Thinking Christian

What about this talk is outstanding?

Very entertaining. I see it hit a nerve with some of the clergy.

He did an outstanding job of differentiating between Mendelian speciation and macro-evolution. Great video.

Wow. This is irresponsible. I don’t know who this guy is but he’s either an idiot or a liar. I’m kind of surprised you would want to introduce his spiel as “outstanding.”

“We’ve never seen a moth turn into a bee…” or whatever he says is such an old saw I’m surprised he can do it with energy.

Tom, if you think this video is a 95% fair characterization of Evolution vs. ID then it seems that you don’t understand evolution or science. I know that you’ve seen your side treated unfairly and rudely, but inviting this smirking liar (or idiot) to be your spokesperson is throwing your lot in with a fast, shady crowd.

If you had introduced it as funny I would have laughed. Outstanding implies it should be taken seriously.

“Moth into a bee” is an infamous strawman, offered because it persuades the ignorant and takes time to teach around — showing how it is a strawman requires teaching some evolution, which requires work. You know it’s a strawman, and yet you introduce the video as outstanding — your introduction, along with your 95% comment, validates among the less informed virtually all of the video’s assertions.

That’s why I don’t find it so funny.

rough quote:

“even if evolution happened, it’s not happening today - at least not to the extent that someone in the lab can demonstrate it”

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html#observe

Tom, you may call this an outstanding summary of the issues, I call it peddling cheap lies. You do yourself no favours when you make truth claims around Christianity then support propaganda like this.

..and I’ve just read your response claiming that “some people can’t handle this sort of thing with a sense of humour”. A few lines above you’re claiming it’s 95% right. Again, for someone who ought to hold intellectual honesty in high regard, this is very poor.

Well, I appreciate you’ve stepped back from “outstanding” as a good description of this video.

As far as “touchiness” is concerned, I have 3 comments:

1. Don’t forget that you’ve been drawing parallels between evolutionary theory and Nazism. Now I think these parallels are rubbish (this isn’t the forum for that argument), but you if you do this and then praise utterly naive critiques of evolution, you’re beginning to sound like you have an agenda.

2. The criticisms raised in this video are classic straw-man material that’s raised all the time in attempts to get school boards to teach unorthodox material in science classes unsupported by academic concensus. These arguments *do* matter, and you’re getting very close to advocating them.

3. This is primarily a philosohpy website: we’re supposed to be uncovering the truth, and readers here will be influenced by the material presented. You gave the appearance of advocating support for scientific falsehoods, and you have to expect people to jump on it.

That said, I really do appreciate the civil discourse you run here, Tom.

(fwiw, I am not a Christian, and I do believe evolutionary theory poses major challenges for Christian doctrine that have not been met).

thanks,

Well, Tom, I’ll say it:”This is an outstanding website!” I also enjoyed the “Nukes, They’re the Bomb” episode.

This guy is brilliant for both summarising complex issues into a short time frame, as well as the presentation. You may disagree with what he says, but c’mon, you have to admit the presentation was first-rate.

As for the content:

1. Evo-ID: I thought his most powerful argument was regarding bacteria. Why have we not seen a “higher form” of bacteria after all this observational time. And be very careful what you mean by “higher form” (i.e. watch out for subjective criteria of “higher form”).
snafu: I didn’t see anything in that link that shows me macroevolution has been observed. I did see that biologists try to define (and change) the goalposts when it suits them.

2. Global Warming: What was that saying about false prophets? I can’t quite put my finger on it… (drooling with sarcasm).
He hit the nail on the head regarding the “fear factor”. When David Suzuki advocates jailing those who disagree with him, that goes too far (i.e. totalitarianism, fascism).
Also, now they’re predicting cooling (oops, I mean a brief cessation of global warming. Please don’t jail me for speaking against the “party line”).
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aU.evtnk6DPo&refer=science

3. Nukes, They’re the bomb: All those nuclear tests so close to Las Vegas - that really helps to explain Las Vegas. Those bomb craters really looked cool!

OK, I know I’m being sarcastic - maybe borderline facetious - but the only responses to the website has been ad hominem and “you don’t understand”. In other words, empty rhetoric and no facts.

I didn’t see anything in that link that shows me macroevolution has been observed

What about

1. “Weinberg, J.R., V.R. Starczak, and D. Jorg, 1992, ‘Evidence for rapid speciation following a founder event in the laboratory.’ Evolution 46: 1214-1220),”

2. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html at “5.0 Observed Instances of Speciation”

3. “Even without these direct observations, it would be wrong to say that evolution hasn’t been observed. Evidence isn’t limited to seeing something happen before your eyes. Evolution makes predictions about what we would expect to see in the fossil record, comparative anatomy, genetic sequences, geographical distribution of species, etc., and these predictions have been verified many times over. The number of observations supporting evolution is overwhelming.”

