On Sun, 04 May 1997 20:17:24 -0400, Pim van Meurs wrote:
[...]
>PM>Not even the evolutionist would attribute this to chance only so
>the question is merely rethorical and does not address the real issue
>here that there is a guiding mechanism in evolution (natural
>selection).
>SJ>No. Wilder-Smith is discussing the origin of life-before
>"natural selection" came into existence:
[...]
PM>Which of course is merely semantics. So perhaps the mechanism is
>not natural selection but molecular selection? The same idea under
>a different name. Fine with me.
There is no evidence for "molecular selection?" In the same section
as the above quote, Thaxton, et. al., say:
"How could energy flow through the system be sufficiently coupled
to do the chemical and thermal entropy work to form a nontrivial
yield of polypeptides (as previously assumed in the "chance" model)?
One answer has been the suggestion that configurational entropy
work, especially the coding work, could occur as a consequence of
the self-ordering tendencies in matter. The experimental work of
Steinman and Cole in the late Sixties is still widely cited in support of
this model....Together with our colleague Randall Kok, we have
recently analyzed the ten proteins originally analyzed by Steinman and
Cole, as well as fifteen additional proteins whose structures (except
for hemoglobin) have been determined since their work was first
published in 1967...The reduced data presented in table 9-1 shows
that Steinman and Cole's dipeptide bond frequencies do not correlate
well with the observed peptide bond frequencies for one, ten, or
twenty-five proteins....Furthermore, the peptide bond frequencies for
the twenty-five proteins approach a distribution predicted by random
statistics rather than the dipeptide bond frequency measured by
Steinman and Cole This observation means that bonding preferences
between various amino acids play no significant role in coding
protein. Finally, if chemical bonding forces were influential in amino
acid sequencing, one would expect to get a single sequence (as in ice
crystals) or no more than a few sequences, instead of the large variety
we observe in living systems." (Thaxton C.B., Bradley W.L. & Olsen
R.L., "The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories",
Lewis & Stanley: Dallas TX, 1992, pp147-148)
>PM>To use this as an argument shows however poor logic and evasion of
>addressing that even in the prebiotic soup mutuation and selection
>could have played a similar role in pre-life as it does in life.
What "prebiotic soup"? There wasn't one. It is just one of naturalism's
myth:
"Based on the foregoing geochemical assessment, we conclude that
both in the atmosphere and in the various water basins of the
primitive earth, many destructive interactions would have so vastly
diminished, if not altogether consumed, essential precursor chemicals,
that chemical evolution rates would have been negligible. The soup
would have been-too dilute for direct polymerization to occur. Even
local ponds for concentrating soup ingredients would have met with
the same problem. Furthermore, no geological evidence indicates an
organic soup, even a small organic pond, ever existed on this planet.
It is becoming clear that however life began on earth, the usually
conceived notion that life emerged from an oceanic soup of organic
chemicals is a most implausible hypothesis. We may therefore with
fairness call this scenario "the myth of the prebiotic soup." (Thaxton
C.B., Bradley W.L. & Olsen R.L., "The Mystery of Life's Origin",
1992, p66)
[...]
>SJ>Pim, to date it is *you* who have shown the "lack of
>understanding of evolution and thermodynamics"!
PM>Perhaps you could show me some examples ? After all you claimed
>that evolution violates the SLOT, without proof.... That surely
>implies a lack of understanding of thermodynamics.
As I have repeatedly pointed out, I have *not* "claimed that evolution
violates the SLOT"! This is just a figment of your imagination.
[...]
>SJ>First, you just tried to use a "Darwinist" solution to the origin
>of life, namely "natural selection"! Please clarify.
PM>That I tried such a solution has no relevance to what Darwinism
>says about evolution. That there might be a similarity between
>evolution and abiogenesis is irrelevant for evolution, just
>convenient. To clarify my point, what if mutation and competition
>(selective forces) favoured the 'survival' of chemicals which could
>adapt to the circumstances better than their 'competitors'. A
>combination of mutation and selective forces could result in the
>evolution of chemicals leading to a form of 'proto life' leading to
>life.
First of all you claim that "such a solution has no relevance to what
Darwinism says about evolution", and then you claim a Darwinist
mechanism of "mutation and ... selective forces" which "favoured the
'survival' of chemicals which could adapt to the circumstances better
than their 'competitors'". Please make up your mind!
