Gaps in Evolution

[buffalo]

Perhaps you should read in its entirety that which you post as evidence for your position

Shucks. Gee wiz, maybe I will.

 

[xixxvmcm85]

“Moreover, science has to an extent falsified the initial conception of macroevolution.”

Perhaps you should petition them to remove the above sentence.

By the way, this “falsified initial conception” only applies to the domain Prokarya. The “tree-like model” still holds true for us animals, plants, fungi, and archaeans as we do not undergo conjugation or reciprocal gene transfer. I cannot come up to you, touch you and suddenly infuse part of my DNA with yours (like bacteria can). Us animals reproduce strictly by sexual means.

 

[buffalo]

By the way, this “falsified initial conception” only applies to the domain Prokarya. The “tree-like model” still holds true for us animals, plants, fungi, and archaeans as we do not undergo conjugation or reciprocal gene transfer. I cannot come up to you, touch you and suddenly infuse part of my DNA with yours. Us animals reproduce strictly by sexual means.

What do you make of snake DNA being found in cows?

 

[xixxvmcm85]

What do you make of snake DNA being found in cows?

A miracle.

To be certain I understand what you’re talking about: Modern snake DNA in a modern cow genome?

 

[SoulBeaver]

About the gene transfer and reproduction in general I recommend the book, “The Red Queen” by Matt Ridley. Seems to have good information on the subject about reproduction and gene transfer throughout evolution and various species as well as the history behind sexuality.

Just wanted to throw that one out there as a book related to the statement made by xixxvmcm85 about conjugation and reciprocal gene transfer.

 

[Eleve]

Finding snake DNA in the nuclei of a cow’s cells would have more to do with completely nullifying our understanding of DNA than with falsifying evolution.

 

[xixxvmcm85]

Finding snake DNA in the nuclei of a cow’s cells would have more to do with completely nullifying our understanding of DNA than with falsifying evolution.

Or buffalo might be speaking of prions which arose from a snake cell and now attack cow cells. Prions are non-living, protein entities which are misfolded forms or a particular protein. What’s most interesting is that these proteins are able to hijack the machinery of a cell to propagate itself (much like how viruses do). All known prions reside in neural tissue with the two most common being the culprit for Kreutzfeldt-Jakobs disease and “Mad Cow” disease. I’m not sure of any such prions (those created in snakes but which attack cow neural tissue), however buffalo might have some info we’re lacking.

 

[buffalo]

Or buffalo might be speaking of prions which arose from a snake cell and now attack cow cells. Prions are non-living, protein entities which are misfolded forms or a particular protein. What’s most interesting is that these proteins are able to hijack the machinery of a cell to propagate itself (much like how viruses do). All known prions reside in neural tissue with the two most common being the culprit for Kreutzfeldt-Jakobs disease and “Mad Cow” disease. I’m not sure of any such prions (those created in snakes but which attack cow neural tissue), however buffalo might have some info we’re lacking.

**Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life
**

…Even so, it is clear that the Darwinian tree is no longer an adequate description of how evolution in general works. “If you don’t have a tree of life, what does it mean for evolutionary biology?” asks Bapteste. “At first it’s very scary… but in the past couple of years people have begun to free their minds.” Both he and Doolittle are at pains to stress that downgrading the tree of life doesn’t mean that the theory of evolution is wrong - just that evolution is not as tidy as we would like to believe. Some evolutionary relationships are tree-like; many others are not. “We should relax a bit on this,” says Doolittle. “We understand evolution pretty well - it’s just that it is more complex than Darwin imagined. The tree isn’t the only pattern.”

 

[Eleve]

Well, that Darwin’s* understanding of evolution was less than perfect is hardly news, and this doesn’t shake up any of the major claims of evolution that creationists object to.

*He didn’t even have Mendel, after all.

 

[xixxvmcm85]

Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life

…Even so, it is clear that the Darwinian tree is no longer an adequate description of how evolution in general works. “If you don’t have a tree of life, what does it mean for evolutionary biology?” asks Bapteste. “At first it’s very scary… but in the past couple of years people have begun to free their minds.” Both he and Doolittle are at pains to stress that downgrading the tree of life doesn’t mean that the theory of evolution is wrong - just that evolution is not as tidy as we would like to believe. Some evolutionary relationships are tree-like; many others are not. “We should relax a bit on this,” says Doolittle. “We understand evolution pretty well - it’s just that it is more complex than Darwin imagined. The tree isn’t the only pattern.”

