Reflectorites
On Thu, 7 Sep 2000 19:24:09 EDT, Bertvan@aol.com wrote:
BV>(Schutzenberger M-P, "The
>Miracles of Darwinism: Interview with Marcel-Paul Schutzenberger,"
>Origins & Design, Vol. 17, No. 2, Spring 1996, pp.10-15.
>
>http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od172/schutz172.htm
[...]
BV>The interview with Schutzenberger was excellent. Easy to understand. I am
>relieved there are such scientists, although apparently few of them are
>biologists.
Thanks to Berthajane. But IMHO we should assume that there are only a
"few" biologists who doubt the adequacy of random mutation and natural
selection.
I would not be surprised if *most* biologists doubt it. Certainly a large
minority do. As the paleontologist Olson pointed out at the even in
heyday of Neo-Darwinism, there were a large number of biologists
who disagreed with Neo-Darwinism but who, for various reasons,
preferred to remain silent:
"E. C. Olson, one of the speakers at the Darwinian Centennial
Celebration at Chicago, made the following statement on that
occasion:
`There exists, as well, a generally silent group of students engaged
in biological pursuits who tend to disagree with much of the current
thought but say and write little because they are not particularly
interested do not see that controversy over evolution is of any
particular importance, or are so strongly in disagreement that it
seems futile to undertake the monumental task of controverting the
immense body of information and theory that exists in the
formulation of modern thinking It is, of course, difficult to judge
the size and composition of this silent segment but there is no doubt
that the numbers are not inconsiderable.' (Olson E.C., in Tax S.,
ed., "Evolution after Darwin," Vol. 1, 1960, p.523)
(Gish D.T., in Ruse M., ed., "But is it Science?", 1996, p.268).
But the problem is that RM&NS is the least falsifiable naturalistic
theory so the minority of Neo-Darwinists are able to rule the majority.
This is not to say that this silent large minority (or even majority) of
biologists would agree with ID. Most of them would have their own
favourite `hobby horse' mechanism, or just assume that it must have been
some combination of naturalistic mechanisms, even if we don't know what
they were.
BV>(This one was a French mathematician and now deceased.)
Schutzenberger was, in addition to being a mathematician, also a
medical doctor. He made a special study of Neo-Darwinism (and so
was probably an example of what Olson meant by the broad term
"silent group of students engaged in biological pursuits).
In fact Schutzenberger was one of the group of mathematicians who
challenged leading Neo-Darwinists at the Wistar Institute in 1966:
"In 1966 there was an inconclusive and often ill-tempered two-day
symposium at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in the
University of Pennsylvania entitled 'Mathematical Challenges to the
Neo- Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution'. Here it became clear
that doubts among biologists were doubled and redoubled by
physicists, mathematicians and engineers, some of whom were
openly incredulous at the lack of a testable scientific basis for
evolutionary theory. ... Computer scientists, especially, were baffled
as to how random mutations alone could possibly enrich the library
of genetic information. A mutation, they repeatedly pointed out, is a
mistake - the equivalent of a copying error. ... Marcel P.
Schutzenberger, a computer scientist from the University of Paris,
agreed that spontaneous improvement and enlargement of the code
through mutations and natural selection was 'not conceivable'. `In
fact, if we try to simulate such a situation by making changes
randomly at the typographic level (by letter or by blocks, the size of
the unit does not really matter) on computer programmes, we find
that we have no chance (that is, less than one chance in 10^1,000)
even to see what the modified programme would compute: it just
jams.' And he summed up: 'We believe that there is a considerable
gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe this
gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged within the
current conception of biology.' (Schutzenberger M.P., in Moorhead
P.S. & Kaplan M.M., eds., "Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-
Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution," Wistar Institute Press:
Philadelphia PA, 1967, p. 70)
(Hitching F., "The Neck of the Giraffe: Or Where Darwin Went
Wrong", 1982, pp.82-83)
BV>Do you
>suppose American biologists are denser than those in other countries? Or
>maybe American biologists have their mind more on "fighting creationists"
>than on science.
I think the latter is the main problem. In Europe and the UK, Christianity in
the main sought a `theistic evolution' compromise, whereas the USA with
its higher percentage of evangelicals, the tendency has been for Christians
to seek to challenge Darwinism rather than to accommodate to it.
