Tag: evolution

A question for Ed Brayton

Michael Heath attempts an illogical defense of Ed Brayton:

Ed’s response to the comments regarding him in this thread is here. Ed does have a debating background. He is not a scientist in a relevant field, however he’s scientifically literate and has an in-depth understanding of both the evidence for evolution and creationist attempts to discredit those claims.

One of his commentors in the link above regarding this debate suggested Ed only debate in written form, I agree. I’ve yet to experience a creationist that can debate this subject without complete dependence on rhetorical and logical fallacies coupled to frequent use of the Gish Gallop. A written debate provides no cover for such intellectual dishonesty.

We such a rhetorical fallacy here where Mr. Day fails to address Mr. Brayton’s point and instead moves straight into avoidance mode.

We have absolutely nothing of the kind here. Ed Brayton asked Ellis Washington a question for the apparent purposes of evading a debate with him. Calling my non-response to a question asked of Ellis Washington “a rhetorical fallacy” isn’t just ridiculous, it doesn’t even make sense. First, asking such a question is not an appropriate response to a debate challenge; one does not engage in the debate prior to it actually taking place. Second, asking a question in lieu of a clear yes-or-no response strongly suggests that the individual asking the question does not wish to engage in the debate. Third, it’s a ridiculous and logically fallacious question because the absence of an alternative hypothesis does not, in itself, testify to the accuracy of the current hypothesis. For example, Keynesian general theory has been shown to be false on both logical and empirical grounds and it would still be false on those grounds even in the absence of Neo-Classical, Austrian, or Post-Keynesian Minskyan models.

Of course, one can’t expect much in the way of logic from either biologists or journalists who are said to possess “an in-depth understanding” of “the evidence for evolution”. So, what does Brayton himself have to say?

“Someone went and posted a link to my response to Ellis Washington and my question about endogenous retroviruses in a comment on Vox Day’s blog. Vox did manage to stop combing his mohawk and counting his world class IQ long enough to make a couple of nasty and substanceless comments about me, as did several of his readers. Guess what none of them attempted to do? Explain the patterns found in retroviruses without common descent. I bet Ellis won’t either. What he will do, as I predicted earlier, is try to change the subject from evolution and common descent to atheism. What else can he do?”

Nasty and substanceless comments? Let’s see, what did I say:

1. Brayton doesn’t want to debate Washington. That’s neither nasty nor substanceless. Notice that in neither of his two posts has he answered the obvious question of whether he wants to or not.

2. Brayton wants to avoid debating Washington without looking like he is ducking Washington. That’s neither nasty nor substanceless, that’s exactly what it looks like. And if this is incorrect, Brayton can make it clear that he will debate Washington and will ask Washington the question during their debate.

3. Brayton is a coward. Nasty, perhaps. Not substanceless. Possibly true. That’s exactly what it looks like now to me and pretty much everyone else on both sides of the issue. Michael Heath’s assertion that “Ed has a debating background” says absolutely nothing about whether he wants to debate Washington or not. Now, I know nothing about Ellis Washington and am perfectly open to the possibility that Brayton would destroy him. But, considering Brayton’s past demonstration of illogical infelicities, it is by no means a given.

4. Brayton isn’t very bright. That’s neither nasty nor substanceless, it’s just an observation. He’s a journalist, which is a field well-known for being filled with poorly educated bubbleheads, and his blog shows little in the way of evidence for intelligence much higher than the average literate individual. Furthermore, the fact that he thinks Washington has no options other than turning the discussion from evolution and common descent to atheism shows that his “in-depth understanding of evolution” is nothing of the kind. Brayton appears to be engaging in psychological projection here, for as the past discussions of evolution on this blog will testify, it is usually atheist supporters of evolution who prefer to turn the subject to religion whenever direct questions addressing the various flaws in the theory of evolution by natural selection and common descent are asked.

Anyhow, it’s quite easy to establish if I am correct in my suspicions about Ed Brayton by asking him one simple yes-or-no question. Mr. Brayton, do you want to debate Ellis Washington?

UPDATE: Further evidence supporting my hypothesis that Brayton isn’t that bright: “I made a simple factual claim: there is no coherent, reasonable explanation for the patterns found in endogenous retroviruses other than comment descent (i.e. the theory of evolution). If that’s wrong, show why it’s wrong; if you can’t, then all this talk of arrogance, snobbery and “Christophobia” is irrelevant.”