Tom,

I don’t want to pile on here but I thought I’d throw in another few cents on why I was so disappointed to see this video here, and have it introduced as “outstanding.”

As I mentioned before I like your site for a variety of reasons, but chief among them is the discourse is usually respectful. I’ll be very frank and say that I have Christian fundamentalist friends whom I would love to have these discussion with but I am sure I would wound the friendship in their outing; this site appears to be a good place for those of us who are skeptics to understand the thinking, the motivations, the evidence, etc. that lead Christians to believe. I may not end up agreeing with you but I think I understand better the reasons for your convictions, and I believe that understanding is typically lacking in this kind of debate.

So why did the video so gall me? It stoops to mischaracterizations and laugh lines that make one side feel good about itself by ridiculing the other. You can say it picks on every side, but c’mon — this is clearly a hit piece on Evolution and science.

I don’t expect you to be impartial; I respect your advocacy, and thank you for sharing your knowledge. But I would be discouraged from viewing here, reading, and partaking in debates if I felt that the site was acting only as a partisan promoter, and not as a facilitator of understanding.

Christians are worthy or respect, not least of all for their contributions to our living society. Evolutionists and scientists are worthy of respect, not least of all for what they’ve contributed. That’s at least how I wanted to read the ground rules here.

As much fun as it is debating NDES (and it is fun), I think it should be pointed out this comes down to two viewpoints: are the appearances of design in nature and the universe real or an illusion? BOTH sides are legitimate hypotheses. This is at the core of the video on Evo/ID.

I personally have no problem with evolutionary biologists performing their research. In fact, I encourage it. What I have a problem with is the stifling of research from the other side of the coin (and in fairness, the IDM has focused more on rhetoric than actual research).

Getting back to the topic, the What You Ought To Know website is outstanding for what it attempts to do: provide a short summary and commentary on complex issues using an entertaining medium and presentation. I don’t believe the website is presenting itself as “gospel”, but rather that we should look at everything with an open mind.

I didn’t see anything in that link that shows me macroevolution has been observed

the only “speciation” observed in the laboratory involve plants (polyploidy) and fruit flies.

JJS, you first couldn’t find any examples of macroevolution (=speciation?), but now you can’t find any examples of speciation in animals. Isn’t this moving the goalposts?

And why is speciation in plants vs animals relevant?

snafu: So the goalposts have moved since Darwin first proposed his theory. My understanding was “start simple, evolve to complex” was the backbone of NDES. (Oh by the way, “stick and stones…”)
So correct me if I’m wrong, but macroevolution as you define it is blind (i.e. no design) and occurs in small-scale increments (which means a heavy emphasis on natural selection over random mutation/saltation). These are the goal posts you’re assuming?

Paul: I admit, I should’ve been more specific in my response to say “I can’t find any examples of animal macroevolution”. I’ll admit to that. However, as for polyploidy, let me ask you a question: what is the equivalent macroevolutionary mechanism of polyploidy for the animal kingdom? Based on what I understand, it cannot be natural selection, since in most (not all) cases, natural selection reduces variation. Therefore, it has to be a random mutation mechanism. So what is the mechanism and what are it’s limits?

Paul, you missed another one of my points:

“As for the fruit flies, the “speciation” that occured was that a population evolved that would not reproduce with it’s progenitors (i.e. sexual isolation). However, they were still fruit flies.”

IMO, this example of “speciation” is more like microevolution than macroevolution. Therefore, my point is still valid: there has been no observed instances of macroevolution in the animal kingdom.

Paul, thanks for the link. However, after going through the examples and doing a quick investigation of things I am not familiar with, I have the following notes:

1. The mosquito is still a mosquito, the fly is still a fly, the fish is still a fish, and so on. According to the brief summary provided by the talkorigins link, it would appear that the species merely adapted to different environments - hardly controversial. Most of the examples look to be more of microevolution than macroevolution.

2. As an engineer I want to know 2 basic things about animal macroevolution: the mechanism and its limits (this is what first came to my mind when looking up Helacyton gartleri). When I’m designing a structure, I need to know how the various applied loads are resisted by the materials used and what the limits of those materials are. If I don’t perform this basic due diligence, people die, as witnessed by the Minnesota I-35W bridge collapse.

In anticipation of a future objection, just because I am an engineer and not a biologist does not make my queries nor my criticisms of animal macroevolution any less legitimate. To do otherwise is elitism and a major reason people will tune out the counter-arguments of evolutionary biologists.

snafu: It appears to me, and Dr. Stephen Jay Gould (who came up with the concept of punctuated equilibrium), that the fossil evidence supports sudden appearance and stasis more than gradualistic animal evolution.

