Tradition betrayed

[Josquin des Prez]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnsXKtE5PNI&feature=related

Fascinating. I think i may have finally found a direction for my own philosophical observations, and perhaps a way out of my racism and anti-semitism, both of which derive from a materialistic, modernist point of view. Dostoevsky nearly turned me to Christianity, but something held me back from that. This might actually be the way for me.

[Geo Dude]

I think i may have finally found a direction for my own philosophical observations, and perhaps a way out of my racism and anti-semitism, both of which derive from a materialistic, modernist point of view.

Could you elucidate on this?

[Josquin des Prez]

What's there to elucidate? From a materialistic point of view, racism and anti-semitism are inevitable positions. But, since i'm not an evil individual, i cannot accept such a point of view in its entirety. So i'm looking for a way out.

[Geo Dude]

I simply don't understand why racism and anti-semitism are inevitable positions from a materialistic point of view.  This is what I'm curious about.

[snyprrr]

Are you sure you don't just call 'em as you see 'em?

Hey, is this one of those (bang bang) traps to get me to (bang bang) say something I shouldn't?



Don't you live in NYC or something?? Surely that's where it starts?



interesting:

http://news.search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A2KJ3CWQlKdOFkUATFTQtDMD;_ylc=X1MDUCM1MzcyMDI3MgRfcgMyBGFvAzAEY3NyY3B2aWQDNTl5Z3VXS0ozQ0hucEJJZlM2azNfUXVBUkNDcTJVNm5sSkFBQVh5TARmcgN5ZnAtdC03MDEEZnIyA3NidG4Ebl9ncHMDMARvcmlnaW4Dc3JwBHF1ZXJ5AyJhbnRpLXNlbWl0aXNtIGRvZXNuJ3QgZXhpc3QiBHNhbwMxBHZ0ZXN0aWQDVVNOQTA5?p=%22anti-semitism+doesn%27t+exist%22&fr2=sb-top&fr=yfp-t-701&type_param=

it's everywhere!!

[jowcol]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnsXKtE5PNI&feature=related

Fascinating. I think i may have finally found a direction for my own philosophical observations, and perhaps a way out of my racism and anti-semitism, both of which derive from a materialistic, modernist point of view. Dostoevsky nearly turned me to Christianity, but something held me back from that. This might actually be the way for me.

A:  Your search for a way out-- or simply one for continued growth, is laudable.  I really believe this is something we all need to do.  We should never stop learning, or let previous ideas block us from where we want to go. Sometimes the labels and defintions we use to make sense out of things become impediments later on.  But, before setting out on a journey and wondering how you will get there, it is worthwhile to decide upon your destination first.

B: With that in mind, and not wanting to nit-pick, I don't see how racisim and anti-semtism are related to modernism-- unless your definition of modernism includes the period before the Renaissance.   Persecution of the Jews, slavery, and similar behavior was present long before "modernism".  If anything, I could say that some of the "modernists" that may have caught your attention were trying to develop an intellectual rationalism for are really primitive impulses.   



But that is my silly opinion-- take with  a grain of salt. 

[kishnevi]

I am at present unable to view videoclips so I can't comment directly--but some of the webpages that came up in googling Dr. Oldmeadow and the presentation title refer to the "doctrines/ideologies" of Darwin, Freud, Marx, etc.  Now it's perfectly accurate to speak of Marx in that way, and Freud seems to belong to the category of outdated science, but to refer to Darwin in those terms--that is, to speak of the theory of evolution as anything other than a part of science that has loads of evidence to support it--throws a red flag up for me immediately.  Unless the reference is meant to refer to such things as "Social Darwinism" and similar abuses of the theory of evolution, in which case the term would be appropriate.

That said,  I adhere, more or less, to what Dr. Oldmeadow refers to as the "perennial philosophy", so I'm certainly not going to discourage Josquin or anyone else from following up on this--but I'm bound to say there's a good deal of hogwash, tripe and pure bovine excrement peddled under that banner which doesn't belong there, so please make sure your critical analysis skills are fully engaged when reading up on it.

B: With that in mind, and not wanting to nit-pick, I don't see how racisim and anti-semtism are related to modernism-- unless your definition of modernism includes the period before the Renaissance.   Persecution of the Jews, slavery, and similar behavior was present long before "modernism".  If anything, I could say that some of the "modernists" that may have caught your attention were trying to develop an intellectual rationalism for are really primitive impulses. 

Not to speak for Josquin, but I think the difference between bigotry from the medieval/Renaissance eras and bigotry in the modern era is the attempt to justify modern bigotry with (usually) bad science and on materialistic, racial grounds.  A German of circa 1500 would justify his hate of Jews by referring to their role in the death of Jesus and their continued rejection of Christianity, and admit that if they converted to Christianity, their "evil" would end; a German of 1900 would justify his hate of Jews by referring to their supposed racial inferiority and alleged inborn vices which no religious conversion or education could stop.  The Spanish discrimination against "New Christians", based on blood purity ideas, is a sort of bridge, but has much more akin to the early version and not the modern version.

[Daidalos]

The speaker in that video is a charlatan; his comments regarding evolution are simply laughable. Even if it were true that Darwin was a racist, even in comparison to his contemporaries (which certainly isn't true), it wouldn't do one bit to refute evolution. Modern evolutionary science has gone far beyond Darwin. Darwin had no idea of heredity, and the mechanism that he proposed to explain inheritance is quite disproved; he knew nothing of molecular biology, which informs our modern conception of evolution; nor he could he possibly conceive of bioinformatics or population genetics, both of which are very important if you want to understand the science of evolution. Despite all of this, Darwin's key insight, that we share a common ancestry with all life and that natural selection is the mechanism that drives adaptive change, has not been contradicted. As for Freud, Marx or Nietzsche, I don't care one bit about them or their philosophies. I don't see any one philosopher, dead or alive, as an authority whom I'd regard with reverence and deference. Ideas stand on their own, and if they are powerful and useful, they should be incorporated into our understanding of the world, regardless of whoever originally invented them.