>SJ>Second, "Darwinist's" routinely discuss "the origin of the
>machinery", as part of their defence of Darwinism. For example,
>Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker, devotes a whole Chapter (6 "Origins
>and miracles") containing 27 out of 334 pages (or about 8% of the
>book), to the origin of life.
PM>Appeal to authority.
Amazing! You claimed that "such a solution [to the origin of life] has
no relevance to what Darwinism says about evolution" and when I quoted
that one of the leading Darwinists in the world (Dawkins), in probably the
leading Darwinist book in the world (The Blind Watchmaker), devoted
"8% of the book...to the origin of life", you just dismiss it as an "Appeal
to authority"!
PM>That evolutionists make the similar mistake (if you are correct)
>does not mean that you should be allowed to make the same
>mistake. That evolutionists discuss origin of life does not mean
>that evolution needs to address the origin of life.
Why do they do it then? I can only assume that because "evolutionists
discuss origin of life" constantly in their books and articles, that
they really do, at least at a metaphysical level, "need to address
the origin of life":
"Biological evolution is just one major part of a grand naturalistic
project, which seeks to explain the origin of everything from the Big
Bang to the present without allowing any role to a Creator. If
Darwinists are to keep the Creator out of the picture, they have to
provide a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life." (Johnson
P.E., "Darwin on Trial", 1993, p103)
[...]
PM>Based on the erroneous assumption that Darwinists keep the creator
>out of the picture. Science cannot accomodate a creator but cannot
>prove or disprove its existance either. To claim that evolutionists
>have to provide an explanation for the origin of life for evolution
>to be viable is illogical. What is next? The origin of the
>universe ? The origin of the deity?
In fact "Darwinists" do often address "The origin of the universe" and
"The origin of the deity" in their popular books. For example, Dennett
discusses the The origin of the universe:
"...now, bolstered by our experience with Darwinian thinking in more
familiar terrain, we can extrapolate a positive Darwinian alternative to
the hypothesis that our laws are a gift from God. What would the
Darwinian alternative have to be? That there has been an evolution of
worlds (in the sense of whole universes ), and the world we find
ourselves in is simply one among countless others that have existed
through eternity. There are two quite different ways of thinking about
the evolution of laws, one of them stronger, more "Darwinian," than
the other in that it involves something like natural selection. Might it
be that there has been some sort of differential reproduction of
universes, with some varieties having more "offspring" than others?"
(Dennett D.C., "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", 1995, pp176-177)
And Dawkins often discusses "The origin of the deity":
"To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a
supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves
unexplained the origin of the Designer. You have to say something
like 'God was always there', and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy
way out, you might as well just say 'DNA was always there', or 'Life
was always there', and be done with it." (Dawkins R., "The Blind
Watchmaker", Penguin: London, 1991, p141)
In fact, so much so that one of his biologist colleagues publicly
commented on it:
"Richard Dawkins...wrote a letter to the London Independent, taking
his usual line that theology is vacuous and that the only knowledge of
any value we can have comes from science. Heated newspaper
correspondence on the subject followed. The best letter was from
another evolutionary biologist, Gabriel Dover, who wrote, "There are
two classes of questions, natural and unnatural. Can science answer
both of them? No, science cannot answer the question why Dr.
Dawkins is unnaturally drawn to theology like a moth to the flame.
Only theology can answer that, and it has a lot to answer for."
(Johnson P.E., "Reason in the Balance", 1995, p236)
[...]
>SJ>Well then, please explain how "DNA" or indeed "abiogenesis"
>occurred step-by-step, *before* there was natural selection:
PM>I guess this means you agree with the fallacy of the giant leap.
Yes. As Denton points out, nature makes no jumps, but God does:
For Darwin the term evolution, which literally means 'a rolling out',
always implied a very slow gradual process of cumulative change (a
view which has been subscribed to by the great majority of biologists
ever since). There were two main reasons why Darwin rejected the
saltational solution to the challenge of the great gaps in nature.