To begin buffalo, you asked me what my reaction to modern snake DNA inside a modern cow cell would be. In this case, it would have been much more appropriate for you to quote the part that speaks of cows ans snakes:

Other cases of HGT in multicellular organisms are coming in thick and fast. HGT has been documented in insects, fish and plants, and a few years ago a piece of snake DNA was found in cows. The most likely agents of this genetic shuffling are viruses, which constantly cut and paste DNA from one genome into another, often across great taxonomic distances. In fact, by some reckonings, 40 to 50 per cent of the human genome consists of DNA imported horizontally by viruses, some of which has taken on vital biological functions

Notice that the reason given for these is viruses, similar to prions (which was my first assumption about your earlier post). Snake DNA wasn’t found in a cow because a snake magically found the means to conjugate its DNA in the form of a plasmid like a prokaryote does rather it was found in a Cow because a virus that apparently uses both snakes and Cows as hosts put it there.

What you posted here (just as I previously stated) has absolutely nothing to do with the common descent of large, multicellular, Eukaryotic organisms. The DNA evidence for some might imply the “web like” model that we see with Prokaryotes, however unlike the Prokaryotes any HGT exhibited isn’t due to ancestry, it’s due to virology.

 

[xixxvmcm85]

Again buffalo:

Macroevolution has not been falsified, and neither has the theory of common descent.

 

[buffalo]

Darwin’s Scientific Skeptics

             	 		**Darwin's Scientific Skeptics**

       	**By John G. West**

Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute
Is evolution compatible with faith in God? It’s a question that is receiving lots of attention of late.
On the one hand, “new atheists” like biologist Richard Dawkins insist that Darwinian evolution makes “it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”
On the other hand, “new theistic evolutionists” like Francis Collins assure people that Darwin and God get along just fine, thank you. Former head of the Human Genome Project, Collins recently unveiled a website that seeks to convince the faith community to accept Darwinian evolution.

more…

 

[xixxvmcm85]

Darwin’s Scientific Skeptics

             	 		**Darwin's Scientific Skeptics**

       	**By John G. West**

Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute
Is evolution compatible with faith in God? It’s a question that is receiving lots of attention of late.
On the one hand, “new atheists” like biologist Richard Dawkins insist that Darwinian evolution makes “it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”
On the other hand, “new theistic evolutionists” like Francis Collins assure people that Darwin and God get along just fine, thank you. Former head of the Human Genome Project, Collins recently unveiled a website that seeks to convince the faith community to accept Darwinian evolution.

more…

So… did you have an opinion or an argument to share with us or are we just practicing our link dumping skills?

 

[xixxvmcm85]

Darwin’s Scientific Skeptics

             	 		**Darwin's Scientific Skeptics**

       	**By John G. West**

Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute
Is evolution compatible with faith in God? It’s a question that is receiving lots of attention of late.
On the one hand, “new atheists” like biologist Richard Dawkins insist that Darwinian evolution makes “it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”
On the other hand, “new theistic evolutionists” like Francis Collins assure people that Darwin and God get along just fine, thank you. Former head of the Human Genome Project, Collins recently unveiled a website that seeks to convince the faith community to accept Darwinian evolution.

more…

I’m a little surprised that this Discovery Institute article has internal contradictions; they’re usually pretty good with editing:
Guest's Voices: Darwin's Scientific Skeptics:

Largely shut out from current media coverage are the growing number of scientists, as well as the vast majority of Americans, who view Darwin’s theory with skepticism

I couldn’t care less what the vast majority of Americans think about a scientific theory. They’re not qualified to make such judgments.

I do, however, care who these “growing number of scientists” are. Moreover, I’d like to know what constitutes a “growing number” in Mr. West’s mind.

Media coverage notwithstanding, theistic evolution has been shunned by leading evolutionary biologists, 87% of whom deny the existence of God, and 90% of whom reject the idea that evolution is directed toward an "ultimate purpose" according to a 2003 survey.

This implies that at least 90% of those polled evolutionary biologists accept evolution, in order to also claim that it has no “ultimate purpose”. What happened to that “growing number of scientists …] who view Darwin’s theory with skepticism”?

The rest of the article is one huge opinion piece with neither substantiated evidence nor even examples of what the author is claiming, such as:

While theistic evolutionists are mired in the past trying to defend Darwin’s nineteenth-century mechanistic process, other scientists and scholars are suggesting that twenty-first century science is fast making Darwin obsolete.

Which "scientists and scholars? And what is it that prompts them to make their suggestion?