Feel free to base your spiritual reawakening on whatever drivel you want, but have no illusions: that man's critiques of evolution are asinine and pathetic. If you base your understanding of science on the pronouncements of fools such as the speaker from that link, it suddenly becomes clear how you manage to habitually arrive at absurd conclusions, such as the inane notion that materialism inevitably leads to racism and antisemitism.

[Josquin des Prez]

I simply don't understand why racism and anti-semitism are inevitable positions from a materialistic point of view.  This is what I'm curious about.

Because from a materialistic point of view, racism is the only possible outcome. Likewise from a realpolitik point of view, in relation to anti-semitism. That is, of course, unless you like to bullshit yourself to the realities of the world.

To wit, the Nazis were fierce Darwinists.

I've already distanced myself from a purely physical understanding of race after reading Imperium, by Francis Parker Yockey. I haven't had a similar success at distancing myself from the works of Kevin McDonald, who uses an evolutionary perspective to explain ethnic conflict between Jews and Europeans.

[Josquin des Prez]

The speaker in that video is a charlatan; his comments regarding evolution are simply laughable. Even if it were true that Darwin was a racist, even in comparison to his contemporaries (which certainly isn't true), it wouldn't do one bit to refute evolution. Modern evolutionary science has gone far beyond Darwin. Darwin had no idea of heredity, and the mechanism that he proposed to explain inheritance is quite disproved; he knew nothing of molecular biology, which informs our modern conception of evolution; nor he could he possibly conceive of bioinformatics or population genetics, both of which are very important if you want to understand the science of evolution. Despite all of this, Darwin's key insight, that we share a common ancestry with all life and that natural selection is the mechanism that drives adaptive change, has not been contradicted. As for Freud, Marx or Nietzsche, I don't care one bit about them or their philosophies. I don't see any one philosopher, dead or alive, as an authority whom I'd regard with reverence and deference. Ideas stand on their own, and if they are powerful and useful, they should be incorporated into our understanding of the world, regardless of whoever originally invented them.

Feel free to base your spiritual reawakening on whatever drivel you want, but have no illusions: that man's critiques of evolution are asinine and pathetic. If you base your understanding of science on the pronouncements of fools such as the speaker from that link, it suddenly becomes clear how you manage to habitually arrive at absurd conclusions, such as the inane notion that materialism inevitably leads to racism and antisemitism.

Well, once you are done frothing at the mouth, feel free to join the discussion again.

[Josquin des Prez]

I am at present unable to view videoclips so I can't comment directly--but some of the webpages that came up in googling Dr. Oldmeadow and the presentation title refer to the "doctrines/ideologies" of Darwin, Freud, Marx, etc.  Now it's perfectly accurate to speak of Marx in that way, and Freud seems to belong to the category of outdated science, but to refer to Darwin in those terms--that is, to speak of the theory of evolution as anything other than a part of science that has loads of evidence to support it--throws a red flag up for me immediately.  Unless the reference is meant to refer to such things as "Social Darwinism" and similar abuses of the theory of evolution, in which case the term would be appropriate.

It is a "doctrine" because Darwinism reflects an aspect of modernistic thinking, under the bracket of which he includes Marx, Freud and Nietzsche as the four pillars of all modernistic thought. I recommend you see the presentation though, i can't sum up the whole thing in a few words. I will clarify the way in which he defies Darwinism though, which is the most convincing argument made from a metaphysical point of view i ever heard. Oldmeadow's position is thus. That it is absurd to think that consciousness could arise from non-consciousness. That from inert matter, a Mozart could rise. That from "primordial slime", after all sorts of complicated processes throughout a VERY long span of time, you could arrive at Bach. According to him, its only possible to go downwards, not upwards, and you can only descent from a "celestial" archetype to a lesser physical manifestation of said archetype. Its a compelling argument, as far as metaphysical explanations for the existence of life go, at any rate.

That said,  I adhere, more or less, to what Dr. Oldmeadow refers to as the "perennial philosophy", so I'm certainly not going to discourage Josquin or anyone else from following up on this--but I'm bound to say there's a good deal of hogwash, tripe and pure bovine excrement peddled under that banner which doesn't belong there, so please make sure your critical analysis skills are fully engaged when reading up on it.

Well, all fields of metaphysics are rife with the most outstanding type of nonsense, it comes with the territory. So far i gathered a few names belonging to this movement: Julius Evola, René Guénon, Frithjof Schuon and Martin Lings. I'm going to investigate their works and see what comes out of it.

Apparently, those individuals were also tied to Neoplatonism. As an admirer of Platonic metaphysics, i find this interesting.

[Daidalos]

It is a "doctrine" because Darwinism reflects an aspect of modernistic thinking, under the bracket of which he includes Marx, Freud and Nietzsche as the four pillars of all modernistic thought. I recommend you see the presentation though, i can't sum up the whole thing in a few words. I will clarify the way in which he defies Darwinism though, which is the most convincing argument made from a metaphysical point of view i ever heard. Oldmeadow's position is thus. That it is absurd to think that consciousness could arise from non-consciousness. That from inert matter, a Mozart could rise. That from "primordial slime", after all sorts of complicated processes throughout a VERY long span of time, you could arrive at Bach. According to him, its only possible to go downwards, not upwards, and you can only descent from a "celestial" archetype to a lesser physical manifestation of said archetype.

There's a problem with the notion that "consciousness could [not] arise from non-consciousness": in essence, it's simply an assertion and argument from personal incredulity. In the presentation that you linked there certainly is no convincing argument why it's necessarily false that an evolutionary process could give rise to consciousness; no, the speaker simply invites us to consider the self-evident "absurdity" of the concept. So, on the one hand we have a plain assertion, and on the other a rigorously tested and reliable scientific explanation.

