Then an amazing thing happened. Salvador Cordova, another well-known creationist, posted a comment on one of Torley's blog posts. You can see it as comment #39 on Branko Kozulic responds to Professor Moran. Cordova was responding to comments posted by Nick Matzke and "WD400" on that same post. Here's what Sal Cordova said,
Dr. Torley,The reason why this is so remarkable is that it almost never happens under the creationist big tent. Different Intelligent Design Creationists have widely conflicting views ranging from Young Earth Creationism to Theistic Evolution Creationism but they always manage to cover up those conflicts and present a united front in attacking evolution.
I’m sorry I must sympathize with Nick Matzke (puke) and WD400 objections, but I feel some obligation to ask you to at least pause and reconsider.
The YEC Creationist genetics model, Mendel’s Account agrees to great degree with Larry Moran, Nick Matzke, and WD400. Mendel’s accountant was developed by John Sanford (applied geneticist), Walter ReMine (ID author), John Baumgardner (Princeton and Sandia Lab Scientist), Wes Brewer (MIT PhD), Paul Gipson (Professor of Population Genetics), Robert Carter (PhD genetic engineer and population geneticist), several un-named guilty parties. Mendel’s accountant was featured at the Cornell conference.
...
I hate being on the opposite side of the majority ID view, but like the arguments over the 2nd law, I have a responsibility to ID students matriculating through secular universities in science curricula to speak up if I think the ID side should reconsider what they are saying. I could of course be wrong too, but I hope you’ll recognize, not every ID proponent would be enthused to disagree with Dr. Moran on the neutral fixation issue. Neutral evolution has it’s flaws, but this isn’t necessarily one worth going after.
In the first of those posts, Kozulic says, "Since my reputation is at stake, I kindly ask you to make my position public in another post at Uncommondescent under the title: ‘When I am not wrong’ ...." I responded to Kozulic's questions. I think there are several Intelligent Design Creationists who will be satisfied with my response.
As you can imagine, these posts have caused a bit of a kerfluffle on Uncommon Descent. If you read the comments, you'll see that some hard-core creationists aren't at all happy to admit that they don't understand evolution and they are even less happy to admit that some scientists might have been right and some creationist might have been wrong. Something has to be done about that.
The most comprehensive software model of textbook population genetics for important evolutionary questions was Mendel’s Accountant. It was written by 10 or so creationists (some from top tier science institutions like Cornell, MIT and Princeton), but Darwinists refuse to acknowledge it by saying it is unrealistic, whereas they celebrate Avida and Steiner which have no basis in biological reality whatsoever! With all the nasty comments about Mendel’s Accountant, the critics seem unwilling to actually write and publish software that has the “right” parameters, and not even that, they can’t point you to an existing simulation that materially disagrees with Mendel’s Accountant.His point is that Darwinism is wrong! According to Cordova, evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins don't understand evolution and the creationists were right all all along to question Darwinism.
The claim of this essay is that real evolution of populations as modeled by textbook population genetics does not conform to the Darwinian view, but rather the non-Darwinian view.
Cordova drives home this point in his next post [ Neutral theory and non-Darwinian evolution for newbies, Part 2], where he makes sure that creationists get credit for opposing Richard Dawkins ...
The present state of affairs is that both evolutionists and creationists with background in population genetics agree that IF we evolved, most of the traits became fixed without the influence of selection. Thus most evolution, if it is unguided and not front loaded, would essentially be random.Of course that does present a bit of a problem for creationists since some of their opponents have been arguing all along that there's more to evolution than just Darwinism. This led to a serious of posts where Sal Cordova assaults people like Richard Lewontin [Dawkins’s Vulgarization of Darwinism and Lewontin’s non-answers], and me [Recommending Larry Moran’s textbook without reading it].1 Denyse O'Leary jumps in by attacking PZ Myers [Did PZ Myers have anything to do with vanishing newspapers?].
These considerations contradict Dawkins’ claim: ...
Cordova also tries to regain the respect of his IDiot friends by accusing Chalres Darwin of plagiarism [Evidence of natural selection is not evidence against design, the Designer made NS].