Experiments with bacteria, where evolution can be tested in real time, are showing just how little undirected processes like natural selection can actually accomplish.

Completely baseless assertion. Which experiments are these? I know of experiments that I’ve performed myself which very clearly supported the alternative hypothesis that natural selection was a play.

Experiments with protein sequences are revealing how astonishingly fine-tuned protein sequences must be to work at all.

Yes; and…? How does this tie into evolution being false?

And the DNA inside each of us is disclosing massive amounts of genetic information that points to mind, not chance and necessity, as the ultimate source of biological innovations.

How does the DNA point to a “mind”? This author has not offered any other physical alternative to evolution. He’s doing nothing more than waving his hands here.

Not surprisingly, this author isn’t a scientist. He received his undergraduate degree in Communications and his PhD in Government. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._West

He also has a very queer sense of God and is in a bad habit of jumping to conclusions:

Seeking to lessen the discomfort such arguments pose for most religious believers, Francis Collins suggests that God “could” have known the specific outcomes of evolution beforehand even though He made evolution appear “a random and undirected process.” In other words, God is a cosmic trickster who misleads people into thinking that nature is blind and purposeless, even though it isn’t.

It seems Mr. White doesn’t believe in an omniscient God for he scoffs at the idea of a creator who “could have known the specific outcomes of evolution beforehand”. Even if I were to humor his argument and assume that belief in theistic evolution presupposed a “cosmic trickster” of a God, would he be any different than the “cosmic trickster” whom Mr. White is presumably supporting; a God who misleads people into thinking that populations evolve and that contemporary species share common ancestor(s) with one another when in reality they do not?

 

[buffalo]

OK - now we can proceed to Stephen Barr’s comments:

Re: The New Theistic Evolutionists

I think both John West and Joe Carter are trapped in a false dilemma, namely the choice between believing that certain processes are random or believing that they are directed by God. The dilemma is created by a failure to take adequately into account the complete sovereignty of God and the fact that God is outside of time. This is ironic, because Joe says he is a Calvinist, and Calvinists of all people, should have no problem with these issues.
Let’s back off from the emotionally heated subject of evolution for a moment and look at an issue that is much simpler. We have all played games of chance, I suppose. When you roll a pair of dice, is there not an obvious sense in which the outcome is “random”? Is there not an obvious sense in which the rolling of dice is a matter of “chance” so that one can use the concepts of “probability”? On the other hand, isn’t it also true that God knows and wills from all eternity what numbers come up when dice are rolled? If anyone thinks there is a contradiction between these statements, then I suggest that he hasn’t really grasped the traditional teaching about God’s atemporality. And I would further suggest that he lacks certain basic theological insights that would allow him to think clearly about evolution.

more…

 

[xixxvmcm85]

Let me first remind you, buffalo, that this thread is a scientific one. I don’t believe it was the OP’s intention to have it evolve into a philosophical or theological one. Nonetheless, this is a religious forum, and as we all know, every thread on evolution eventually turns into one about ethics or theology. With that in mind, I’ll humor a bit of a derail but let’s try to keep ourselves close to the task at hand.

OK - now we can proceed to Stephen Barr’s comments:

I’d rather we proceed to your comments. You’ve provided us with three articles now but haven’t advanced an argument. It’s starting to become apparent that you’re link dumping which does nothing but have your contenders run in circles. I don’t play that.

Re: The New Theistic Evolutionists

I think both John West and Joe Carter are trapped in a false dilemma, namely the choice between believing that certain processes are random or believing that they are directed by God. The dilemma is created by a failure to take adequately into account the complete sovereignty of God and the fact that God is outside of time. This is ironic, because Joe says he is a Calvinist, and Calvinists of all people, should have no problem with these issues.
Let’s back off from the emotionally heated subject of evolution for a moment and look at an issue that is much simpler. We have all played games of chance, I suppose. When you roll a pair of dice, is there not an obvious sense in which the outcome is “random”? Is there not an obvious sense in which the rolling of dice is a matter of “chance” so that one can use the concepts of “probability”? On the other hand, isn’t it also true that God knows and wills from all eternity what numbers come up when dice are rolled? If anyone thinks there is a contradiction between these statements, then I suggest that he hasn’t really grasped the traditional teaching about God’s atemporality. And I would further suggest that he lacks certain basic theological insights that would allow him to think clearly about evolution.

more…

Indeed! As I stated in my last post, Mr. West has a rather unorthodox view of God (or so I’ve extrapolated from the last article you linked). If one is to ascribe to God omniscience as all the orthodox of Christian denominations do, then surely he’s just as capable of foreseeing the outcome of random mutations as he would be of foreseeing the outcome of random actions of human agents with free will.