I'd suggest that human intuition is very limited when it comes to gauging reality on a deep level, and that many things that on the face of it appear absurd are nonetheless true (in a scientific sense). Therefore, appealing to our sense of what seems true is both ridiculous and dangerous. Since Mozart was a genius who composed fantastic music, it might strike us as preposterous that a mundane physical process (i.e. evolution) could produce a composer like him, even given huge time spans... but just because an explanation offends our sensibilies doesn't automatically make it false. It it were so, you'd have to throw out almost all of modern science. It baffles me that anyone would expect reality to align with their most superficial intuitions; to my mind, it's symptomatic of an all too common breed of narcissism.

Its a compelling argument, as far as metaphysical explanations for the existence of life go, at any rate.

It's not an argument, it's an assertion. Let's see:

1. It's absurd to assume that consciousness could arise from non-consciousness.
2. In order to get a Mozart or a Bach, it's only possible to go downwards; from the divine to the physical.

It's just an exercise in question-begging. Your standards for what counts as an "argument" are remarkably lax.
(By the way, we see consciousness arise from non-consciousness every time an egg is fertilised by a sperm and the resultant zygote proceeds to grow into a baby. I'm assuming that you believe that neither egg nor sperm is conscious, of course.)

Feel free to defend your assertions with evidence, reason, logic, what have you; what won't work are appeals to our sense of what is absurd (and therefore false).

[drogulus]

This may be so; but the obverse is equally the case as the notion that "consciousness could arise from non-consciousness" is itself "simply an assertion from personal" credulity.

     No, we have examples of consciousness arising through a developmental process. All humans were once unconscious, and became conscious as their brains developed. We know that birds fly, and we knew it before we knew how. We were not credulous about that, or about the development of consciousness from unconsciousness. The question of consciousness is a matter of investigation of the processes, not something fought out at the metaphysical level where people can't "prove" the existence of other minds, so we're credulous to think people have them. No, we aren't.

[Daidalos]

This may be so; but the obverse is equally the case as the notion that "consciousness could arise from non-consciousness" is itself "simply an assertion from personal" credulity.

I am not the one making a claim. From what I understand, consciousness doesn't at this time have a scientific explanation.

What tests?What experiments? Where? Darwin's book on the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection is a tissue of conjecture and speculation andsuch a broad & general philosophy as Darwin's by definition cannot be tested.

No Darwinist that I know of has dealt with Cuvier's refutation of Transformism. Cuvier (in his polemic with Lamarck) refutes it on three bases:

Allow me a brief chuckle over the fact that you're citing the work of a scientist who died two decades before the publication of On the Origin of Species to refute evolution.

1/ the implausibility of using varieties as evidence for evolution. Why? Because a/ variations occur on superficial traits (ie, the relative size or color of, say, Columbine flowers), not internal organs & structure; b/ the span of possible variations is quite limited & after just a few generations the form either grows sterile, or degenerates, or reverts back to type; and c/ because all through what variations occur, what can always observe the persistance of the original type - ie, a rose is always a rose, a pig always a pig

In short, Darwin's contention that, if given time, variations will add up to new species is implausible, as the range of possible variations is just too limited and superficial.

First point, evolution takes a long time and significant changes to important organs or other structures are not likely to occur over a few generations. The hypothesised split between the human and chimp lineages is seven million years ago.

Second, we can certainly observe significant variation and use it for comparison. The analysis of structural homologies was very important in early evolutionary science. What I would be interested to hear from you is why the phylogenetic trees we can construct from analysis of structural and biochemical features of organisms match up with the phylogenetic trees we construct independently from genetic analyses? Before the invention of DNA sequencing, the evolutionary relationships between the higher primates had been drawn up based on morphology, and subsequent genetic analyses produced trees confirming what scientists already suspected. Even analysis of non-functional DNA yields these patterns of relationships. This data is perfectly consistent with evolution; if evolution did not occur, you will still have to explain why creatures seem to share these similarities.

Third, you seem unaware that there have been observed instances of speciation.

2/ Cuvier's own discovery regarding the correlation of the growth of parts in living organisms (from which the invention by him of the science of paleontology derives) makes evolution impossible, as changes in any organism, that are not tied to changed in all the other parts of that organism, are necessarily injurious to the organism, which would eventually be rendered disfunctional by the modification.

You are aware that contemporary paleontologists overwhelmingly accept evolution?

What you say is also false. You are alluding to irreducible complexity, or whatever guise it took in the 19th century. Biological beings are not perfect clockworks that if you disrupt one cog everything ceases to function. Certainly there are mutations that are lethal, and obviously those are not inherited. Most mutations are actually neutral and confer no survival value at all to an organism, but they do accrue over time, which eventually can lead to substantial change.

3/ And of course, the evidence from geology, which shows geologically brief periods of destruction of old species and formation of new ones, followed by geologically long periods of stasis. To make a case for transformation congruent with the geological evidence you would have to postulate saltation - a tall order, as no known species has ever been observed to produce offspring other than of its own kind.

Bah, a jerk in the geological record does not indicate an instantaneous change. We are still taking about thousands and thousands of years. The change would still be gradual from a generational perspective.

Are you perhaps referring to punctuated equilibrium, conceived of by the late Stephen Jay Gould? I'd note that he certainly was an evolutionist, and a famous one.

When I re-read Darwin or any other Darwinian ideologue, I long for the good old days when the great Voltaire would berate scientists for day dreaming about what may have been, instead of figuring out what occurs now, in front of our eys (even though I acknowledge most practicing scientists ignore the controvertial big issues, focusing instead on gaining understanding of currently observable & testable details, like the structure & function of proteins)

As a matter of fact, the statistical chances of even such a small thing as a functional protein arising by chance, no matter how much time is granted, is so close to nill as to be, well, nill. So, the chances of a Mozart arise through a Darwinian process?!!!!

Creationists suck at making probability arguments; I see that you are no different. It is not proposed that an enzymatically active protein popped into existence without any precursors. Indeed, the current science suggests that ribozymes, RNA-molecules with the ability to self-catalyse, preceded proteins.  We can just look at the ribosomes in our own cells to see evidence that ribonucleotides can function, however inefficiently, as enzymes.

