On Fri, 9 Jan 1998 19:59:33 -0600, Ron Chitwood wrote:
RC>As a creationist, would be interested in your input on how this is
>resolved with macroevolution.
On Mon, 12 Jan 1998 11:29:38 -0600 (CST), Wesley R. Elsberry wrote:
WE>What's to resolve? I fear that I don't see that a question has
>been posed here.
I agree with Wesley at one level. I cannot see there is necessarily
any problem to be resolved between macroevolution and the second law
of thermodynamics. Once energy conversion mechanisms are in place
(eg. photosynthesis), and providing there is a sufficient and
continuous supply of energy, macroevolution can occur under the
second law. There is however, a problem with *the origin of life*
and the SLOT because no one has yet shown how the irreducibly
complex photosynthetic reaction center came into being:
"In fact, none of the papers published in JME over the entire course
of its life as a journal has ever proposed a detailed model by which
a complex biochemical system might have been produced in a gradual,
step-by-step Darwinian fashion. Although many scientists ask how
sequences can change or how chemicals necessary for life might be
produced in the absence of cells, no one has ever asked in the pages
of JME such questions as the following: How did the photosynthetic
reaction center develop? How did intramolecular transport start?"
(Behe M.J., "Darwin's Black Box:", 1996, p176)
On Mon, 12 Jan 1998 10:10:10 -0800 (PST), Greg Billock wrote:
[...]
GB>What is "macroevolution"?
But I suspect there is another level here. Consistent Neo-Darwinists
don't even accept that there is such a thing as "macroevolution":
"The very term macroevolution is enough to make an ultra-Darwinian
snarl. Macroevolution is counterpoised with
microevolution-generation by generation selection-mediated change in
gene frequencies within populations. The debate is over the
question, Are conventional Darwinian microevolutionary processes
sufficient to explain the entire history of life? To
ultra-Darwinians, the very term macroevolution suggests that the
answer automatically no. To them, macroevolution implies the action
of processes-even genetic processes-that are as yet unknown must be
imagined to yield a satisfactory explanation of the history of life."
(Eldredge N., "Reinventing Darwin", 1996, pp126-127)
The orthodox Neo-Darwinist view is that "transpecific evolution [ie.
macroevolution] is nothing but an extrapolation and magnification of
the events that take place within populations and species [ie.
microevolution]:
"The proponents of the synthetic theory maintain that all evolution is
due to the accumulation of small genetic changes, guided by natural
selection, and that transpecific evolution is nothing but an
extrapolation and magnification of the events that take place within
populations and species."(Mayr E., "Populations, Species and
Evolution", 1970, p351)
The battle in evolutionary biology is over the terms of the debate.
Neo-Darwinists try to deny or water down words like "macroevolution",
which might indicate there are other unknown factors (God?) at work
in the major changes in life's history, like design innovations.
Gould et. al. try to paint the classical Neo-Darwinists as somehow
unorthodox (eg. "ultra-Darwinian). See Johnson's brilliant recent
article "The Gorbachev of Darwinism" in First Things January 1998 at
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9801/johnson.html where he
describes this bitter struggle within Darwinism":
"The revisionist Gould calls that picture of ubiquitous selection
"ultra-Darwinism" or "Darwinian fundamentalism," and he attributes it
not to Darwin himself but to contemporary Darwinists like Dawkins and
Dennett. Gould ignores Darwin's own pan-selectionist affirmations
and quotes instead a passage from the sixth and final (1872) edition
of the Origin. There Darwin remarked with some bitterness that
critics had, by "steady misrepresentation," overlooked his
qualification that "natural selection has been the main but not the
exclusive means of modification" (emphasis added). Whether the
qualification amounts to much is hard to say, since a few exceptions
to an otherwise pervasive pattern of selectionism would be consistent
with the modest disclaimer that natural selection is not literally
"exclusive." (Johnson P.E., "The Gorbachev of Darwinism", First
Things 79, January 1998, pp14-16.
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9801/johnson.html)
Johnson compares Gould's predicament with that of Gorbachev, trying
to reform a bankrupt, tottering system without upsetting the ruling
hard-liners:
"Gould's uncomfortable situation reminds me of the self-created
predicament of Mikhail Gorbachev in the last years of the Soviet
Empire. Gorbachev recognized that something had gone wrong with the
Communist system, but thought that the system itself could be
preserved if it was reformed. His democratic friends warned him that
the Marxist fundamentalists would inevitably turn against him, but he
was unwilling to endanger his position in the ruling elite by
following his own logic to its necessary conclusion. Gould, like
Gorbachev, deserves immense credit for bringing glasnost to a closed
society of dogmatists. And, like Gorbachev, he lives on as a sad
reminder of what happens to those who lack the nerve to make a clean
break with a dying theory."
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 8 9448 7439
Perth, West Australia v "Test everything." (1Thess 5:21)
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