There’s one thing I’d like to add to “Re: The New Theistic Evolutionists” by Mr. Stephen M. Barr. He speaks of the random nature of mutations in DNA and likens them to the shuffling of a deck of cards or the roll of dice. This indeed is a sufficient analogy to explain the aspect of mutations in evolution but it doesn’t suffice for natural selection and any other selective forces in evolution. We cannot liken evolution in general to the roll of a die or the shuffling of a deck because each are truly isolated events irrespective of former trials (or runs if you will). I could roll a die 10 times. Each time there is a 10% chance that the die will exhibit any particular number 1-6. To get a sequence of a particular number spanned across the 10 trials would be the product of the individual probabilities (i.e. 1/10 ^ 10 = 1 x 10^-11). This probability works for tandem events which have absolutely no relationship to each other. This isn’t what evolution is though! Evolution has the ecological niche of the particular population as a mitigating factor rendering the sequence of events as non-random. It’s important that we remember that the only truly random even in the evolution of a trait is the mutation which brought about the trait in the first place. The propagation of said trait throughout a population is not random, depends on ecological need, and indeed is (to an extent) predictable. Contrary to what dishonest organizations such as “The Discovery Institute” tell the public, there are complex equations which model evolution.

 

[buffalo]

Now onto the rebuttal:

God and Evolution: A Response to Stephen Barr (part 1)

                           Theistic evolutionist Stephen Barr is a serious and thoughtful man, and on the *First Things* blog, he has [raised some serious and thoughtful objections](http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2009/06/12/re-the-new-theistic-evolutionists/) to [an essay](http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/06/broaden_the_debate_over_faith_and_evolution.html) I wrote for *The Washington Post* as well as to [reflections](http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2009/06/11/the-new-theistic-evolutionists-lack-direction/) on that essay by Joe Carter (also at the *First Things* blog). Unfortunately, I think Barr’s criticisms confuse matters more than they clarify them. Nevertheless, I’m grateful that he has aired his objections, because some of his misunderstandings are shared by other conservative intellectuals, and they deserve a response. This is the first of three posts responding to Barr.

False Dilemma or Wishful Thinking: Is Darwinian Evolution Undirected or Not?
Barr first claims that Joe Carter and I “are trapped in a false dilemma” because we wrongly think that random processes cannot be directed by God. Barr points out that even random events, properly defined, are part of God’s sovereign plan. Just because something is random from our point of view, doesn’t mean that it is outside of God’s providence. Barr may be surprised to learn that I agree with him. Indeed, most, if not all, of the scholars who believe that nature provides evidence of intelligent design would agree with him. The problem with Barr’s argument is not with his understanding of the proper meaning of random, but with his seeming blindness to the fact that the vast majority of evolutionary biologists do not share his view. Barr’s ultimate disagreement here is not with me or Joe Carter, but with the discipline of evolutionary biology itself.

more…

God and Evolution: A Response to Stephen Barr (part 2)

God and Evolution: A Response to Stephen Barr (part 3)

 

[xixxvmcm85]

Now onto the rebuttal:

God and Evolution: A Response to Stephen Barr (part 1)

<<>>

The problem with Barr’s argument is not with his understanding of the proper meaning of random, but with his seeming blindness to the fact that the vast majority of evolutionary biologists do not share his view. Barr’s ultimate disagreement here is not with me or Joe Carter, but with the discipline of evolutionary biology itself.

And now you’re dragging us back into the realm of philosophy and theology, two disciplines about which real science is devoid of authority or ability. That Mr. Barr’s theological argument doesn’t sit well with individual evolutionary biologists, the same evolutionary biologists of which 87% are said to espouse an atheistic (and presumably materialistic) philosophy by the Discovery Institute article which you cited, is completely irrelevant.

This is a fallacious appeal to authority.

 

[Eleve]

I could roll a die 10 times. Each time there is a 10% chance that the die will exhibit any particular number 1-6.

What happens the other 40% of the time?

 

[BerhaneSelassie]

In the Haydock 1849 commentary of Exodus 7:11 it references a local council text (which i have not found) which seems to assert theistic evolution is possible

 "Whoever believes that any thing can be made, or any creature changed or transmuted into another species or appearance, except by the Creator himself, is undoubtedly an infidel, and worse than a pagan." (Coun.[Council?] of Orange.)