- Darwinism; If the Idiots have been misinformed about evolution, which they have, then who is responsible and why were they misled by so many of their leaders?
- Social Darwinism: If evolutionary biologists really believe in Neutral Theory and random genetic drift then how can they be supporters of the evil consequences of nineteenth century Darwinism? What about all those posts where evolutionary biologists were compared to eugenicists, racists, and Nazis?
- Common Descent: This is a biggy. If Sal Cordova and the evolutionary biologists are right about the sequence differences between humans and chimpanzees, then it must mean that humans and chimps share a common ancestor. There will be no room under the big tent for Young Earth Creationists.
- Junk DNA: If Cordova is right then most of the stochastic substitutions in the human genome are neutral. This must mean that most of our genome is junk. Oops! That won't sit well with many creationists.
- Theistic Evolution:There's only one group that's more evil than materialistic scientists and that's theistic evolutionists. They are traitors. But if the IDiots actually were to accept the fundamental concepts of evolution, as Sal Cordova and Vincent Torely seem to be doing, then where does that leave Theistic Evolution Creationism? This cold be embarrassing when you look at all the posts on Uncommon Descent where theistic evolutionst have been mercilessly attacked.
I don't expect Denyse O'Leary to stop posting.
1. He points out that Micheal Behe has sold more copies of Darwin's Black Box on Amazon than copies of the latest version of my textbook. He quotes some negative reviews of my book from students on Amazon who were "forced" to use it in their biochemistry course.
56 comments :
This is going to be interesting... ;-)
Junk DNA: If Cordova is right then most of the stochastic substitutions in the human genome are neutral. This must mean that most of our genome is junk. Oops! That won't sit well with many creationists.
I doubt many YEC or Intelligent Design folks have yet made the logical step from (1) most substitutions are neutral to (2) most of the genome ain't critical (or even at all important).
Yeah, Cordova and Torley now have to admit that most of the human genome is JUNK.
They put their heads right down the cannon.
Hilarious!
LoL! As if all evolutionists agree on everything evolution! Heck from what I have read most evos don't understand evolution.
No one can model unguided evolution. So how can anyone understand it?
Modern evolutionary "theory":
Mutations happen. They are chance events, ie genetic accidents. If they are detrmental they are likely to be removed depending on the degree of harm caused. Otherwise they get kept.
NS and drift are blind and mindless processes. They do not act for any future needs.
These genetic accidents that are kept can then accumulate until somethng like a fatal mutation stops them from doing so. Catastrophies are also good stoppers.
Sometimes these accidents accumulate in such a way as to give rise to new molecular machinery, new body plans and new body parts. Sometimes they don't- they accumulate with hardly any noticable effect. Meaning mutations can cause a change or they have effectively no effect.
Of course no one knows what makes an organism what it is but evolution absolutely depends on it being a sum of its genome- so far untested.
We do not attack evolution. ID is not anti-evolution. We attack blind watchmaker/ unguided evolution. And seeing that no one can model it the question should be why doesn't everyone attack it?
We do not attack science. We attack materialism's interpretation of science.
Geez Larry if you can't even get the basics right...
We do not attack evolution. ID is not anti-evolution. We attack blind watchmaker/ unguided evolution. And seeing that no one can model it the question should be why doesn't everyone attack it?
Then you'd better hustle on over to Uncommon Descent. Right now, that village is missing a lot of IDiots.
I should hustle over to UD because you are an ignorant moron? How does that work? Heck your blog is full of idiots. And as opposed to you I would gladly say that to all of your faces
I'd be more than happy to say it to your face. What's your real name and where do you really live?
Joe Gallien, Ashburnham, MA- just let me know when you are coming and I will tell you where we can meet.
Jon G, can you model the version of evolution that you accept?
Is Troley a theistic evolutionists? What about Cordova?
Genetic and evolutionary algorithms model Intelligent Design Evolution.
Translation- Mikkel is ignorant
Ignorant of a phrase you just made up, "Genetic and evolutionary algorithms model Intelligent Design Evolution", Chubs.
#2: I have never seen the connection between those anyway. Tainting evolutionary biologists with Social 'Darwinism' is like arguing that everybody who accepts the theory of gravity must be in favour of pushing people off high buildings.
