Stephen E. Jones wrote:
>Second, I am not even making an argument based on Darwinism. My point
>was that "Darwinian gradualism" *itself* claims to be the only naturalistic
>mechanism "which can (in theory at least) reliably craft complex designs".
What would be the significance of this point? I'm interested in the claims
themselves, not in the claimants' claims that they are right about their
claims.
>CL>Unless you allow that a designer may have set up a Darwinian world.
>
>I don't rule that out. One of my own web pages makes the point that
>Darwinism, by its own admission, requires that the laws of physics must be
>"deployed in a very special way":
Dawkins is an idiot for saying that.
>CL>Natural selection doesn't have to be anything. The mechanism providing
>>the choices, and the nature of the choices, is completely irrelevant.
>
>Cliff is just `wriggling' here. His symbionts which survived out of "an
>astronomical number of unsuccessful macromutations is Darwinian".
Assuming the last quote mark is two words late, I can only gainsay the
implication that macromutations are Darwinian in your usual sense of
the word. But maybe I'm just hand-waving as I'm wriggling. BTW, How do
you picture this hand-waving? Is it done with two hands, as if to say 'stop',
or is it a one-handed dismissive get-outa-here gesture?
>*Anything* that survives because it is the fittest among a number of
>competitors is Darwinian.
Including macromutations? I thought they were out in your conception
of Darwinian evolution?
>Cliff needs to make up his mind what exactly *is* his theory. Is it symbiosis
>or "macromutations"? If it is "macromutations" it doesn't need symbiosis
>and vice versa.
The symbiotic theory is not *my* theory. But why are symbiosis and
macromutation mutually exclusive? For me, the merging of symbionts *is*
a macromutation. My theory about segmentation uses Siamese-twinning,
another macromutation.
>Development Biology would presumably claim that the Hox genes that
>make digits started with one and duplicated them over time. I have not
>necessarily have a problem with that.
This sounds like the 'control gene' deus ex machina. I need to know
more about this noble creature. For example, what are its limitations?
There are genes which affect gross skeletal morphology, real basic
blueprint genes; but if they can add new (non-atavistic) segments,
why don't we see this creativity at work? A problem with appending
new segments is that the evidence shows quite the opposite going
on: in segmented animals the evolutionary trend is reduction and
distortion among groups of segments.
>So endosymbiotic theory still has to explain how the *genes* for the once
>free-living mitochondria and chloroplast organelles merged with the host
>organism.
They just did, they just happened to, through some mixup. And it caught
on. That's evolution. The most solid thing in favor of the symbiotic theory
is that it's more plausible than gradualist scenarios as a mechanism for
generating irreducibly complex structures.
>I agree with Richard that Cliff has got hold of the problem from the wrong
>end. He need to have a *genetic* theory to explain *inherited* parabiosis.
>Twinning at the morphological level does not create one merged genome.
>The genome is already fixed at conception.
Twinning at the morphological level is a morphological phenomenon. There
is no merging of genomes. When this phenomenon is caused by a gene that
the genome of the twins has inherited, the twins' offspring will also be twins.
I don't see the problem with inheriting genes that have morphological effects.
Why is a special new genetic theory needed?
>Susan or Cliff will not succeed at eliminating creationists "by laughing at
>them or ignoring them". The only way they will ever eliminate creationists
>is by beating them fair and square by rational arguments.
Nothing philosophical ever dies out because of rational arguments.
Philosophies are not vanquished, merely abandoned.
>But Cliff's proposed pan-symbiosis `final solution' is unconvincing even to
>evolutionists, let alone creationists.
But should it turn out to be valid, no problem; it's just the way things
were designed. Life is great when you've got science and religion both
going for you.
>Cliff might ponder the implications of that. If Susan's more traditional
>Darwinist arguments are not even convincing to Cliff, and Cliff's symbiosis
>arguments are not convincing to other evolutionists, then that is just what
>would be expected if naturalistic evolution is false!
Just what would be expected if the topic is difficult and obscure.
--Cliff Lundberg ~ San Francisco ~ 415-648-0208 ~ cliff@cab.com
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