I would say an equally valid interpretation of the fossil record would be that of archetypes (as was the view before Darwin). In other words, the fossil record is not the slam dunk you think it is.

Paul, if you mean that the “speciation” observed are evidence for microevolution, sure, we’re in agreement. However, these examples are usually provided as evidence for macroevolution; that is what I have difficulties with.

I’m looking forward to your next set of evidence.

Paul, my apologies if I appeared to be too nitpicky, but I wanted to make sure we were on the same page, which, thus far, it appears we are.

A qualifier before I state my case: scientific discoveries have a habit of not doing what we expect. To go off topic for a second, take the Voyager missions. Before Voyager 1 was launched, scientists generally expected nothing to learn from the satelites of the gas/ice giants. IMO, sulfur volcanoes on Io, possible liquid water ocean beneath Europa’s surface, and nitrogen “geysers” on Triton (to state just a few) were quite the shock. The Voyagers taught us to expect the unexpected.

Back to topic: If I understand NDES properly, saltation (i.e. rapid mutation) is generally frowned upon; thus macroevolution must take place gradually.

Given the above qualifier, understanding of NDES, and the animal speciation examples stated in the talkorigins link as a starting point, I would expect multiple speciations in a clear and gradual progression until a new genus/family/order/class/phylum is produced as observable evidence of NDES macroevolution. Anything other than a gradual progression is saltation, and thus not NDES macroevolution.

Now, another qualifier: I think we have to be careful when applying discoveries in the lab to what occurs in the real world. Even though the real world is modeled in the lab, the lab is still, for all intents and purposes, an artificial environment. However, say that a gradual progression of speciation that lead to a higher classification was observed in the lab. I would want to know what was the environmental variables and constraints and how does that relate to the real world.

I’ll give an example of this (sorry, no citation, but I will try my best to track it down). Sheep breeding (artificial/human selection) produced a variety of sheep breeds. However, I believe once these variations were introduced into the real world environment (i.e. outside the farm), the variations shrunk considerably. Should this be true, it would appear that while the genome possesses the potential for multiple breeds of a species/genus, natural selection “controls” the amount of variation (RM is dependent upon NS).

To sum up, macroevolution could be observed in the lab by multiple speciations that gradually progess towards a higher classification. Even if this did occur in the lab, NS would appear to select out a certain percentage (possibly 50+%) of the variations.

If I could ask a question, what were the mechanisms that produced these speciations, or did they even look there?

Paul, thank you for the article. It made for interesting reading. My comments on it are as follows:

1. I found the concept of the “continuum” vague, confusing and not very enlightening.

2. The short circuit analogy, as presented in the first few lines of the paragraph, I found superficial (and a cheap set-up for the swipe at ID at the end of the article) because anyone familiar with predictive science knows that all detailed experiments are based on a specific set of assumptions, something that was hammered into my head in 7th grade science class. To paraphrase, “Given A,B,C,…, X will occur”. The real fun part is when Y occurs instead of X.

3a. The baseball analogy then tries to explain the post-dicitive sciences by generally saying that we have circumstantial evidence, and post-dicitive scientists are playing detective. Based on what I know of law - mostly through watching episodes of Law & Order - circumstantial evidence on its own is generally weak, even though one can convict based on it. IMO, the confidence in the verdict is inversely proportional to the amount of variables involved in the situation. IOW, the fewer variables, the greater the confidence in the verdict. So Dr. Pigliucci is correct only in regards to the specific analogy: yes, “surprisingly few clues” are required “to infer an amazing amount of detail”, but only because the number of variables (house locked, glass shards on the floor inside, baseball on floor) are constrained. Plus, it only explains IN PART how the window got broken (was it vandalism or an accident?). Further investigation is clearly required.

3b. The baseball analogy ties in nicely to the video above that started this whole thread. Richard Dawkins was quoted as saying we have a lot of circumstantial evidence. However, he uses the “massive amount” of evidence to come to the conclusion that macroevolution (with natural selection dominating) occured while at the same time neglecting the number of variables involved. The variables include the various mechanisms of random mutation and natural selection (Side note: I thought Allen McNeil had a list out there, but I couldn’t find it on his blog. I’ve seen the list of mechanisms, I just can’t recall which site I saw it on). Other variables include, but are not limited to, the various ways macroevolution may have occured - punctuated equilibrium (Gould), single tree of life (Darwin), multiple trees of life (Doolittle), more recently, the bush of life (Koonin), frontloading (Mike Gene), etc. The variables increase substantially when you include the possibility of archetypes (or design).