#4: It would be naive to assume that creationists cannot accept the first part without drawing the necessary conclusion. After all, there position is nonsensical and full of self-contradictions anyway.
#5: To me, theistic evolution is simply indistinguishable from Old Earth Creationism anyway, so what is the additional problem here?
Of course no one knows what makes an organism what it is but evolution absolutely depends on it being a sum of its genome- so far untested.
Amazing to be able to cram so very much that is simply wrong into the space of one sentence.
So it's never been tested that the genome is what makes one or two organisms give rise to other organisms of the same species? And no one knows this? (Hint: Google "Watson and Crick.")
Genetic and evolutionary algorithms model Intelligent Design Evolution.
Interesting you can say that, since you've given no indication of understanding what those "algorithms" are, down to the fundamental principles of the way the math works.
We attack blind watchmaker/ unguided evolution.
'Cause only a supremely intelligent entity would know enough to put useless nipples on guys.
These IDiots really are enthralled by their vapid technical jargon. Stick the word "machine" or "information" in some sentence about biology and their heads explode.
Particularly gruesome examples are seen in the pseudo-publications of YEC David "Department of ProtoBioCybernetics and ProtoBioSemiotics" Abel. They're so overloaded with fancy sounding words used in engineering and computer science, IDiots often quote them all over the place without even knowing what any of it means.
"there position"? Did I really do that? Excuse me while I put some ash onto my head...
Genetic and evolutionary algorithms use goal-oriented targeted searches to achieve their results. Natural selection is NOT like that. Drift is not like that..judmarc you are just a moron and mikkel is an imecile
Genetic and evolutionary algorithms use goal-oriented targeted searches to achieve their results. Natural selection is NOT like that
But of course it is. That's why those algorithms are called "evolutionary."
To enlarge on that just a bit: For natural selection, the "goal," i.e., the selection criterion, is reproductive success. That's what an evolutionary algorithm does as well - it makes changes, or mutations, that are tested against the selection criterion, or goal.
To enlarge on that just a bit: For natural selection, the "goal," i.e., the selection criterion, is reproductive success. That's what an evolutionary algorithm does as well - it makes changes, or mutations, that are tested against the selection criterion, or goal.
You're wasting your time. Joe G is too mentally challenged to understand this. For Joe G it's all a semantic game. Only he is too stupid to understand that for him it's all a semantic game.
Nice moronic spewage. GAs have SPECIFIC goals. They are designed to solve problems.
Natural selection does NOT have any goals- it is blind and mindless. It does not care about the future. You are ignorant of evolution.
See Larry, I told you there are evos who are ignorant of evolution.
BTW Ernst Mayr said NS is eliminative- it does not select "What Evolution Is"
For Joe G it's a test for intelligent design if you make an experiment, no matter what the experiment is testing. His mind is too narrow to understand experimentation and its relation to what's being tested. This is so extreme that if you show him evidence for evolution in the wild, he will claim that because a scientist measured something then this evolution in the wild proves intelligent design. No way around, any human does as much as smell a flower. There! It proves intelligent design! You discover some fossils showing each and every step in the evolution of some animals? There! Some scientists excavated! Therefore those fossils prove intelligent design! Oh, but he's serious! He is not trying to be dishonest. He is just that incredibly stupid.
Oh dear, Chubs is having another meltdown and it isn't even Friday!
Definitions are all about semantics- and seeing that we are talking about definitions, semantics rules. It isn't a game though.
It's useless Joe G. You're mentally challenged. You would not understand any explanations. I know this for a fact. You demonstrate so in your "answers" to what others here have attempted to explain.
Go ahead, shows us more of your mental challenges Joe G. Oh, how cute this poor mentally challenged Joe G. Come Joey. Have some candy. There. Good boy Joey, good boy.
Definitions are all about semantics- and seeing that we are talking about definitions, semantics rules. It isn't a game though.
Pf course not Joey. Of course not. Here, more candy little idiot. Come on.
Oh, but he's serious! He is not trying to be dishonest. He is just that incredibly stupid.
Joe would have to raise his IQ by 30 points just to reach the level of incredibly stupid.