As for the chances of Mozart arising through evolution... if I were making a bet four billion years ago that evolution would produce such a specimen, I'd most certainly bet against it. However, this is just spurious teleological thinking. If I drew a card from a deck, noted which card I drew on a piece of paper, returned the card to the deck, shuffled the deck, and repeated the process a total of ten times, the probability before I drew my first card that I would receive this particular suite would be 6,91x10^-18. Astronomical odds, but there I sit with those ten cards.

It does not automatically make it true, either; besides, you are assuming skeptics are skeptics because they are offended by Darwin: on what evidence do you assume that. One becomes a skeptic because as one gets deeper into the theory one finds there is more speculation and sheer fiction in it, that tested & demonstrated science.

Perhaps you should read the posts that I was responding to. Stating that something is "absurd" on the face of it, and therefore untrue, suggests that one bases one's judgment on whether a notion offends one's sensibilities, and what one feels must be true.

If evolution is fiction, explain to me why humans have a chromosome that appears to the result of the fusion of two chimpanzee chromosomes.

No you do not; what you are doing is assuming the spermatozoon and the unfertilized egg and the resulting zygote are devoid of conscience: but you do not know if that is the case.

Oh, indeed I cannot know that zygotes are devoid of consciousness, but from my observations it is usually the case that conscious beings have functional nervous systems. You might be an exception.

[drogulus]

A bizarrely fallacious analogy! Yes, we know birds fly and, yes, we know humans have conscience, but we do not know how birds came to be and fly and we do not know how consciousness arose (assuming conscience is something that arises, instead of something that just is). You are equating a fact - bird flight - with a speculation - the development of conscience from unconsciousness - what more, you are starting from the very same a priori as Daidalos - i.e. the presumed unconsciousness of the zigote, without consideration of the possibility that conscience is there in inception, alongside the brain & nervous system & other organs, which presumably are also there in germ from the moment of conception.

    Since we knew that birds could fly before we knew how, we can similarly say that unconscious beings can become conscious without knowing the details. I'm not going to grant that it's speculation that humans become conscious. We all were unconscious at one point no matter how far you push that moment back. As for thinking that things just exist rather than develop and change, what convinces you of this? All the evidence points to change over time, and these changes are responsible for new features including consciousness. In order to think this I must reluctantly give up the idea that tiny barking dogs inhabit dog zygotes. Either essences or developmental processes account for features of living beings, and it isn't credulous to prefer the path evidence indicates over essences.

[Daidalos]

Allow me a roar of laughter over your ignorance of Lamarck, with who Cuvier was arguing - and Cuvier's refutation of Lamarck also works on Darwin as Darwin like Lamarck bases his theory on a failure to properly pay attention to the limitations to the limited range of observable variations.

I knew Cuvier argued against Lamarck. It's just a very curious practice to dredge up centuries-old arguments to critique the science of today.

You fail to grasp the observation made by Cuvier (and later corroborated by Mendel), namely, that variations occur on superficial traits & the range of observable variations is always limited. The amount of time available made available to Darwin is therefore of no significance.

Observable phenotypic variation might be limited to a degree, but not so far as you seem to take it. Paleontologists can chart gradual changes to the gross structures of organisms that link species to species through geological time.

These phylogenetic trees of Darwinian ideologues are not proof of the theory, they are restatements of the theory in the abscond, technical jargon dear to XXth century scientists...

How easily you dismiss mountains of corroborating evidence.

Do you deny that there are greater sequence similarities between chimpanzees and humans than with chimpanzees and gorillas?
Do you deny that there are greater sequence similarities between gorillas and chimpanzees and humans than with gorillas and organgutans?
and so on, and we have ourselves a nested phylogenetic tree. This pattern emerges if we study non-functional DNA as well, e.g. endogenous retroviruses, transposons, pseudogenes. This is a fact, one which is consistent with evolutionary theory. If you say that evolution is fiction, how can you explain this fact?

No, I do not need to explain this as I do not need to claim to know it all to justify my skepticism toward the speculations of Charles Darwiniand of his disciples; indeed, to withold judgment on such a mysterious thing as the appearence of life on eath seems like a respectable one to me -

It would be respectable if there weren't any evidence to support evolution. There is. Loads of it.

If you wish to demonstrate the falsity of evolution, you must explain how it manages to be consistent with a great deal of data. One of the triumphs of modern evolutionary science is DNA sequence analysis. It has shown us that there are remarkable similarities on the sequence level between organisms, and to a very large degree sequence analysis confirms prior conclusions that scientists made with alternate methods.

As a matter of fact it is among paleontologists that skepticism toward evolution is most widespread, but they do not like to say so publicly, for fear of being exploited by the Creationists - and smeared by doctrinaire Darwinists.

Since it is a matter of fact, I presume that you can provide evidence for your claim?

The corelation of the parts in living organisms is a fact of observation that Darwinian ideologues deny, because it is not compatible with their theory.

If you have ever studied physiology, you will know that there is no denial of the interrelation of parts. The same goes for cell biology and biochemistry. I assure you, my professors in those subjects were Darwinians, and they made frequent reference to evolution to explain the various features of the systems we were studying.

Where did you get the idea that living organisms needed to be perfect to be just that, organisms - i.e. organized beings or systems? Nothing in this universe is perfect yet evidence of pattern & organisation is wide spread -ie planetary cycles, reproductive cycles, etc.

Yes, there are patterns, but minor permutations don't screw over living systems completely. Even in instances where it appears to be very sensitive to change, e.g. molecular systems such as the immune response, there are precursors.

"... they do accrue over time.." This is indeed the key to darwinism. But it simply is not an established fact, it is a speculation, and one at that that is contradicted by observation, as the range of observed variations is indeed such a limited one.

It is not contradicted by observation; quite to the contrary, as I stated before, there have been observed instances of speciation. Furthermore, if you dismiss comparative morphology, genetic analysis overwhelmingly supports the fact of common ancestry. Why do we share non-functional endogenous retroviruses in greater proportion with species that are considered more closely related to humans than we do with more presumably distantly related ones?

Once people have grasped the notion that this core contention of Darwin - and of Lamarck - is unproven at best and possibly inplausible, then all evolutionary doctrines will fall.

