I wrote:
>But then comes the second question.
>Most of these same "skeptics" also believe that RM&NS were
>indeed the main mechanisms behind the origin of every biological
>feature. Yet when I ask for the evidence behind this belief, I
>get none. What happened to that hard-core skepticism? >>
Huxter replied:
>This is a load of crap.
You are entitled to your opinion.
>I presented to you on the ARN board 2 citations for papers
>that described evidence for positive Darwinian selction. You
>'pooh-poohed' it because the authors didn't rule out 'artificial
>selection' (i.e., design) or some such nonsense.
That you subjectively believe this is "nonsense" does not matter.
Do you have any sound argument for thinking this is "nonsense?"
Clearly it would be nonsense if one adopts a non-teleological
perspective that dictates how one is to interpret data, but if one
does not adopt this perspective, well, nonsense is in the eye of
the beholder.
As I noted, the "positive evidence" you cited is really evidence
that chance alone was not behind the sequence changes. Thus,
if one begins their analysis with only two explanations, chance
alone or chance plus natural selection, eliminating chance is
sufficient. But this is "evidence" that is completely dependent
on one's metaphysics and game rules. Another explanation for
the factor other than chance is some form of intelligent intervention.
Thus, finding that a sequence is not due to chance is not eliminating
the explanation of intelligent intervention. I am just expressing
good old fashioned critical thinking.
>That and, of course, you had originally asked for evidence that
>'NS was the primary driving force behind the evolution of all mammals.'
>That way, when presented with examples of NS, you can reject them
>because they are not exactly, precisely, what yiou 'demanded.'
Yes, I did originally ask for this to determine the evidential basis
for the consensus views that exist. Thus, even
if your two papers did indeed show natural selection at work
(yet this has not been shown), they were still not relevant to
the question I asked.
For some odd reason, you think that employing sound critical
thinking to the proposition you agree with is akin to demanding
some exotic, strange requirement. If I would like to know what
is the evidence that random mutations and natural selection
actually evolved endothermy, why do you think slight sequence
changes in lysozyme are supposed to be the definitive answer?
And note that you persist in assuming the articles provide
evidence of NS. They only provide evidence that something
other than chance was involved. This could be interpreted
to mean we have an adaptive change, but then we might expect
intelligent modifications to prove to be adaptive also. Don't'
you realize just how much your "evidence" is dependent on
your metaphysics?
>Maybe you should ask people in the know your amazing
>questions - like when I asked YOU for evidence supportive
>of ID - you came up with 'maybe' convergence. You have
>NOTHING, yet demand evolutionists provide you with what
>you explicitly demand. What a load..... what a charlatan...
But I never claimed that ID was behind the evolution of mammals.
I cited convergence merely as one possible indicator. As for
evidence supportive of ID, I have indeed presented this on this
list many times now. Recall that my views about ID are tied to
the origin of life (a topic you claimed you didn't care about).
But because I think ID applies at the origin of life, I am also
interested if it applies beyond this event.
It's a shame you view me as a "charlatan" who simply writes
crap and nonsense (however, it is ironic that you became upset
when I noted that most critics of ID approach this whole topic
with a certain flippant arrogance). Clearly, we cannot communicate
about this topic. But as I have outlined before, I think this whole topic
is simply an expression of the two views of teleology and
non-teleology. I'm not convinced that any measurement can
really and clearly resolve such properly basic differences. Thus, I am
simply interested in the evidential basis that seems to convince
so many non-teleologists of their origin stories and, not
surprisingly, find that it seems to be their metaphysics which
is dictating to the data. Thus, it would seem to me that
since there is no metaphysics-independent evidence that
RM&NS evolved these things, the objective answer is that we
really don't know how these things came into being (although
their coming into being seems to have resulted in something
we call 'evolution.'). We can say that from a non-teleological
perspective, data can be interpreted to mean X and from a teleological
perspective, data can be interpreted to mean Y. Whether or not
either of these alternative explanations (X or Y) is the True One
is something we simply can't say.
Mike
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