Oh dear, Chubs is having another meltdown and it isn't even Friday!
Another? He's constantly melting poor little idiot.
Joe would have to raise his IQ by 30 points just to reach the level of incredibly stupid.
Nah, you're giving him too much credit, while I was out of adjectives. The limitations of language and mathematics.
...and the discourse degrades with name-calling based on genitals and sexual orientations. One more consequence of the turmoil over at UD, I guess. Good christians.
Most times they don't wait for the bell to ring...
Poor Joey G still projecting. Here Joey, have some more candy and some immaterial information you poor little idiot. Not to worry Joey! It's immaterial! No books! No school! No computers! None of the stuff that so challenges you Joey! It's immaterial! It will use no space in your little tiny tiny mind! It's immaterial! Good boy! Who's a good boy? Joey G!
sez alex sl:
"#2: I have never seen the connection between those anyway. Tainting evolutionary biologists with Social 'Darwinism' is like arguing that everybody who accepts the theory of gravity must be in favour of pushing people off high buildings."
The connection is Darwinism, of course. It's a guilt-by-association tactic. Social Darwinism is a BadThing™, don'cha know?
"#4: It would be naive to assume that creationists cannot accept the first part without drawing the necessary conclusion. After all, there position is nonsensical and full of self-contradictions anyway."
Yep. Creationism demands that its adherents believe six impossible things before breakfast (or 12+, in the case of Young Earth Creationism), so what's one more self-contradiction?
"#5: To me, theistic evolution is simply indistinguishable from Old Earth Creationism anyway, so what is the additional problem here?"
The additional problem is that evolution contradicts Creationists' religious beliefs. OECs accept more of the findings of real science than YECs, but in both cases, we're talking about people who know that evolution must be wrong because Jesus. See Kurt Wise, a YEC who is on record as acknowledging that evolution is 100% valid from as scientific point of view, but who nonetheless denies evolution because it makes mincemeat of his religious beliefs.
Nice moronic spewage. GAs have SPECIFIC goals. They are designed to solve problems.
Natural selection does NOT have any goals- it is blind and mindless. It does not care about the future.
I'm of course not bothering to respond for Joe's sake, since we all know what his reply will be like if he makes one. But for those interested in some further detail about genetic algorithms and how they relate to "unguided" evolution:
I have a very good friend who has used genetic algorithms in work he's done for the US Department of Defense. The situation I've discussed most extensively with him involves the targeting system for the US high-tech anti-missile defense system popularly known as "Star Wars."
With "Star Wars," the problem is to accurately concentrate lased light or other radiation from a mobile platform (the platform must be as high as possible to minimize the horizon as an obstacle) on an extremely fast moving target steadily enough for the beam to destroy the target. Not only must the relative motions of target and source be taken into account, but also atmospheric conditions that chaotically affect the beam's direction and focus to quite a significant degree considering the distance involved and the necessary targeting accuracy.
These conditions are sufficiently chaotic that no human is capable of considering everything that's necessary to design an effective targeting algorithm. So what is done is to allow the targeting algorithm to change - "mutate" - randomly, and the resulting algorithms with their random changes are then tested to see which gives the best targeting results. It is essential that the changes in the algorithms be as random and unrestricted as possible in order to explore the widest possible solution space.
So in the evolutionary algorithm situation:
- The intelligent human "designer" doesn't have the answer. If he or she did, evolutionary algorithms would be unnecessary.
- It's essential that the algorithms evolve as randomly as possible. It's counterproductive to have intelligent input - i.e., to restrict the solution space to less than all random changes - because the human "designer" doesn't know where in the solution space the answer may be found.
This points out the fallacy behind the thinking that "unguided" evolution is somehow less effective because it's unguided. Just as with the evolutionary algorithm situation, the only "goal" in evolution is what's most effective in terms of the selection criterion - breeding success in evolution, targeting success in the Star Wars example. Just as with the Star Wars example, restricting mutations to less than all the random ones that are possible is less effective at exploring the total solution space.
Time and again we see in the real world that teleology is *less* effective than simple random chance and fundamental law at creating the most astonishing (and astonishingly complex) variation.