To sum up, IMO, the overarching theme of the article by Dr. Pigliucci was a “glossed-over” generalisation of predictive and post-dictive sciences. However, as any engineer knows, the devil is in the details. This is where the historical or post-dictive sciences falls short: the details are glossed over. I also found that the purpose of the article was more served to propping up evolutionary biologists’ and paleontologists’ ego (I noticed that Dr. Pigliucci is an evolutionary biologist at SUNY - Stony Brook).

To comment on Paul’s other points in his post:

It is not my limitation (gradual over saltation), but rather the limitation imposed upon scientists by the “consensus” led by Dawkins et al. (Don’t get me started on consensus science)

Also, my implied point about macroevolution in the lab was that I would put greater emphasis on observed macroevolution in nature/real world than in the lab. To my knowledge, this has been done mostly by either analysing the fossil record and/or molecular phylogenies, both of which provide little evidence at best, flimsy at worst, to support macroevolution.

Paul:

If I may say, I am really enjoying this thread. I admit I am making observations “from the sidelines” and drawing conclusions from them. I am not “in the huddle”, and therefore not privy to the “current thinking”, of which I would be very interested in learning more about.

That said, my point was meant to criticise both the article and certain (not all) historical sciences. I can (sort of) let the lack of details in the article slide given time and space contraints. At the same time, Dr. Pigliucci appears to use the limited baseball analogy as a general description of how the historical sciences work, and thus, opened the door to critique of the historical sciences. To be more specific, I was criticising evolutionary biology, paleontology and anthropology. That said, there may be some sound conclusions within each of these disciplines, however, IMO, they are very limited. (Again, this is a sideline observation. Extra details are always welcome)

I “chose” Dawkins’ consensus view because that is what the general public is being spoon-fed. Dawkins himself is “hostile to a rival doctrine”, which include saltation theories. This appears to be a running theme in evolutionary biology.

As for the fossil evidence, Dr. Philip Johnson brings up some interesting points in “Darwin on Trial”.
a. The fossils seem to be arranged based on the pre-supposition that macroevolution took place to prove macroevolution took place. The circular reasoning is obvious.
b. It appears paleontologists (in general) have discouraged publication of fossil evidence contrary to Darwinian Evolution (DE)/NDES. Thus, it would appear that paleontologists have cherry-picked certain circumstantial evidence while dismissing other evidence. On what basis did they do so? (rhetorical question - see first part of b)
c. Dr. Gould admitted that the sudden appearance and stasis that dominates the fossil record was paleontology’s “dirty little secret”.
Combined, points a-c lend serious doubt to the claims of paleontologists regarding the fossil record.

Yet another example of presuppositions of paleontologists is the dinosaur-to-bird macroevolutionary theory. I consider the major blow to this theory the challenge by Dr. Michael Denton in “Evolution: A Theory in Crisis”: how do you go from the bellows-type lung of a lizzard/dinosaur to the circulatory-type lung of the bird in a step-by-step process where the intermediates are breathing long enough to reproduce?

I realise I am again leaning towards the gradual/NS theory of macroevolution instead of saltation. Let this be a segue to the saltation concerns I have. To start off, it seems to me that saltation is dismissed because it could open the door to creationism or ID. You suggest that this is not a correct view by implying saltation is part of the “current thinking” of evolutionary biologists. Is this an accurate statement?

More to come…

You should probably spend more time reading up on evolution than making videos on a subject I’m afraid you know little about.

You should probably post this on site of the person who made the video.

Tom, you post this video on your website with the introduction “This is outstanding:”

The video is chock full of tired misinterpretations and strawmen about Evolution and science. It goes for that folksy, plain-talkin’ approach that implies that all science is just a matter of good old-fashioned common sense, not all this high-falutin, head in the clouds talk off those egghead scientists who lose sense of how things really are. It’s a plea to the ignorant, a sop to the crowds, a populist run-around in the debate that ID is supposed to be having within the scientific community.

Either you should disown this video or stop acting shocked when people use it as evidence of your ignorance of science and evolution; the two ideas are incompatible.

Tom, I would respectively ask that you don’t delete this thread. I feel responsible for “hijacking” this thread and I apologise for my overexuberance.

I hope to move this discussion to my blog (blatant plug alarm!) with future posts.

Tom,

I did see your later post distancing yourself from the video. Trouble is that I think first time-viewers might pop in, see the video and your introduction, and only get the headline, not your correction.

I’m glad you removed it. Thanks for that.

Last plug, I promise

I hope to continue my discussion with Paul (and anyone else) here .