Then I suggest you get to it and publish your research that refutes evolution. I look forward to the scientific revolution that is sure to follow.

But the geologically short change postulated by Elredge and Gould is impossible from a stricter, Darwinian standpoint; these people are good at refuting one another, but not so good at proving themselves right.
No; I was refering t the geological and paleontological evidence. Punctuated equilibria is an attempt by Elredge and Gould at reconciling Darwinism with the overwhelming geological and paleontological evidence for stabilty (in between the periodic bouts of unruliness, mountain building, high volcanic activity, etc) - but one that does not go far enough in the end as all it does is reduce the time frame available for evolutionary transformation

The occasional jerkiness in the geological record does not indicate massive change and the "transformation" of species would still be a gradual one if considered one generation at a time; most likely, it would be imperceptible. In no way does it refute Darwinism.

Well, it didn't take you long to do as darwinians always do when they run out of argument - and create guilt by association with people I, for one, do not associate with, namely, the Creationists (whose critique of Darwinn, btw, is not wrong, but who draw the undue inference from their critique that, if Darwin is wrong, the Molina must be right. Separate creation is itself inplausible as it ignores the fact that all things in nature are linked - and the environment just as much a function of its parts as its parts are a function of their environment. A more plausible speculation - questions of origin probably always are speculative - is that the whole system, or biosphere, came about pretty much as is, perhaps by a process of precipitation from the very materials and energies of which it is composed).

Oh goodness, you want to talk about chance and you suggest the system precipitated out of the environment? Evolution by means of natural selection actually reduces the improbability of the emergence of complex traits; your proposal would by comparison be ridiculously improbable.

This said, it is not the Creationists who have pointed out the statistical implausibility of the random emrgence of any form of organisation, living or not; it is mathematicians, who have been exploited by Creationists (and smeered by Darwinians, through the same guilt by association you have practiced against me); see for instance the Mathematical Challenges to neo-darwinism, published by the Wistar Institutes in 1967, or the writing of John Von Neumann.

For someone who claims not to be a Creationist, you sure sound like one. Random emergence of any form of organisation? Evolution is random in the sense that it is not strictly deterministic, but it is not entirely random; evolution is stochastic, it's a process with weighted probabilities. It is not proposed that complexity emerges spontaneously, but it does emerge nonetheless. A non-evolutionary example might the formation of snow flakes: a purely physical process that produces intricate crystals.

Well, it is indeed the case that Darwinism constantly modify their theory, to try and invalidate refutations of it; the problem is, the modified theory - that you refer to as "current science," - is just as speculative as the previous forms of it; what more, neither  RNA molecules nor living proteins have ever been observed outside of living organisation and it simply is not plausible to base any theory on phenomena whose very existence is implausible at best.

The strength of science is that is amenable to new evidence and changes to accommodate new data. The test of a theory is its ability to make accurate predictions. Evolution makes accurate predictions. We can predict in which geological strata a particular organism belongs; find a rabbit in the pre-Cambrian and evolution is dead. By means of different methods, we can compare the relatedness of different organisms; if the independent methods yield the same phylogenetic trees, it is an indication of the power of the theory.

The origin of life itself is surely a speculative issue, one which is very exciting, but it is actually separate from evolution. Evolution postulates the existence of life and goes on from there. Of course we cannot see RNA or protein "outside of living organisation" because they are right now inextricably intertwined with biological processes -- how would you even recognise RNA or protein "outside of living organisation"? -- but it certainly is plausible to make inferences based on the evidence at hand.

What occurs in living organisms today does not give us reliable clues as to how these organisms came about in the first place.

If ancestral features are preserved, they certainly might. DNA cannot have been the first replicator, because it is rather inert; protein cannot have been the first replicator, because it isn't good at storing information and it doesn't self-replicate; RNA, on the other hand, can fulfil both these functions, but not as efficiently as either DNA or proteins, respectively. If we can construct a model that describes the behaviour of those early replicators, and confirm the possibility by creating self-replicating RNA in a laboratory, then we have more reason to believe that RNA might have been one step closer to the first replicator (there may have been precursors even to RNA). On this issue of the first appearance of life, I don't think we will ever know, but with consistent models and theories, it becomes more plausible to have certain beliefs regarding the appearance of that first lifeform.

The fact that there you are sitting with those ten cards in no way proves that either you or those cards have arisen through a process of evolution; it proves no more than that you are sitting there with those cards and your assumption that your existence proves darwinism is an expression of credulity, not reasoned observation.

It wasn't an attempt to prove evolution, only to highlight the pointlessness of probability calculations after the fact.

Perhaps you should practice what you preach and read my posts before berating me as nowhere have I stated Darwin was absurd therefore wrong; I have merely stated Darwinism is a tissue of  conjectures and speculations and given some reasons for my statement.

I didn't respond to your post when I made my original post; you hadn't even posted then. I referred to the link in the OP and to Josquin. I thought that much was obvious. Evidently not.

I don't need to explain a wikipedia entry; you do, if you are going to make authority of such a dubious source; just as you are the one who needs to explain why I should let myself get swayed by such an obviously speculative assertion as that humans have a chromosome that "appears" to result of the fusion of two chimpanzee chromosomes. All living beings are composed of sugars and proteins, there is nothing in this chemical fact that proves all living beings are related by common descent and it is sufficient to observe the apparent fact that living organisation is a property of the chemicals of which living forms are composed - without making dogma of wild speculation over a subject that is probably yo complex for the human mind to understand, namely, the origin of life on earth

If you are insistent on this paranoia of yours, I will provide links to more reputable sources than wikipedia (even though it is accurate in this instance).
Ken Miller (Brown molecular biologist) explains the issue
An article in Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences regarding this issue