"What would happen if Intelligent Design Creationists understood evolution?"
Well, I presume they would no longer be ID creationists.
Dave Bailey
Cordova is a Floodite. He says that 4,300 years ago, the entire Earth was flooded during the Fifth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of Egypt, and all land animals today are descended from populations of ONE breeding pair on the Ark which hyper-evolved and mega-diversified in just 4 thousand years to make all of today's knagaroos, wallabies, wallaroos, anacondas, etc. Radiometric dating? Vast international conspiracy.
Torley is an ID philosopher who says he doesn't oppose common descent, but in fact, like all IDers except Michael Behe, Torley fights common descent tooth and nail, employing every trick you can imagine. He does not challenge radiometric dating.
Professor Moran says:
"What Neutral Theory tells us is that a huge number of mutations are neutral and there are far more neutral mutations fixed by random genetic drift that there are beneficial mutations fixed by natural selection. The conclusion is inescapable. Random genetic drift is, by far, the dominant mechanism of evolution."
"Junk DNA: If Cordova is right then most of the stochastic substitutions in the human genome are neutral. This must mean that most of our genome is junk. "
If this is correct is it correct to conclude that most of the evolution is due to junk DNA?
Can you give solid arguments that evolution can be driven by random drift of random errors in a DNA full of junk? Isn't that as saying we can build (whatever) by random destruction of garbage?
How can 100000 generations of random drift of random errors in a DNA full of junk produce a human out of a monkey ancestor?
What Larry is saying is that drift dominates in terms of quantity. But nobody denies that selection is important. The small percentage of changes due to selection are mostly responsible for what you call producing "a human out of a monke ancestor".
How can 100000 generations of random drift of random errors in a DNA full of junk produce a human out of a monkey ancestor?
Because some small percentage of all those mutations will have phenotypic effect that changes the species over all those generations.
Don't tell me this answer wasn't immediately obvious to you.
"The small percentage of changes due to selection are mostly responsible for what you call producing "a human out of a monke ancestor""
If this is true then the most important mechanism of evolution are RM + NS. True evolution is getting from monkey to human,then what random drift is doing is just side noise.
The implication would be that modern evolutionary theory brought nothing special to neo darwinism. The core issues of the debate are still the darwinian mechanisms. Indeed what random mutations and natural selection can't do, random drift doesn't help do it.
So the criticism that creationists are stuck at the neo darwinian paradigm is for granted.
I asked: "How can 100000 generations of random drift of random errors in a DNA full of junk produce a human out of a monkey ancestor?"
- "Because some small percentage of all those mutations will have phenotypic effect that changes the species over all those generations.
Don't tell me this answer wasn't immediately obvious to you."
Is obvious that random processes can't produce a human out of monkey ancestor.
Is also obvious that if there would be evidence that it could we would know about it.
M Behe:
"No matter if a monkey is rearranging single letters or whole chapters, incoherence plagues every step. ... One step might luckily be helpful on occasion, maybe rarely a second step might build on it. But Darwinian processes in particular and unintelligent ones in general don't build coherent systems. "
Is also obvious that if there would be evidence that it could we would know about it.
Is this a monkey typing?
Is obvious that random processes can't produce a human out of monkey ancestor.
No it isn't. Turns out a simple iterative process can more that adequately do the job and that this has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt.
Is also obvious that if there would be evidence that it could we would know about it.
There is and we do.
Is obvious that random processes can't produce a human out of monkey ancestor.
Argumentum ad itsobviousum!
Without drift, genomes would tend to move to local fitness maxima and stop there until the environment changes (which is itself pretty likely, of course). Drift (and mutation, and recombination) has the effect of constantly 'shaking the tree' (to mix metaphors), allowing higher fitness peaks to be reached, and producing new 'environments' - new contexts within which adaptation can operate. It increases the dimensionality of what can be characterised as an optimisation process.
It's true that the kind of 'random' you are thinking of would probably not mould a language facility, increase in brain size, tool use, opposable thumbs to assist in use of a stick-shift, etc. Nonetheless, many of the 'important' differences (we're somewhat biased in our assessment of what they are) may well be due to random factors.
