"Stephen E. Jones" writes
in message <200004092210.GAA05235@popserver-02.iinet.net.au>:
> Reflectorites
>
> On Fri, 07 Apr 2000 10:01:15 -0700, Tedd Hadley wrote:
>
> This is my first response to Tedd, so a belated welcome to the Reflector to
> him from me.
>
> Maybe Tedd could tell us a bit about himself?
I'm an ex-creationist, essentially, with mostly non-religious
views. I don't have any specific academic credentials in
evolution or biology, having my degree in CS.
<snip>
> TH>So [Maynard Smith] doesn't believe its an insourmountable problem
> >for evolution, either, eh? I guess he's using "problem"
> >differently from the way you're using it.
>
> Not really. What Tedd is here trying (maybe unconsciously) is
> the old evolutionist trick of attempting to shift the burden of
> proof onto the critic. If the switch is not detected, it no
> longer becomes the evolutionist's job to shown how sex originated
> naturalistically, it becomes the critic's job to show how sex
> could *not* have originated naturalistically!
No switch needed. I took you're original claim as exactly that:
sex could not have originated naturalistically. So you didn't
mean that. Okay. What did you mean?
> I don't say that the origin of sex is "an *insurmountable* problem for
> evolution". In fact I don't say that *anything* is an "*insurmountable*
> problem for evolution." I don't rule out in advance that even
> Darwinian `blind watchmaker' evolution, could be 100% true.
>
> Indeed, I have come to realise that even if fully naturalistic
> Darwinian evolution was 100% true, it would not, by its own
> admission, be able to predict (and therefore explain) from its
> basic principles, the range of living things that we actually
> have on Earth today:
It would be able to predict a wide variety of living things
(it is not clear to me how the fragment of the Popper quote
has bearing on this-- maybe you'd like to flesh out his argument?)
and even predict such things as sense organs, reproductive
organs, etc., but, of course, all the tiny details wouldn't be
known.
<snip>
> So Darwinian evolution could not even defintitely predict *anything*,
> in particular.
No, you've merely shown that evolution can't predict *some things*.
You can't logically go from that to concluding that evolution
can't predict *anything*.
I'm skipping most of your quotes. While interesting, I believe
they often do not fairly represent the views of the persons
quoted, they lack enough context to be sure of the view expressed,
and they do not take into account changing views over time or
new discoveries. Now, if you want to refer to specific evidence
or specific interpretations of evidence or specific lack of
evidence in biology or evolution or make specific arguments
related to your quoted material on this subject, I'll be happy
to participate.
<snip>
> So, if there has been a change in that area since 1993-95, such that the
> origin of sex is no longer "probably the most baffling topic in modern
> evolutionary theory," I would appreciate Tedd citing the scientific
> journal(s) article(s) which carried the news of that change.
You've got a nice article on current discoveries and research
on the topic right here:
http://coldfusion.discover.com/output.cfm?ID=67
I certainly wouldn't say the problem of the origin of sex is
solved (at the very least, not until we have one theory rather
than two or more), but I consider it very important to reference
all the theories, evidence and research that it a part of this
issue, rather than attempting to summarize it with subjective
terms.
Why not explain what specifically is baffling about the origin
of sex to you and the implications that a failure to explain it
have for your philosophy? Is it the difficulty in explaining
meiosis or is there just no way that sex could arise in step-wise
fashion, each step having a selective advantage?
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Apr 12 2000 - 12:56:15 EDT