Firstly, he considered it axiomatic that all natural processes always
must conform to the principle of continuity. In his book Darwin on
Man, Howard Gruber remarks:
`Natura non facit saltum - nature makes no jumps - was a guiding motto
for generations of evolutionists and proto-evolutionists. But Darwin
encountered it in a sharp and interesting form, posed as an
alternative of terrible import: nature makes no jumps, but God does.
Therefore, if we want to know whether something that interests us is
of natural origin or supernatural, we must ask: did it arise
gradually out of that which came before, or suddenly without any
evident natural cause?' (Gruber H., "Darwin on Man", 1981, pp125-26)
(Denton M., "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis", Burnett Books: London,
1985, p58)
PM>>I merely showed the errors of such an assumption. Why btw are you
>assuming that there was no such force similar to natural selection?
Why are you "assuming that there was"? Especially since there is no
evidence for it?
>SJ>"The basic difficulty in explaining how life could have begun is
>that all living organisms are extremely complex, and Darwinian
>selection cannot perform the designing even in theory until living
>organisms already exist and are capable of reproducing their kind.
PM>True, that is why Darwinian evolution has nothing to say about the
>origin of life. Which does not mean that similar mechanisms could
>have played a role in chemical evolution.
This is just a variation on the theme of the usual Darwinian shell game
with the words "evolution":
"...words like evolution and Darwinism have been used like the
walnut shells in a shell game to obscure distinctions and to persuade
the faint in heart. Evolution has at least been used to mean change,
mechanism, history, paradigm, and world view, more linguistic freight
than any word can meaningfully carry." (Wilcox D.L., in Buell J. &
Hearn V., eds., "Darwinism: Science or Philosophy?",, 1994, p128)
The moves in this two part shell game are:
1. The shell is moved away from "Darwinian evolution" in relation to the
"the origin of life":
"Darwinian evolution has nothing to say about the origin of life"
even though I point out that the leading Darwinist (Dawkins), devotes a
whole chapter totalling 8% of his leading Darwinist book (The Blind
Watchmaker).
2. Having deflected the audience's attention away from "Darwinian evolution"
in relation to "the origin of life", then the shell is moved back again, this
time bringing "Darwinian evolution" back into relation to "the origin of life"
with:
"...similar mechanisms could have played a role in chemical evolution".
But this is just an illusion. "similar mechanisms" to "Darwinian evolution"
*are* "Darwinian evolution". Another leading Darwinist, Daniel Dennett
refers to Cairns-Smith's clay-based "origin of life" theory as one that
"perfectly instantiates the fundamental Darwinian strategy":
"Whether or not Cairns-Smith's theory is eventually confirmed, it is
well worth sharing simply because it so perfectly instantiates the
fundamental Darwinian strategy. ...For just this reason, Richard
Dawkins also presents a discussion and elaboration of Cairns-Smith's
ideas in The Blind Watchmaker (1986a, pp. 148-58)." (Dennett D.C.,
"Darwin's Dangerous Idea, 1995, p157)
>SJ>The challenge of chemical evolution is to find a way to get some
>chemical combination to the point where reproduction and selection
>could get started." (Johnson P.E., "Darwin on Trial", 1993,
>pp103-104)
PM>Reproduction is not limited to biological entities. The survival
>of chemical entities can equally well depend on the ability to
>reproduce and out perform its competitors. Only those chemicals
>which can adapt to such challenges will be able to survive. The only
>difference is that chemical evolution takes place at a smaller scale
>than biological evolution and that the former acts on 'non life or
>proto life' while biology deals only with life.
So having defelcted the audience's gaze away from "Darwinian evolution"
in relation to the "the origin of life", the shell is moved back and
lifted off the pea, with "Darwinian evolution" explanations like
"survival", "ability to reproduce and out perform...competitors",
"adapt".
>PM>Much headway is made in understanding the self-assembly scenarios
>both in theory as well as in experiments.
>SJ>Please give details of what this "Much headway" is. Thanks.
PM>Kaufman, Fox, Eigen, Prigogine for instance. See Aspects of
>Chemical evolution, ed. G. Nicolis, Advances in Chemical physics
>Vol. LV, Wiley and Sons, NY, 1984.
These are not "details". They are just *names*
[...]
>SJ>Pim, your whole post has been one long "argument from rhetoric"!
>How about including some *evidence* to back up your assertions?