"Without drift, genomes would tend to move to local fitness maxima and stop there"
Not quite. Genomes would move along gradients of the fitness landscape and stop whereever the gradient is 0. That's the case for saddle points as well as local maxima. And if you got to a local minimum for some reason, you'd be stuck there as well.
"No it isn't. Turns out a simple iterative process can more that adequately do the job and that this has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt."
Sure if the iterative process is guided.
Is also obvious that if there would be evidence that it could we would know about it.
"There is and we do."
There isn't, you would have shown.
M Behe:
"No matter if a monkey is rearranging single letters or whole chapters, incoherence plagues every step. ... One step might luckily be helpful on occasion, maybe rarely a second step might build on it. But Darwinian processes in particular and unintelligent ones in general don't build coherent systems. "
Genomes aren't books, and nucleotides aren't letters. It's a strained analogy.
Yes the analogy fails because genes are governed by biochemical interactions while written letters don't.
If this is correct is it correct to conclude that most of the evolution is due to junk DNA?
You're missing the genetic load point.
If mutations are occurring all the time (and they do) and they can be bad (and of course they can), then if a species' entire genome was vital and none of it was ineffective unimportant junk, the entire species would quickly go extinct as bad mutations occurred all the time that fouled up vital functions. That's one reason we know a great deal of the genome is junk, because we know there are mutations steadily occurring in our genomes, yet humans as a species aren't going extinct from those mutations. Therefore the mutations must by definition be occurring in parts of the genome that are *not* important to human survival and reproduction.
Now, re evolution: You're being more restrictive in your definition than experts in the subject. You seem to be interested only in gross changes in appearance and/or function (way on the phenotypic end), while most experts would include changes in allele frequency (the genotypic end) in the definition of evolution. This includes changes brought about by selection and drift, thus changes in both the functional and the "junk" parts of the genome. It's my impression as a layperson (ready to be corrected) that genes under selection will tend to change more rapidly and have the changes conserved to a greater extent than those parts of the genome changing due to drift.
Unknown, you're thinking a guided process must of necessity be more effective, but in fact history and experience don't show that. If anything, they show the opposite.
Think about something as ordinary as siding - does "wood grain" vinyl siding look more real than wood? Yet the look of the vinyl is intelligently designed, while the look of the wood is random. Why doesn't the intelligently designed piece do a better job of looking real?
Think about the path of the Mississippi. Just water and erosion and lots of time. Is that path complicated? Have a look at a map some time - the answer is obviously yes. Do you know of any intelligently designed waterway that displays such complexity?
Clearly effectiveness and complexity need not have intelligent guidance as prerequisites.
More to the point about books and letters - who determined those symbols were "letters," and part of a "language" like English, French, Arabic, etc.? Were those languages pre-planned in accordance with a design, or did they naturally evolve over time? So the very fact there *are* letters, words, and books in various languages stems not from design but from a natural evolution of human languages.
Considering the point 3 of the pr Larry Moran question,
“…/…3. Common Descent: This is a biggy. If Sal Cordova and the evolutionary biologists are right about the sequence differences between humans and chimpanzees, then it must mean that humans and chimps share a common ancestor. There will be no room under the big tent for Young Earth Creationists…./…”
I have to day sufficient consistent material, data and results to demonstrate – considering the chromosome4 – that this human chromosome is an exception and “out of continuity” comparing it with all other primates chromosomes4 and all 23 remaining human chromosomes:
The 5 steps of my upcoming demonstration are:
Phase 1 – Analysis of populations of codons:
Correllations 99.99% of the genomes of humans and chimpanzees but emergence of two clusters of chromosomes highly differentiated (human chromosomes 16 17 19 20 and 22).
Phase 2 – Evidence of a classification scale of the 24 human chromosomes (focusing particularly on the 2 extremal limit borders chromosome4 and chromosome 19).
Phase 3 – The chromosome4: significant differentiations between primates (human, chimp, gorilla, oran utang).
Phase 4 – The chromosome4: Meta-exclusive differentiation between humans and other primates (chimp, gorilla, oran utang).
Phase 5 – chromosome4: Meta-exclusive differentiation vis-à-vis the other 23 human chromosomes.
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