On 06 Jun 95 14:38:31 EDT you wrote:
>Glenn writes:
GM>...All aerodynamic work is now extensively tested in the
>computer before a wind tunnel test is made. The bytes in the computer can so
>closely model what happens in a wind-tunnel experiment that some people even
>say that the wind-tunnel is unnecessary. If you really think simulations are
>not useful, I would suggest that you tremble the next time you get on an
>airplane.>>
JB>..I still don't see the
>analogue. Airplanes are designed by intelligent creatures (at least, we all
>hope so). Simulated conditions regarding these vehicles are ripe for computer
>analysis, contemplation and correction.
Yes. And we can test and refine these aircraft simulations by
designing and flying real aircraft based on them. The test of Glenn's
models would be to take a bit of biological material that his model
represents, replicate the original conditions, and see if it behaves
the
same way.
JB>This is a function of simulate and record, relating to an existing
>mechanism. But with evolution, we are looking for mechanism itself.
Yes. As Johnson notes in his "sinking ship" metaphor, this search for
other mechanisms such as self-organising and auto-catalysing systems
is a sign that the existing Darwinian mechanisms of mutation + natural
selction are inadequate. Why don't Darwinists come clean and admit
that?
JB>I take it as a given that your program runs as advertised. But I
>share Gordon's questions, and a conviction that mathematical
>possibility is not the same as biological reality.
Agreed. There may be an element of truth in it as one of the ways in
which God works through nature, but I doubt if it will obviate the
need for God to intervene directly in creating life, and life's basic
types.
JB>Did it really happen this way? Is all this plausible in nature,
>beyond the theoretical construct? It seems to me the fossil record,
>which is available to corroborate all this, gives a stark answer.
Yes. If Glenn's models were true, we would expect to see continuing
"Cambrian Explosions". Why was there only one?
>Glenn again:
GM>Your failure to try these harmless little programs and
>your failure to explain to me why the whale sequence is not a satisfactory
>large morphological change by small steps, tells me that you are not
>interested in the data of science.
JB>I thought I cited a relevant article by Kurt Wise. I shall do so
>again, from "The Creation Hypothesis", @ pgs. 227-228.
>
JB>Also, the very term "whale sequence" begs the question, and leaves
untouched various problems, e.g., the vestigializing of useful limbs,
the development of complex underwater mechanisms, etc. This whale
business seems quite similar to the "scale to wing" myth.
Yes. It seems like a lot of hand-waving. Even if whales did develop
from a land animal (and I am not yet sure that it did-see Gish's
discussion of the fragmentary evidence for Pakicetus in "Evolution:
the Challenge of the Fossil Record", pp80-81), this is entirely
possible under a Progressive Creation model. Indeed, the fact that all
these alleged massive changes took only 10 million years, almost
demands it!
Indeed, how, under Darwinian mechanisms can a legs become vestigial?
The fact that they are of no use does not matter. Darwinism must show
that they somehow adversely affected reproduction. Even if they did
affect reproduction (which is hard to even imagine), why did these
alleged vestigial legs continue diminishing all the way down until
they disappeared? Did they affect reproduction that much?
It is easier to understand this happening under Lamarckian principles
of use and disuse (indeed Darwin himself thought they were very
important), but this is not Neo-Darwinism.
Was it sexual selection? Did the lady whales not like their mates to
have these unsightly legs? But I thought sexual selection works the
other way - towards preserving bizarre forms.
Or are there inbuilt laws of form that dictate that a plan once
actualised gets bigger until it reaches an absurd point (eg. Irish
Elk) and then either is extinguished or gets smaller until it
disappears? But again this is not Darwinism.
Darwinist mechanisms are blind and purely physical:
"All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the
blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way. A
true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and
plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye.
Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which
Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the
existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose
in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the
future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can
be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind
watchmaker. (Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker", 1991, Penguin, p5)
and they boil down to only one, natural selction:
"It is the contention of the Darwinian world-view that..slow, gradual,
cumulative natural selection is the ultimate explanation for our
existence. If there are versions of the evolution theory that deny
slow gradualism, and deny the central role of natural selection, they
may be true in particular cases. But they cannot be the whole truth,
for they deny the very heart of the evolution theory, which gives it
the power to dissolve astronomical improbabilities and explain
prodigies of apparent miracle." (Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker",
1991, Penguin, p318)
JB>I am most interested in the great leaps of faith Darwinists take
>WITH the data. That is a very complex problem indeed.
Yes. This is *the* problem. Darwinism seems to be a way of looking
at reality, seeing a number of possibilities, and converting them by
imagination into near-certainties. Darwin's biographer, the,
philosopher Dr Gertrude Himmelfarb, observed that Darwin's technique
of argument in the Origin was to convert possibilities into
probabilities, and liabilities into assets:
"the solution of each difficulty in turn came more easily to Darwin as
he triumphed over- not simply disposed of- the preceding one. The
reader was put under a constantly mounting obligation; if he accepted
one explanation he was committed to accept the next. Having first
agreed to the theory in cases where only some of the transitional
states were missing, the reader was expected to acquiesce in those
cases where most of the stages were missing, and finally in those
where there was no evidence of stages at all. Thus by the time the
problem of the eye was under consideration, Darwin was insisting that
anyone who had come with him so far could not rightly hesitate to go
further . . . As possibilities were promoted into probability, and
probability into certainty, so ignorance itself was raised to a
position only once removed from certain knowledge. When imagination
exhausted itself and Darwin could devise no hypothesis to explain away
a difficulty, he resorted to the blanket assurance that we were too
ignorant of the ways of nature to know why one event occurred rather
than another, and hence ignorant of the explanation that would
reconcile the facts to his theory." (Himmelfarb, G., "Darwin and the
Darwinian Revolution", Von Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1959, in
Hitching F., "The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong",
1982, Ticknor & Fields, NY, pp252-253)
God bless.
Stephen