Also Darwinism was not as strong in Europe. For example, Pierre Grasse,
president of the French Academy of Sciences, Chair of Evolution at the
Sorbonne for 30 years, and editor of a 28-volume encyclopedia of zoology,
of whom even his opponent Dobzhansky said: "His knowledge of the living
world is encyclopedic", was an anti-Darwinist!
[...]
On Mon, 11 Sep 2000 20:05:09 -0500, Susan Brassfield Cogan wrote:
[...]
>SJ>That is, they should ask themselves whether the fact that they spend their
>>time and energy attacking their fellow Christians who are arguing against
>>anti-Christian philosophies like materialism, naturalism and Darwinism, and
>>defending their atheist/agnostics colleagues who hold those philosophies, is
>>not good evidence that they themselves have in fact been taken captive by
>>those "hollow and deceptive" philosophies?
SB>Cliff stated that Dembski had lied to him personally. Why should he support
>and defend such a person? Indeed how could he do it and remain a Christian?
Cliff gave no details and Dembski has not had the opportunity to respond.
Susan once claimed that I lied and I *know* I didn't!
As I pointed out, evolutions are prone to assume that anyone who
disagrees with them must be a liar. I assume they are sincere in this, so I
put it down to the reality-distorting influence of their "hollow and deceptive
philosophy" (Colossians 2:8).
SB>And I want Stephen to point out what, specifically, is anti-Christian about
>the following passage:
>(This is from Lenny Flank's website
>http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/therapsd.htm)
>
>. The earliest therapsids show the typical reptilian type of jaw joint,
>with the articular bone in the jaw firmly attached to the quadrate bone in
>the skull. In later fossils from the same group, however, the
>quadrate-articular bones have become smaller, and the dentary and squamosal
>bones have become larger and moved closer together. This trend reaches its
>apex in a group of therapsids known as cynodonts, of which the genus
>Probainognathus is a representative. Probainognathus possessed
>characteristics of both reptile and mammal, and this transitional aspect
>was shown most clearly by the fact that it had TWO jaw joints--one
>reptilian, one mammalian:
>
>"Probainognathus, a small cynodont reptile from the Triassic sediments of
>Argentina, shows characters in the skull and jaws far advanced toward the
>mammalian condition. Thus it had teeth differentiated into incisors, a
>canine and postcanines, a double occipital condyle and a well-developed
>secondary palate, all features typical of the mammals, but most
>significantly the articulation between the skull and the lower jaw was on
>the very threshhold between the reptilian and mammalian condition. The two
>bones forming the articulation between skull and mandible in the reptiles,
>the quadrate and articular respectively, were still present but were very
>small, and loosely joined to the bones that constituted the mammalian joint
>. . . Therefore in Probainognathus there was a double articulation between
>skull and jaw, and of particular interest, the quadrate bone, so small and
>so loosely joined to the squamosal, was intimately articulated with the
>stapes bone of the middle ear. It quite obviously was well on its way
>towards being the incus bone of the three-bone complex that characterizes
>the mammalian middle ear." (Colbert and Morales, 1991, pp. 228-229
Who said this was "anti-Christian"?
Steve
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"A matter of unfinished business for biologists is the identification of
evolution's smoking gun. As long as there have been theories of evolution
(and certainly before Darwin), critics have complained that "the hypothesis
remains destitute of satisfactory evidence" (Rev. William Paley 1802;
quoted in Thomson 1997). ... Perhaps the most obvious challenge is to
demonstrate evolution empirically. There are, arguably, some 2 to 10
million species on earth. The fossil record shows that most species survive
somewhere between 3 and 5 million years. In that case, we ought to be
seeing small but significant numbers of originations and extinctions every
decade. .... The problem of the smoking gun of causality applied severely
to Charles Darwin as he articulated his theory of evolution by natural
selection. He had identified a powerful mechanism of change in living
systems. He had summarized incontrovertible evidence that evolution had
taken place in the fundamental sense of change in life over time (species,
genera, whole phyla). He had demonstrated the equally fundamental
weakness of "multiple creations" as a cause of the different faunas and
floras existing in similar climatic regimes (Europe versus North America,
for example). His problem was the demonstration of a direct and causal
linkage between the evidence of change and the postulated mechanism."
(Thomson K.S., "Natural Selection and Evolution's Smoking Gun",
American Scientist, Vol. 85, No. 6, November-December 1997, p.516)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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