Reflectorites
On Thu, 24 Aug 2000 18:52:22 -0700, Cliff Lundberg wrote:
[...]
>>SJ>"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which
>>>could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive,
>>>slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
>>>(Darwin C.R., "The Origin of Species," 6th Edition, 1928, reprint,
>>>p.170)
>SB>and you know the above quote is wildly out of context.
CL>Could you (or someone) suggest a proper context for this quote?
Cliff is taking Susan literally. When a Darwinist says that a creationists
"quote is wildly out of context," they *really* mean that they don't have
any answer to it!
If they really did mean that a quote was "out of context" they would also
show *why* it was out of context. But they *never* do.
The context in question was Darwin's "Origin of Species," Chapter VI,
"Difficulties of the Theory," section "Modes of Transition". It was the
first sentence of that section. It followed a section "Organs of
extreme Perfection and Complication," where Darwin had immediately
before discussed the problem of the eye:
"It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye with a telescope.
We know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-
continued efforts of the highest human intellects; and we naturally
infer that the eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous
process. But may not this inference be presumptuous? Have we any
right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like
those of man? If we must compare the eye to an optical instrument,
we ought in imagination to take a thick layer of transparent tissue,
with spaces filled with fluid, and with a nerve sensitive to light
beneath, and then suppose every part of this layer to be continually
changing slowly in density, so as to separate into layers of different
densities and thicknesses, placed at different distances from each
other, and with the surfaces of each layer slowly changing in form.
Further we must suppose that there is a power, represented by
natural selection or the survival of the fittest, always intently
watching each slight alteration in the transparent layers; and
carefully preserving each which, under varied circumstances, in any
way or in any degree, tends to produce a distinctive image. We
must suppose each new state of the instrument to be multiplied by
the million; each to be preserved until a better one is produced, and
then the old ones to be all destroyed. In living bodies, variation will
cause the slight alterations, generation will multiply them almost
infinitely) and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each
improvement. Let this process go on for millions of years- and
during each year on millions of individuals of many kinds and may
we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed
as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to those
of man?" (Darwin C.R., "The Origin of Species," 6th Edition, 1928,
reprint, pp.169-170).
In that context, Darwin then immediately after (i.e. with no text in
between), wrote the quote in question:
"Modes of Transition
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which
could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive,
slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I
can find out no such case. No doubt many organs exist of which we
do not know the transitional grades, more especially if we look to
much-isolated species, round which according to the theory, there
has been much extinction. Or again, if we take an organ common to
all the members of a class, for in this latter case the organ must
have been originally formed at a remote period, since which all the
many members of the class have been developed; and in order to
discover the early transitional grades through which the organ has
passed, we should have to look to very ancient ancestral forms,
long since become extinct." (Darwin, p.170).
In fact the above quotes are also in the first edition of Darwin's Origin
which can be checked online at:
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_darwin/origin_of_species/Chapter6.html
CL>It seems to me such a clear and absolute statement, I don't see
>how it can be quibbled with.
It *can* "be quibbled with" by those Darwinists to whom Darwinism is not
a testable scientific theory, but a `religion'.
This is evident by those who even deny Behe's irreducible complexity
mousetrap analogy. They cannot even accept that there could be an
*analogy*. That is, to them *in principle* there cannot even be any such
thing as "irreducible complexity" in biology. IOW *to them* Darwinism is
unfalsifiable.
CL>Darwin was wrong about gradualism.
>If you insist on gradualism, you are an ally of the ID advocates.
That is true, because it was Darwin's theory of how a "complex organ"
could "have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications"
which supplanted Paley's design argument, by purporting to show how a
complex organ like the eye *could* have been built up by ordinary tiny
variations that conferred a slight survival advantage to the animals
possessing them.
However, if evolution of a "complex organ" like the eye was not by
"numerous, successive, slight modifications", then one would have to
advocate the equivalent of a genetic miracle!
But the problem for those non-Darwinian evolutionists like Cliff who want to
get away from the problems caused by Darwin's "numerous, successive,
slight modifications", is well stated Neo-Darwinism's co-founder Julian
Huxley:
"In any case, if we repudiate creationism, divine or vitalistic
guidance, and the extremer forms of orthogenesis, as originators of
adaptation, we must (unless we confess total ignorance and
abandon for the time any attempts at explanation) invoke natural
selection-or at any rate must do so whenever an adaptive structure
obviously involves a number of separate characters, and therefore
demands a number of separate steps for its origin. A one-character,
single-step adaptation might clearly be the result of mutation; once
the mutation had taken place, it would be preserved by natural
selection, but selection would have played no part in its origin. But
when two or more steps are necessary, it becomes inconceivable
that they shall have originated simultaneously. The first mutation
must have been spread through the population-by selection before
the second could be combined with it, the combination of the first
two in turn selected before the third could be added, and so on with
each successive step. The improbability of an origin in which
selection has not played a part becomes larger with each new step."
(Huxley J.S., "Evolution: The Modern Synthesis," 1945, pp.473-474).
>SB>And that the "numerous, successive, slight modifications" need not
>>be linear.
CL>What does it mean to say that "numerous, successive, slight
>modifications" need not be *linear*?
Presumably Susan means that the changes could be all happening in parallel
in different animals in the same species and then all came together in the
one right animal (or mated pair), in the right order, at the right time?
If so, this presents a furtjer major problem for Darwinism, as Cambridge
University Professor of Cell Biology E.J. Ambrose pointed out:
"Mayr has pointed out that almost every gene has multiple effects in
higher organisms. These closely integrated interactions between the
genes, leading to highly ordered structures are inexplicable in terms
of randomly generated assemblies of molecules. If this is the case, a
single gene mutation cannot generate a structure of new
complexity. But according to neo-Darwinism, genes are distributed
within the population. To produce a significantly new structure 3 or
10, or more generally 30-40 genes closely cooperating would have
to be brought together in the same individual. To design a new style
of dress for women, the designer would have to bring together the
suppliers of fabrics with their various colours, suppliers of lace,
suppliers of ribbons, etc. Working as a team, the final design would
emerge. So it would be with the group of newly modified genes,
which together, working in harmony would generate the new
complexity. The rate of mutation is 1 in million, out of these non
harmful mutations are 1 in 1000. For 2 such to occur would be 1 in
10^3 x 10^3. For 5 to occur 1 in 1000 million million (1 in 10^15)."
(Ambrose E.J., "The Mirror of Creation," 1990, p.167).
An Intelligent Designer could guide this `parallel processing' and bring
it all together when needed, but not a blind watchmaker!
[...]
Steve
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"It is thus hardly surprising that the vast majority of biologists have
accepted it [the theory of natural selection] as *the* theory of evolution.
Yet there have always been those who are dissatisfied with the theory. The
issue is not whether natural selection does occur; the question is whether
the basic framework of neo-Darwinism-the natural selection of random
mutations-is sufficient to account for most, if not all evolutionary change;
for such is the claim of the modern "synthetic" theory.." (Ho M.W. &
Saunders P.T., "Beyond neo-Darwinism - An Epigenetic Approach to
Evolution", Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 78, pp.573-591, 1979,
p.574. Emphasis in original)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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