RDehaan237@aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 7/21/2000 4:38:15 PM, gmurphy@raex.com writes:
>
> <<
> 1) I note the Howard's caveat about the term "creative roles" but the
> same
> warning could be made about _any_ natural processes with which God works. >>
>
> Granted. Delete "creative roles" and substitute, "above the species level."
> Or if you will, at the higher taxonomic level of Orders, Classes and Phyla.
>
> <<2) Second, It seems to me that you're confusing a couple of issues & in
> fact
> get things backward when you say "I would be happy to take macroevolution
> seriously if there were empirical evidence that natural selection played a
> significant *creative* role in it." That's like saying somebody in 1700
> saying "I'd be happy to believe that the planets move around the sun on
> elliptical orbits if there were empirical evidence for Newton's law of
> gravitation." >>
>
> George:
>
> But almost 140 years have elapsed since Darwin's *Origin* was published. The
> scientific resources available to research the role of natural selection at
> the higher taxonomic levels are enormous. How much more time is needed?
>
> <<Surely a person may be convinced by fossil evidence, biochemical and
> anatomical similarities &c that macroevolution has taken place without making
> any commitment at all as to its mechanism.>>
>
> Let me quote from an "Open Letter to Paul Gross" by Jay W. Richards:
>
> "Doubts about the efficacy of the mechanisms of microevolution for
> macroevolutionary change are widespread within evolutionary biology--so
> widespread, indeed, that researchers often refer to the issue by a kind of
> shorthand, i.e., as the “micro-macro” controversy. The University of
> Wisconsin developmental biologist Sean Carroll, for instance, writing last
> month in Cell (9 June 2000, volume 101:577-580), noted “the long-standing
> question of the sufficiency of evolutionary mechanisms observed at or below
> the species level (‘microevolution’) to account for the larger-scale patterns
> of morphological evolution (‘macroevolution’)” (p. 577) and “One of the
>
> longest running debates in evolutionary biology concerns the sufficiency
>
> of processes observed within populations and species for explaining
> macroevolution” (p. 579).
>
> (snip)
>
> "The paleontologist Robert Carroll of the Department of Biology at McGill
> University, for instance, argued recently in thejournal Trends in Ecology and
> Evolution that “the most striking features of large-scale evolution are the
> extremely rapid divergence of lineages near the time of their origin,
> followed by long periods in which basic body plans and ways of life are
> retained. What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by
> Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace
> between distinct adaptive types . . . . The extreme speed of anatomical
> change and adaptive radiation during this brief time requires explanations
> that go beyond those proposed for evolution of species within the current
> biota” (“Towards a new evolutionary synthesis,” TREE, volume
>
> 15:27-32; p. 27).
>
> Arguments such as Carroll’s fill the current biological literature. They
>
> are even more widespread outside the English-speaking world."
>
> I simply maintain that Darwinian natural selection is not competent to
> account for what is called macroevolution, what I prefer to call the
> formation of morphologies at the higher taxonomic levels.
>
> <<3) "I am not a paleontologist or the son of a paleontologist", to
> paraphrase
> last Sunday's OT lesson. But it seems to me that the sentence you quote from
> Young is not nearly so "telling" if your commentary is removed.>>
>
> Then be so kind as to accept my commentary, which was and is: "The body
> plans of organisms are generally not adaptive. They need NS. The
> "significant role of natural selection" in the formation of the body plans of
> phyletic lineages in the Cambrian, is to enhance the adaptations of organisms
> to their surroundings with their respective Bauplans, using contemporary
> 'short-term-evolution' studies as the best evidence we have of the role of
> NS."
>
> <<4) Natural selection in an important sense is simply negative: there
> aren't
> enough resources &c for all organisms to survive so a lot will die (Malthus'
> influence
> on both Darwin & Wallace), & the ones with variations which best enable them
> to survive
> in the environment of the moment will be most likely to survive & have
> offspring.
> Natural selection itself says nothing about the mechanisms which may bring
> about the
> necessary genetic variations,
***************
This is the entire point: What is the mysterious mechanism that accounts for
rapid and profound
genetic change? Natural selection allegedly controls which change survives but
has no "creative" role.
The "creative role" has to be played by the hypothesised but not identified
mechanism.
To believe in the creative power of macromutations at this point in time and
after a great deal of scientific investigation by the best and brightest
requires belief in the "science of the Gaps", or perhps, "Oh ye of great faith
(that it exists)." Based on what we do know it is tenable to argue that physical
processes acting along could not generate this tremendous information inflow.
Perhaps it is time for a paradigm shift and think about the creative power of
another sort
Bert M
***************
> & it may well be that we need some new theories
> to explain
> them. It is this negative aspect of natural selection - the fact that
> privation, death,
> & extinction make room for development of new species (however that happens)
> - on which
> I've concentrated theologically, & to which I was trying to call attention
> earlier in
> this discussion. The point is certainly not that natural selection is the
> survival of
> "the strong" or that it's a kind of genetic Lamarckianism, as was being
> argued here
> previously.
> Shalom,
> George >>
>
> OK. We are together as long as you are not arguing for a long-term, positive
> role for NS. But I am not sure that is the case.
>
> Peace,
>
> Bob
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