I wonder if you are being deliberately dense on this issue. Sure, the chemical make-up of all organisms is very similar, but our DNA is arranged in specific patterns of nucleotides; it consists of information that can be quantified and objectively analysed.
Very simplistically, our chromosomes look like this: TTTgggggCCCggggggTTT. The T's are the end points of chromosomes, called telomeres. They are characterised by a specific, repeating nucleotide sequence motif that is produced by the enzyme telomerase as it lengthens the ends of chromosomes. The g's are simply genes in this simplified figure. The C's constitute the centromere, the part of the chromosome to which microtubuli attach during cell division; that region too is characterised by a certain sequence features. What is so curious with our chromosome number 2 is that it looks something like this: TTTgggggCCCggggggTTTTTTgggggCCCggggggTTT. There are telomere sequences in the middle of the chromosome and an inactivated second centromere. The genes of chromosome 2 in humans also consist of genes that have homologues in two separate chimpanzee chromosomes. So, the evidence indicates that after the split between the ancestral human and chimpanzee lineages, two chromosomes in our lineage fused to form chromosome 2 and that has been with us ever since. This is consistent with common ancestry and evolution. If evolution is false, explain to me why human chromosome number 2 looks as it does.

As always with internet people, when they run out f argument they resort to insult. If I needed the vindication, I'd thank you for being such the sore loser.

As you can see, I haven't run out of arguments. Consider the insults a happy bonus.

[Herman]

I will clarify the way in which he defies Darwinism though, which is the most convincing argument made from a metaphysical point of view i ever heard. Oldmeadow's position is thus. That it is absurd to think that consciousness could arise from non-consciousness. That from inert matter, a Mozart could rise. That from "primordial slime", after all sorts of complicated processes throughout a VERY long span of time, you could arrive at Bach. According to him, its only possible to go downwards, not upwards, and you can only descent from a "celestial" archetype to a lesser physical manifestation of said archetype. Its a compelling argument, as far as metaphysical explanations for the existence of life go, at any rate.

There's nothing 'metaphysical' to it. It's an argument based on taste, or if you'd like a longer word, aesthetics.

You, or Mr. Oldmeadow (you look at the fellow for a minute and see a charlatan, indeed), and countless other folks throughout history haven't liked the idea that ultimately the human race and all life on this planet have very simple beginnings.

What Darwin did was 1) show conclusively that this is the case 2) that it really makes life on this planet more wonderful

[Herman]

no black couple, no white couple, and no oriental couple (assuming impeccable sexual fidelity by the female) has ever been observed to produce offspring other than black, white or oriental.

I don't think these are hard scientific categories, and in any case, it can be easily observed that "black" couples often have children in different shades of "black". Not that these are scientific observations, but "race" isn't a scientific category anyway. Although it was pretty predictable you would come up with it.

[Daidalos]

Because the science of today is not necessarily better than the science of yesterday, because Ptolemy's geocentric system post-dates Aristarchus's heliocentric system yet Aristarchus was right and Ptolemy wrong, and because the scientists of today have failed to deal convincingly with the refutation of Cuvier, who was the greatest naturalist since Aristotle and therefore inherently respectable and because if the science of yesterday is necessarily superceded by the science of today (as you seem to imply), then the science of tioday has little value itself as it will necessarily be superceded by the science of tomorrow - in which case we are wasting our time, bickering over nothing. (no doubt, those among scientists who seek causes and treatment for such things as aids and cancer and heart diseases are more useful and therefore more respectable than those who make dogma out of speculation over what may or may not have occured in the past).

Just because science is producing answers that become better as time proceeds doesn't mean we should ignore what science says today in the hopes that we will get better answers tomorrow. To paraphrase Isaac Asimov (I don't have the exact quote in memory), "Those who believed the Earth flat were wrong; those later who believed the Earth a sphere were also wrong; however, if you believe that both were equally wrong, you are more wrong than both."

A telling concession, but one whose damage you try and unduly control by failing to deal with the fact that after very few variations specimens become sterile, or degenerate and die, or revert back to type. The evidence from farm and nursery as well as from nature simply refute the permanent, incremental changes postulated by Darwin as these constant changes simply do not occur.

Not a concession, but I'm hedging my statements because I recognise that I'm not that well-versed when it comes to morphological comparison. You, however, seem perfectly willing to make sweeping and dramatic statements, dismissing the efforts of scientists from diverse fields. I don't think it disrespectful to think that you aren't an expert in all of them.

Not so. What some paleontologists (and also museum curators) do is re-organize evidence taken out of geological context, around the theory (instead of deriving the theory from the evidence, kept on context)

This is preposterous. The consilience of different lines of evidence confirm the predictions of the theory. Paleontologists place organisms in nested hierarchies based on anatomical comparisons, and examinations of the genomes of contemporary species of those phyla either confirm or deny that they are "sorted" correctly. To a massive degree, genetic analysis has confirmed common descent and concurs with most other comparisons. There are of course instances where scientists are surprised (the ancestry of whales or hippos, for example), mostly due to loss-of-function mutations producing vestigial limbs.

Of course not; what I deny is the contention that Darwin and the Darwinists have provided a plausible explanation for these resemblances and the evidence from genetics simply does not allow it as known changes are too few and superficial to explain the theory.

Mutations rates (which have been measured) certainly seem to account for the genetic differences between chimps and humans accrued over six-seven million years.

I have seen lots of mendacity in internet debates but this one rates highly: what you are doing here is steal my (and Cuvier's) observation regarding the corelation of parts and then smearingly insinuating that I am the one who ignores the evidence from physiology, when in fact you are the one who, so far, has ignored it.

Furthermore, you are failing to deal with the consequence of ths observation, namely, the implausibility of the piecemeal changes postulated by Charles Darwin, as these changes, if they are not corelated to changes in the rest of the organism, are necessarily injurious to it, and therefore a refutation not a confirmation of the theory

I will make a confession: I haven't read much of Darwin's original writing. However, I have read plenty of modern biology, and the notion that evolution only proceeds by making piecemeal changes is ridiculous. There are many examples in the literature of parts evolving together as functionality shifts, not one piece at a time. For example, the evolution of the eye, an organ usually heralded to be impossibly complicated and therefore unevolvable, is documented step by step by reference to intermediate forms.