Brayton clearly doesn’t understand that it does not matter if his “simple factual claim” is wrong or not. What matters is that the truth or falsehood of that “simple factual claim” says nothing about the truth or falsehood of the theory of evolution by natural selection, which happens to be the subject that Washington raised with him. The proposition that there is only one coherent, reasonable explanation for something is not tantamount to the proposition that the coherent, reasonable explanation is actually correct.

The idol crumbles

From a review of Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini’s new book, What Darwin Got Wrong:

I really enjoyed this book; however, it may only appeal to a very small audience – those who believe in a thoroughly natural evolutionary process, but are also unhappy with the current state of evolutionary theory (the Modern Synthesis). I happen to fall into this category so I appreciated Fodor and Palmarini’s book, but I can also understand why this book may receive negative reviews. The gist of the book is this: “…we will run a line of argument that goes like this: there is at the heart of adaptationist theories of evolution, a confusion between (1) the claim that evolution is a process in which creatures with adaptive traits are selected and (2) the claim that evolution is a process in which creatures are selected for their adaptive traits. We will argue that: Darwinism is committed to inferring (2) from (1); that this inference is invalid (in fact it’s what philosophers call an `intensional fallacy’); and that there is no way to repair the damage consonant with commitment to naturalism, which we take to be common ground. Getting clear on all this will be a main goal of the book.”

This is only the first step in the eventual abandonment of Darwinism and evolution by natural selection that has been inevitable since Mendel, but it’s an interesting one. It should eventually make clear what a religion Darwinism actually is, as atheist and agnostic materialists begin moving away from the Darwinian model for very different reasons than most Creationist theists. I’m looking forward to reading this book because I believe that unlike the intelligent design people, Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini are looking in the correct place for proving the model incorrect in a scientific manner, assuming that it is actually incorrect. As I have pointed out on numerous occasions, the natural selection component of TENS is a logical and philosophical hypothesis, not a scientific one. Even Richard Dawkins has reluctantly admitted in his latest book that it is entirely plausible natural selection is not the mechanism by which evolution operates, and since after 150 years there is still no significant scientific evidence that Darwinian natural selection takes place, I expect that it will not be too terribly long before Darwinism takes its rightful place with phrenology, astrology, and other pseudo-sciences. And in the meantime, it is always amusing to see not-very-bright biologists shrieking about how their intellectual superiors don’t understand the tremendously complicated concepts to which they are so emotionally attached.

Since we’re on the subject of evolution, I would be remiss if I did not mention that Scott Hatfield has concluded that the Pagel paper about which I posted back in December apparently does not call natural selection’s time scale into question in quite the manner that the Physorg.com article to which I linked had claimed. Scott says: “It turns out that Pagel’s group actually endorses the Red Queen hypothesis of constant speciation rates, but proposes a novel reinterpretation of the data uncoupling the former from phyletic gradualism.”

It would seem that physicists can be trusted to write accurately about evolution as biologists write about military history, theology, and pretty much anything outside of biology. And yet, the point I made in the original post stands regardless, especially in light of the recent range reduction in the hunt for the Higgs boson.

“Now, this research deals with the matter of natural selection’s time scale rather than its existence, but nevertheless underlines my point that the natural selection hypothesis has always been logic, not science. The fact that it is difficult and dangerous to paint grizzly bears pink in order to see if they breed less successfully doesn’t change the fact that no one has ever tested the widespread assumption of why polar bears are white. And while the jury is still out on both matters, the exposed cracks in the major theories naturally leads to a philosophical question: since the foundations of both modern physics and modern Darwinism appear to be wobbling, what is the basis for considering materialism to be rational given such demonstrably flawed understandings of what the material happens to be?”

Economics and evolution

Scott Hatfield of Monkey Trials brings an interesting series of posts by David Sloan Wilson to our attention:

One important theme that emerged was the yawning gap between economic theory and evolutionary theory. Economists are very smart people, but when smart people take off in the wrong direction, they go a very long way. As Eric Beinhocker (one of the participants) recounts in his book The Origin of Wealth, neoclassical economics was originally inspired by physics and led to an enormous body of formal theory based on assumptions that are required for mathematical tractability but that make no sense from an evolutionary perspective…. If economics and evolution are different paradigms with a yawning gap between them, then it will be very difficult to get from one to another in an incremental fashion. Every time we try to make one assumption in economic theory more realistic from an evolutionary perspective, it will conflict with the other assumptions and will be resisted by those accustomed to the economic paradigm. Scientific progress will require comparing the two paradigms as package deals and accepting or rejecting them on that basis.

