Re: Stereotypes and reputations

Cornelius Hunter wrote:

> Pim:
>
> The problems with common descent are not minor issues that can be
> glossed over. I recall speaking with an evolutioniist about abruptness
> in the fossil record (Cambrian explosion, etc.). She said she did not
> think that constituted evidence against the theory. So there was no
> evidence against evolution. Do you see the problem here?
>
> If one cannot admit to what are clear counter indications, then there
> is a problem. Woese is not saying that HGT explains early life. He is
> appealing to a far more aggressive explanation -- HGT on a massive
> scale -- nothing like it has ever been observed. You also have
> understated Doolittle, who is one of the early evolutionists to admit
> to what the data say: the tree model doesn't work very well. You wrote:
>
>> That there are problems with morphological and molecular data does
>> not mean that there is no common ancestry. It merely shows that
>> resolving difficulties may be hard. Again, the argument common
>> ancestry is wrong because two methods disagree, is hardly sufficient.
>
>
> Unfortunately this is always the explanation, and it makes common
> descent unfalsifiable. With every problem, one hears, "well, that
> doesn't mean the theory is wrong." So here we have all kinds of
> incongruities -- phylogenetic mismatches abounding. Non homologous
> development patterns that make utterly no sense on common descent.
> Detailed designs evolving independently over and over. Did I mention
> fundamental differences at the DNA level where common descent predicts
> there should be none (proteins involved in DNA replication)? And of
> course that little problem that we have no idea how these designs
> could are arisen. Sure, one can always contrive just-so stories. How
> many different evidential problems, from how many different angles, do
> we need before we acknowledge problems? You mentioned, Douglas
> Theobald's site -- this is yet another problem with talkorigins. That
> page is problematic. You wrote:
>
>> Convergence is also not necessarily a problem for common descent. Nor
>> are ORFans for instance. We should not let our ignorance lead us
>> astray from the solid evidence in favor of common descent.
>
>
> I'm sorry but this is not tenable. ORFans and massive convergence not
> problems? This is a joke right?
>
> --Cornelius
>
>
>
>
>> Cornelius Hunter wrote:
>>
>>> Pim:
>>>
>>> Here are some samplings of places to start in the literature. I've
>>> listed a few categories and citations (with some quotes) below.
>>> There are many more problems with common descent about which
>>> evolutionists are more reticent (non homologous development
>>> pathways, ORFans, massive convergence, for instance)
>>>
>> I notice you reference Woese and Doolittle. It may be helpful to
>> recognize their arguments which are not that there common ancestry is
>> wrong, but rather that horizontal gene transfer may have clouded the
>> picture. It also may help to differentiate between common ancestry
>> and 'universal ancestor'. Even Darwin held open the possibility of
>> multiple universal ancestors.
>>

Woese http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/000513.html

[quote]

Woese scoffs at Meyer's claim when I call to ask him about the paper.
"To say that my criticism of Darwinists says that evolutionists have no
clothes," Woese says, "is like saying that Einstein is criticizing
Newton, therefore Newtonian physics is wrong." *Debates about
evolution's mechanisms, he continues, don't amount to challenges to the
theory. *And intelligent design "is not science. It makes no predictions
and doesn't offer any explanation whatsoever, except for 'God did
it.'"[/quote]

[quote][P]robably all of the organic beings which have ever lived on
this earth have descended from some one primordial form ...[/quote] Carl
Woese
<http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/99/13/8742?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=%22On+the+evolution+of+cells%22&searchid=1096233457445_2756&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0%23SEC4>
in "On the evolution of cells

[quote]

    Organismal lineages, and so organisms as we know them, did not exist
    at these early stages. The universal phylogenetic tree, therefore,
    is not an organismal tree at its base but gradually becomes one as
    its peripheral branchings emerge. The universal ancestor is not a
    discrete entity. It is, rather, a diverse community of cells that
    survives and evolves as a biological unit. This communal ancestor
    has a physical history but not a genealogical one. Over time, this
    ancestor refined into a smaller number of increasingly complex cell
    types with the ancestors of the three primary groupings of organisms
    arising as a result.

    (C. R. Woese <http://esya.newmail.ru/newbiology.pdf> A New Biology
    for a New Century /Microbiol. Mol. Biol. Rev./, June 1, 2004; 68(2):
    173 - 186. )
    [/quote]
Received on Sun Jul 31 00:29:48 2005