology from outside, intended to question and to refute exactly those fundamental ideas. You many or may not (I don't want to put words in your mouth) be inquiring into what the best arguments are for "ID".

    My own view is that the best argument for "ID" is probably Behe's Irreducible Complexity argument:

    "This creates a problem for the Darwinian mechanism. Natural selection preserves or "selects" functional advantages. If a random mutation helps an organism survive, it can be preserved and passed on to the next generation. Yet, the flagellar motor has no function until after all of its 30 parts have been assembled. The 29 and 28-part versions of this motor do not work. Thus, natural selection can "select" or preserve the motor once it has arisen as a functioning whole, but it can do nothing to help build the motor in the first place."

    The idea is that many biological systems are exactly that, systems. They are combinations of elements, sometimes quite complex combinations, that together perform a function. The completed function might obviously be advantageous to the organism and thus subject to natural selection, but none of the individual elements of the system possess that selective advantage. So what explains the original origin of the system?

    Before Sciforums has collective apoplexy and starts flaming me, I'm not persuaded that this problem is anywhere near a slam-dunk disproof of evolution. But it is an interesting conundrum.
     
    Last edited: Jul 13, 2019
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  18. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Which was refuted in court during the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial. It was proven that parts of a flagella are perfectly useable for other purposes and the flagella is not an irreducibly complex pattern.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District
     
  19. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not quite sure why you think this is a conundrum, given that it has been shown that functionality of these systems often does not require the presence of all the elements, and that the functionality of the system can sometimes change. If I recall correctly, this is actually true of the flagellar motor, which seems to have developed from a secretory system - as discussed in the Kitzmiller trial.

    I suppose it is a conundrum in the sense that we do not have worked out schemes showing how all these structures have developed, but the mere fact we can show they can develop in this way seems to me to overcome any obstacle of principle, at least. So then is just a question of cranking the handle and analysing the development of each system of interest.
     
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  20. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Otherwise, "God did it".

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  21. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    As usual. your imagination land pov thinks a politically/ideologically motivated court ruling is some kind of objective refutation of Behe's solid argument against your 'Nature's wondrous ability to create complexity including life from scratch, and then intricate arbitrarily complex biological structures'. It's not.
     
  22. Q-reeus Banned Valued Senior Member

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    My reply to Write4U is unfortunately also apt here. Please do fill in the 'trivial gaps' - between no secretory mechanism -> fully functioning secretory mechanism, and thence -> fully functioning flagellum. I say you cannot do either other than via vague hand-waving. Which will not satisfy me.
    There is a huge burden of proof on the part of evolutionists to establish convincingly the natural process(s) 'inevitably' leading to one then the other.
    Otherwise, Behe's mouse-trap paradox remains perfectly valid as counterargument.
    Here btw is a link within a link, to Behe's scathing reply to a review of his latest book, that I presented, without any reply, here:
    http://www.sciforums.com/posts/3586561/
    Feel perfectly free to tear it apart. Or rather, to try.
    When it's all boiled down, the honest base reason (many have less honorable motives) for excluding God/Higher Power/ID as cause, is the tired 'who made God?'. Anyone who actually understands the issues involved that confront believing in a self-caused/causeless universe(s), pick any current cosmogenesis theory/scheme you like, will know they are severe and imo no easier than positing an eternal God. But that is a digression here.
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2019
  23. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    IMO, nature's wondrous ability to create complexity is as easy as it was to create the Fibonacci Sequence in a host of naturally evolved mathematical patterns and biological growth instructions, because it is an efficient exponential pattern.

    It is not my imagination. It's your disdain for Nature's inherent creative mathematical potentials and abilities.

    Upon presentation of evidence and argument from both sides, the erudite judges of truth held that science had proved that irreducible complexity is a false assumption. Which of course it is.

    There is no Design. Any mathematical regularities are naturally self-assembled patterns. In physics, motive is created by physical necessity, not by consciously emotional considerations.

    Q, you may protest all you want but Behe lost that case resoundingly. Have you read the transcript of the case?
    https://ncse.com/library-resource/kitzmiller-v-dover-intelligent-design-trial

    There is no irreducible complexity in the universe, except perhaps the universe itself.
    Here's some comments by scientists.
    https://www.sciencemeetsreligion.org/quotations.html
     
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