"Stephen E. Jones" wrote: (10/5/00; 8:11 am)
Rather than duplicate this lengthy post, I'll simply add a couple of potentially
useful thoughts.
1) Your list of 47 specific aspects that should be considered in any "evolution
simulating" program is quite impressive. But there are at least two more that may
be even more critical. Namely, a factor to reflect the inclination of many
mutations to revert back to the original (established) DNA code at a higher than
expected rate .... and .... another factor to reflect the progressively negative
effect of recessive, genetic "load". All physical experimental observations (and
mathematical analysis) show this negative genetic "burden" to build up over
time....often to the point of extinction ... particularly in smaller populations as
so often postulated. Time is actually a greater "barrier" to evolutionary advance
than being the all-powerful "solution" as frequently claimed by evolutionists.
2) Your following citation also brings up another interesting, but unrelated
thought.
"Despite a close watch, we have witnessed no new species emerge in the wild in
recorded history. Also, most remarkably, we have seen no new animal species emerge
in domestic breeding. That includes no new species of fruitflies in hundreds
of millions of generations in fruitfly studies, where both soft and harsh pressures
have been deliberately applied to the fly populations to induce speciation.
And in computer life, where the term "species" does not yet have meaning, we see
no cascading emergence of entirely new kinds of variety beyond an initial burst. In
the wild, in
breeding, and in artificial life, we see the emergence of variation. But by the
absence of greater change, we also clearly see that the limits of variation appear
to be narrowly bounded, and often bounded within species. ... No one has yet
witnessed, in the fossil record, in real life, or in computer life, the exact
transitional moments when natural selection pumps its complexity up to the next
level.
There is a suspicious barrier in the vicinity of species that either holds back
this critical change or removes it from our sight. (Kelly K.,"Out of Control: The
New Biology of Machines", 1995, p475)
A recent Washington Post article on endangered species by Advanced Cell
Technologist Robert Lanza tells us "One hundred species are lost every day, and
these mass erxtinctions are mostly our own doing." As an OEC (Old Earth
Creationist), could you comment on how many years this imbalance has been going
on? And perhaps explain how OEE (Old Earth Evolutionists) might possibly explain
it?
3) Your excerpts from mathematicians Schutzenberger and Eden from the 1966 Wistar
Symposium MATHEMATICAL CHALLENGES TO THE NEO-DARWINIAN INTERPRETATION OF EVOLUTION
(with participants as Medawar, Mayr, Fox, Eiseley, Lewontin, etc., etc.) were both
pertinent and interesting. I would like to add one more. This by Dr. Eden on
page 109 where he states: "It is our contention that if 'random' is given a
serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the
randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory
of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural
laws--physical, physico-chemical and biological."
Thus, over 30 years ago, Dr. Eden was acknowledging the very problem (inadequacy of
Random Mutations and Natural Selection [RM+NS] to explain biological evolution)
which Dembski, Johnson, Behe, et al are today addressing as Intelligent Design
(ID), Irreducible Complexity (IC), etc. -- and which evolutionists, like ostriches,
prefer not to acknowledge rather than facing up to reality.
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