Yet another concession. Thank you. The theory postulates that the changes are beneficial but the changes we observe tend to be damaging & therefore contradict the theory.

It's not a concession. Most changes are neither beneficial nor harmful, but neutral. Consider the degeneracy of the genetic code: the third nucleotide in a codon is usually not as important as the first two and a change needn't lead to amino acid substitution in proteins. The vast majority of mutations are neutral. As for changes that are not invisible to natural selection, most tend to be harmful, but that isn't an absolute judgment. Sickle cell anemia, for instance, might be beneficial if heterozygous, as it confers a resistance to malaria; in other circumstances it is harmful. However, there are also plenty of examples of mutations that are directly beneficial. In the world of microbiology, the ability of bacteria to adapt quickly is well known. One of the most dramatic examples is the evolution of the ability to break down nylon by a flavobacterium. More recently, Richard Lenski's research into E. coli has been noted as one of his strains developed the ability to metabolise citrate.

"Occasional jerkiness'! What a joke. What you try and reduce to occasional jerkiness are catastrophic occurences involving massive earthquakes, volcanic activity, mountain building + massive destruction of species occuring near the beginning of the geological events - the whole thing followed by stability - geology dominated by slow processes such as erosion, and little change in existing forms of life. Why Darwin chose to uphold something as clearly refuted by the evidence as progressive evolution is somewhat of a mystery; it is probable he was overly affected by the ideology of progress, pre-eminent in his time - and it is quite certain his disciple accepts it because of a metaphysical a priori - namely, the will to ignore any line of evidence (such as the catastrophic appeareance of most forms of multicellular life during the pre-cambrian explosion) which they believe (probably falsely), requires a God

By "jerkiness" in the geological record I of course referred to the appearance of "jerkiness"; there is no attempt at reduction.

The massive appearance of of most known multicellular life forms during the pre-cambrian event is a matter of paleontological fact, not a speculation. Another thing that is a fact, not a speculation, is the corelation of geological, atmospheric and biological processes that constitute the biosphere and that were well documented by the great Vladimir Vernadsky, father of the science of ecology. A theory that fails to start from such observations can only be a failed theory, over the long run, however sensible it may seem (subjectively) to you.  And when you claim (without evidence), that evolution reduces the improbability of complex traits you are practicing what you have falsely accused me of, namely, of denying facts and observations that do not fit your pre-conceived notions of what is or is not plausible, possible, or rational

The fact that most multicellular life suddenly* appeared does not mean they simply precipitated from the environment. That is far more of a tornado-in-a-junkyard scenario than evolution by natural selection ever was. Evolution reduces improbability because it proceeds in incremental steps, which builds up to complexity. I would refer you to Richard Dawkins's Climbing Mount Improbable, but he's just a Darwinist lackey so I doubt you will find him persuasive.

*by no means "sudden" by our reckoning; it took millions of years

There you go again, with the same old cheap, if conventional smear: such low quality individuals you Darwinians invariably turn out to be, as always with ideologues of any sort. I also note that you have evaded recognition of the opposition to darwinism provided by reputed mathematicians. Not creationist preachers. Mathematicians.

It is not a rare thing for experts in one field to misunderstand the details of other fields and imagine that their criticisms actually have merit. Physicists aren't consulted when we suffer from disease, and while mathematicians conceivably have insights to offer to biological models, probabilistic argument made against the validity of evolution from mathematicians have failed. Here I would point to Dembski, whose mathematical arguments against evolution evince deep misunderstandings of biology, or Fred Hoyle, while an eminent physicist, he made a statistical argument against evolution (the aforementioned tornado in a junkyard) that constitutes a strawman, but I don't imagine that will do much good either.

Such crass misunderstanding of what darwinism can and cannot do! It is not because of darwinism that we know it is unlikely we will find rabbits in the pre-cambrian; it is because generations of paleontologists have studied the rocks, layer after layer and the great man who began this process and even invented the Science of Paleontology happens to be none other than the greatest enemy of evolution - namely, Georges Cuvier!

Who died before Darwin published On the Origin. Don't recruit the dead to your cause. The evolution of Lamarck was very different from the evolution of Darwin. We don't know how Cuvier would have responded to Darwin's theory.

When Darwinism will fall one cannot know for sure - it took nearly two thousand years to break down Ptolemy, even though heliocentricity had been known before him; perhaps people will finally own up to the faxct that variations are too few and superficial to explain (and therefore justify) evolution; or perhaps they will just cease believe in the idea of progress as evolution is also an application to bilogy of that myth & as implausible in nature as it is in history, where what we get are cycles of civilisation and barbarity, not continuous progress from neantherdal to sputnik

Eh... evolution doesn't postulate progress from bad to better. Evolution by natural selection merely says that there are differences in reproduction between replicators. There is no tendency to produce anything "better," only a natural selection that favours those that manage to breed. Who manages to breed differs depending on the prevailing conditions.

As a matter of fact the phylogenetic trees tend to differ from author to author, which is often what clues people to the possibility that evolution is far from a certain science.

Depending on what features you study, there can certainly be differences between phylogenetic trees. However, these differences are more pronounced if you glimpse very far into the past, or use genes that aren't under strong selection pressures to remain the same. You will not see substantially different trees depicting the relationships between the primates if the analysis is based on genetic data.

As a matter of fact, there is nothing plausible about infering the existence of RNA or DNA or protein independent from living organisation because: 1/ such phenomena have never been observed (or recreated in labs) and 2/ because life is all about organisation and RNA< DNA and protein have plausible existence other than the function they serve within living organisms. It seems what you are doing here is rephrasing the Epicurian philosophy (parts randomly assembling into complex forms) in terms of modern chemistry - without due regards for the fact that these pre-existing parts the Epicurians postulate, have never been observed to exist in fact)

We have drifted into discussing abiogenesis, which is distinct from evolution. Nevertheless, the initial assembly into a complex form would probably constitute a chance event, but the "complex" form -- according to the current model -- would be a ribonucleotide that wouldn't be particularly complex by our standards. As stated before, this is a new science that does not have the experimental and theoretical backing of evolution, and it is stille extremely speculative, so I'm not making any definite statements about this. I will refer you to an article written by one of our GMG alums, Al Moritz (he's a biochemist), that deals with the origin of life.