PM>Let's first ask you that question Steve?
I have all along provided "evidence" in the form of quotes from both
evolutionists and non-evolutionists to back up my claims. To date,
all you seem to have provided is assertions and the odd reading list.
>SJ>Anything that is unsophisticated but requires bringing together
>of all the components in the right place at the right time in the
>right order, sounds like intelligent intervention.
>PM>Again, it might sound like such but need not be.
What else could it be. Blind nature cannot plan ahead:
"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", Penguin:
London, 1991, p5)
Yet Darwinism requires that the right mutations come along in the
right animal, at the right time, in the right sequence. For example,
the only animal (a light boned reptile) that could benefit from a
feather developed it. Or when Ambulocetus' descendant was ready to
develop a tail fluke it did:
"We may infer from a tail vertebra that Ambulocetus retained a long
and thin mammalian tail, and had not yet evolved the horizontal
fluke." (Gould S.J., "Dinosaur in a Haystack", 1995, p372)
'Blind watchmaker' Neo-Darwinism has no plausible explanation of how
all the separate and unrelated pieces of the jigsaw puzzle came
together at the right time, in the right animal line, in the right
sequence to produce human intelligence. As a leading evolutionist
anthropologist Lovejoy puts it:
`...man is not only a unique animal, but the end product of a
completely unique evolutionary pathway, the elements of which are
traceable at least to the beginnings of the Cenozoic. We find, then,
that the evolution of cognition is the product of a variety of
influences and preadaptive capacities, the absence of any one of
which would have completely negated the process, and most of which
are unique attributes of primates and/or hominids. Specific dietary
shifts, bipedal locomotion, manual dexterity, control of differentiated
muscles of facial expression, vocalization, intense social and
parenting behaviour (of specific kinds), keen stereoscopic vision, and
even specialized forms of sexual behaviour, all qualify as irreplaceable
elements. It is evident that the evolution of cognition is neither the
result of an evolutionary trend nor an event of even the lowest
calculable probability, but rather the result of a series of highly
specific evolutionary events whose ultimate cause is traceable to
selection for unrelated factors such as locomotion and diet."
(Lovejoy C.O., in Billingham J., ed, "Life in the Universe", 1981,
p326 ,in Barrow J.D. & Tipler F.J. "The Anthropic Cosmological
Principle", 1996 reissue, pp132-133)
The rapid aquisition of these these unrelated but coordinated
anatomical systems in the only animal line that could use them,
presents `blind watchmaker' Darwinism with "total conceptual
bankruptcy":
"Gradualists and saltationists alike are completely incapable of giving
a convincing explanation of the quasi-simultaneous emergence of a
number of biological systems that distinguish human beings from the
higher primates: bipedalism, with the concomitant modification of the
pelvis, and, without a doubt, the cerebellum, a much more dexterous
hand, with fingerprints conferring an especially fine tactile sense; the
modifications of the pharynx which permits phonation; the
modification of the central nervous system, notably at the level of the
temporal lobes, permitting the specific recognition of speech. From
the point of view of embryogenesis, these anatomical systems are
completely different from one another. Each modification constitutes
a gift, a bequest from a primate family to its descendants. It is
astonishing that these gifts should have developed simultaneously.
Some biologists speak of a predisposition of the genome. Can anyone
actually recover the predisposition, supposing that it actually existed?
Was it present in the first of the fish? The reality is that we are
confronted with total conceptual bankruptcy." (Schutzenberger M-P,
"The Miracles of Darwinism: Interview with Marcel-Paul
Schutzenberger", Origins & Design, Vol. 17.2, Spring 1996)
[continued]
Regards
Steve
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| Stephen E (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ sejones@ibm.net |
| 3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ Steve.Jones@health.wa.gov.au |
| Warwick 6024 ->*_,--\_/ Phone +61 9 448 7439 (These are |
| Perth, West Australia v my opinions, not my employer's) |
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-------------------------------------------------------------------
| Stephen E (Steve) Jones ,--_|\ sejones@ibm.net |
| 3 Hawker Avenue / Oz \ Steve.Jones@health.wa.gov.au |
| Warwick 6024 ->*_,--\_/ Phone +61 9 448 7439 (These are |
| Perth, West Australia v my opinions, not my employer's) |
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