At 10:55 PM 10/13/2000, you wrote:
>"Stephen E. Jones" wrote: (10/5/00; 8:11 am)
>
>Rather than duplicate this lengthy post, I'll simply add a couple of
>potentially
>useful thoughts.
>
>1) Your list of 47 specific aspects that should be considered in any
>"evolution
>simulating" program is quite impressive. But there are at least two more
>that may
>be even more critical. Namely, a factor to reflect the inclination of many
>mutations to revert back to the original (established) DNA code at a
>higher than
>expected rate .... and .... another factor to reflect the progressively
>negative
>effect of recessive, genetic "load". All physical experimental
>observations (and
>mathematical analysis) show this negative genetic "burden" to build up over
>time....often to the point of extinction ... particularly in smaller
>populations as
>so often postulated. Time is actually a greater "barrier" to evolutionary
>advance
>than being the all-powerful "solution" as frequently claimed by evolutionists.
>
>2) Your following citation also brings up another interesting, but unrelated
>thought.
>
>"Despite a close watch, we have witnessed no new species emerge in the wild in
>recorded history. Also, most remarkably, we have seen no new animal
>species emerge
>in domestic breeding. That includes no new species of fruitflies in
>hundreds
>of millions of generations in fruitfly studies, where both soft and harsh
>pressures
>have been deliberately applied to the fly populations to
>induce speciation.
>And in computer life, where the term "species" does not yet have meaning,
>we see
>no cascading emergence of entirely new kinds of variety beyond an initial
>burst. In
>the wild, in
>breeding, and in artificial life, we see the emergence of variation. But
>by the
>absence of greater change, we also clearly see that the limits
>of variation appear
>to be narrowly bounded, and often bounded within species. ... No one has yet
>witnessed, in the fossil record, in real life, or in computer life, the exact
>transitional moments when natural selection pumps its complexity up to
>the next
>level.
>There is a suspicious barrier in the vicinity of species that either holds
>back
>this critical change or removes it from our sight. (Kelly K.,"Out
>of Control: The
>New Biology of Machines", 1995, p475)
>
>A recent Washington Post article on endangered species by Advanced Cell
>Technologist Robert Lanza tells us "One hundred species are lost every
>day, and
>these mass erxtinctions are mostly our own doing." As an OEC (Old Earth
>Creationist), could you comment on how many years this imbalance has been
>going
>on? And perhaps explain how OEE (Old Earth Evolutionists) might possibly
>explain
>it?
>
>3) Your excerpts from mathematicians Schutzenberger and Eden from the
>1966 Wistar
>Symposium MATHEMATICAL CHALLENGES TO THE NEO-DARWINIAN INTERPRETATION OF
>EVOLUTION
>(with participants as Medawar, Mayr, Fox, Eiseley, Lewontin, etc., etc.)
>were both
>pertinent and interesting. I would like to add one more. This by Dr.
>Eden on
>page 109 where he states: "It is our contention that if 'random' is given a
>serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the
>randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific
>theory
>of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural
>laws--physical, physico-chemical and biological."
>
>Thus, over 30 years ago, Dr. Eden was acknowledging the very problem
>(inadequacy of
>Random Mutations and Natural Selection [RM+NS] to explain biological
>evolution)
>which Dembski, Johnson, Behe, et al are today addressing as Intelligent Design
>(ID), Irreducible Complexity (IC), etc. -- and which evolutionists, like
>ostriches,
>prefer not to acknowledge rather than facing up to reality.
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