Within the context of living organisation. When you depart from this you are speculating over something that occurs neither in nature nor in labs To arrive at plausible explanation of phenomena you must start from observations. Cells are observed facts. Multicellular organisms are observed facts. Living organisation is fact of observation. Breaking an organism down to its constituent parts is analytically usefull and helps understand what these parts and their functions are. But to assume that an organism constructs itself piece after piece from its constituent parts is not only to speculate from nothing, it is to make a speculation that contradicts the fact that living organism exist only as wholes and can exist only as wholes.

It does seem as though you are trying to resurrect essentialism. Organisms are assemblages of parts working in unison, some more complex than others. Currently, we don't have an example of self-replicating ribozyme (as far as I know), but research is ongoing. If we do manage to construct a simple one in a laboratory, it will certainly lend credence to the notion that a form of RNA world could have preceded our world of cells and bodies. As for organisms constructing themselves piece by piece... we have examples of that as well, on larger scales: consider the development of a human being from a single cell.

These models and theories of yours are merely restatements of those beliefs and therefore cannot confer plausibility onto them

If you are intent on ignoring evidence there is nothing I can do to help you.

Wow!  when you are not resorting to the conventional, ideologically-determined slander (ie creationism), you resort to the same sort of nasty attacks on sanity practiced by bolshevist authorities against dissidents: what a loyal follower of Lysenko you are indeed but I prefer Vavilov's law of  homologous series in Variations even though it is not compatible with Darwinism as he derived his generalisations from observation and experiment, when the Darwinists reorganize the evidence around an ideology that does not convincingly explain it.

Lysenko was a Lamarckian. He believed that organisms acquired traits that were subsequently passed on. This explains the disastrous consequences of Lysenkoism.

Ken Miller: the favorite authority of semi-educated internet morons: if only you heard the mocking laughter this link of yours generated in me! Brown has got to be one of the most pathologically arrrogant dumb-asses I have ever heard off, what with his self-righteous and self-serving claims to be absolutely and exclusive right on the religious issue (ie, presumably liberal christianism VS the fundamentalists) as well as on the science. Brown's sole title to celebrity is his role in the persecution of the hapless Behe; and though he quite liberally asserts his objection to Behe is necessarily and inevitably right, all he has done to oppose him is provide a truly inept analogy between a living organism, and... a mouse trap, claiming (on what evidence he does not say) that a simple mouse trap evolves into a more complex trap and therefore that a simpler organism can evolve into a more complex one! A machine, a human contraption, evolving into another one! What a joke!! Bad analogies can impress readers of science popularisations but surely serious scientists know better.

Why don't you address the issue that I brought up (chromosomal fusion) rather than heaping your invective on Ken Miller? I would say that the bad analogy was orginally Behe's (he introduced the mousetrap!); blaming Miller for showing the shortcomings of that analogy is poor form.

Nor can you impress me with appeals to the authority of a Brown professor. I have been to Rice and Standford, where I have seen lots of second-rates, alongside the good teachers & fine scholars. Nor am I oblivious of the fact that the treatment meted out to Newton by colleges at Cambridge amounted to persecution and acacademic titles no more prove integrity than they prove competence.


And before you again presume to claim I am the one who is dense you need to open up what mind you have and account for the overwhelming fact that observed variations are too few in number and too superficial to provide an adequate mechanism for evolution. All your simplistic description of chromosomes does is re-state in chemical terms the obvious structural resemblences between primates, without giving us much of a clue as the causes and reasons for their existence and to assert all curently existing primates derive from some dwarf called Lucy has no more plausibilty that to claim all human races descend from a bitch called Eve - as no chimp, baboon, or wiki-scientist has ever been observed to produce offspring other than chimp, baboon or wiki-scientist, just as no balck couple, no white couple, and no oriental couple (assuming impecable sexual fidelity in the female's part) has ever been observed to produce offspring other than black, white or oriental. Evolution assumes (not unlike the biblical account of the origgin of human races) were other than the observable processes occuring today. That maybe so, but you need to do better than to restate in modern jargon the speculations of Charles Darwin, to convince me this is the case.

If you knew a thing of genetics you would know that chromosomal arrangement has no large effect on phenotype. It does not reflect the structural resemblances between primates.

I have taken up this issue many, many times, but I will do so again because you haven't yet addressed it. Why are NON-FUNCTIONAL sequences shared in greater proportion between organisms that are believed to be more closely related than between species that are believed to be more distantly related. I'm talking about broken genes, remnants of ancient viruses that have stuck around in our DNA, and huge stretches of repetitive sequences... these things do not produce any phenotypic (i.e. visible) effects on the organism at all; they are only detectable if you analyse DNA sequences.


This is an image I like. It shows that certain kind of sequences resembling retroviruses are shared in greater proportion between chimps and humans than between chimps and gorillas, between gorillas and chimps more than between gorillas and orangutans, and so on down the layers. These sequences do nothing, they are simply genetic fossils, so they cannot possbily reflect physical similarities between these various species. Why do we find that the tree we construct by looking only at these sequences match the trees we construct by other methods? What reason is there for chimps and humans to share more dead viruses in their DNA than chimps and gorillas do?

[Guido]

Daidalos, much though I admire your continued engagement with Toucan (and I also have long liked that telomere video, and the last diagram you posted), it's clearly not going to work.* His arguments against evolution are of course misguided and misinformed, but these are as nothing to the alternative theory that he is suggesting, namely that things precipitated from their environment. Where does one even start with a claim like that? And you are right to point out of course that it is bizarre to appeal to the unlikelyness of evolution, when this is your proposed alternative!

Toucan, you keep denying that you are a creationist, but just to be clear, what is your account of how humans appeared on the earth?



*although actually the value of these discussions is often in clarifying it for later readers: which person is telling a more reasonable story? So do continue if you have the energy!