(1) Where did you get the idea that PE doesn't have a mechanism?
(2) Would you also criticize Newton and Galileo for their failure to
have mechanisms?
---ANSWERS:(1) You are right, my mistake, punctuated equilibrium (PE) apparentlydoes have a mechanism, actually, it has mechanisms. However, incontrast with the Darwinian mechanism it pales in elegance and appeal. I've heared it described as fuzzy, confused, jagged, tentative,incoherent, uncertain, etc., sort of like one would describe "history"without the historians' records. This is not my idea, this is whatthe fundamentals (Dawkins, Dennet, etc.) are saying.
(2) I would not. Your question, however, makes me think that youthink I was criticizing Gould, and I guess I was, but I was alsocriticizing Dawkins. However, in both cases I was simply repeatingwhat has spilled over to the public eye due to the internal pressure(and I submitted a web-reference). The fact is Gould is more honestthan Dawkins in regards to a fair evaluation of the fossil record;Gould's hero is still Darwin but not Darwinism, so he is careful inhis critique. Dawkins' heros are Darwinism and Darwin, but it onlytakes an honest evolutionists (like Gould) to point out thatgradualism is not what characterizes the punctuated fossil record. Remember that was Gould who called Dawkins a fundamentalist; with theobvious overtones that that title has in American religious history(faith over reason) it is not surprising to see that the pressure wentup.
Things are getting weirder. The morphological derived taxa is notfitting well with the molecular derived taxa. The space inside thecell in crammed with all sort of super-specialized power plants,refineries, waste management mechanisms, etc., etc.. Algorithms tobackproject geneological trees are dramatically failing in thesimplest of experiments possible by following several generations ofuni-cellular organisms and examining their complete genome. And yes,no one has yet provided possible mechanisms for those examples givenby Behe in his book.
To me the preacher was right.
Eccl. 3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has alsoset eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God hasdone from beginning to end.
We shall as human beings, nevertheless, continue our search, and mayour hearts in that search found the one who put in them eternity. ==
EGM"in ipso enim vivimus et movemur et sumus sicut"
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