I have to say that it is refreshing to see an evolutionist admitting that perhaps economists may actually be intelligent, (their recent performance notwithstanding), and simply have a different way of looking at things. This is much preferable to the defensive shrieking and finger pointing we have come to expect from biologists forced to confront basic economic concepts. Unfortunately, the response to perfectly reasonable questions like “what is the average rate of evolution?” tends to be some variant of “You know nothing about evolution or science and the reason I can’t answer any of your questions is because you’re stupid!”

Well, that’s helpful. I’m much more convinced that you know what you’re talking about now….

Now, the Walrasian-Keynesian neoclassical formalist paradigm to which Wilson refers was a detour from the earlier and in many ways superior economics of Turgot and the School of Salamanca and it certainly has many weaknesses. Since I favor the Austrian School, I am by no means wedded to the mathematical assumptions and artificial equilibria which Wilson implicitly questions. However, despite the gaps, I also see many similarities between what has now evolved into a Samuelsonite Neo-Keynesian macroeconomic orthodoxy and the Neo-Darwinian orthodoxy of the evolutionists. Both scientific consensuses are highly intolerant of criticism, produce predictive models that are reliably wrong, and take an approach that should be labeled “Kuhn’s Ostrich” toward anything that might threaten their current dogma.

Unfortunately for the sake of evolutionists who are actually interested in improving their theories rather than defending their dogma, the time scale on which they operate prevents their theoretical flaws from being exposed as rapidly as is the case with illegitimate economic orthdoxies. Pure Keynesian general theory was vanquished during the recession of the 1970s, the two Japanese Lost Decades eviscerated the monetarist heretics of the Chicago School, and the current contraction should cause the collapse of the SNK synthesis over the next decade. The false dichotomy of monetarism vs Neo-Keynesianism has already been exposed; whether the successor is some Minskyite Post-Keynesian doctrine, the Austrian school, or, as I expect, a blending of the two with a strong dash of behavioral economics, economics will be greatly transformed.

While I have hopes for genetics eventually putting the final stake through the tattered remnants of TENS that still survive the modern synthesis, it’s quite clear that in the absence of an unexpected Kuhnian crisis, biology will continue to be handicapped by its reliance on what is at its core nothing more than a quasi-medieval philosophical foundation rather than a properly scientific one. But Wilson’s perspective is an unusual one and I expect to follow his Paradigm series with interest.

I am, however, more than a little dubious of Wilson’s attempt to construct an analogy fitting paradigms into evolutionary stable strategy. “Intriguingly, paradigms can be regarded as the intellectual equivalent of local stable equilibria in complexity theory and adaptive peaks in evolutionary theory.” This sounds suspiciously like Dawkins’s “meme” nonsense to me, especially in light of Wilson’s obvious awareness of the risks inherently involved in adapting concepts from one discipline into another.

Darwin’s killer disciples

The murderous children of evolution are a real problem, even if the Darwinists don’t like to admit it:

Darwin would no doubt have been horrified by all this, but it’s easy to see why some of his ideas might appeal to the disturbed adolescent mind. One conclusion implicit in evolutionary theory is that human existence has no ultimate purpose or special significance. Any psychologically well-adjusted person would regard this as regrettable, if true. But some people get a thrill from peering into the void and acknowledging that life is utterly meaningless.

Darwin also taught that morality has no essential authority, but is something that itself evolved — a set of sentiments or intuitions that developed from adaptive responses to environmental pressures tens of thousands of years ago. This does not merely explain the origin of morals, it totally explains them away. Whether an individual opts to obey a particular ethical precept, or to regard it as a redundant evolutionary carry-over, thus becomes a matter of personal choice. Cheerleaders celebrating Darwin’s 200th birthday in colleges across America last February sang “Randomness is good enough for me, If there’s no design it means I’m free” — lines from a song by the band Scientific Gospel. Clearly they see evolution as something that emancipates them from the strict sexual morality insisted upon by their parents. But wackos such as Harris and Auvinen can just as readily interpret it as a licence to kill.

The truth or untruth of natural selection, or evolution by natural selection, doesn’t depend upon their consequences. But the inability of biologists to recognize the obvious logical implications of the freedom from the limits of traditional morality that they celebrate only serves to demonstrate their complete incompetence as philosophers. If it’s no longer evil to freely fornicate or worship idols, it’s no longer evil to freely rape or murder either. And a description of a theorized process of historical moral development is no rational basis for subsequent cherry-picking between those developments you happen to believe are positive and those you happen to believe are negative.

Mailvox: the materialist writes back

JS continues the discussion of his previous email:

Thank you for addressing my e-mail on your site. I appreciated your responses and the responses of those who commented on the post. I have to say that much of the naturalist community seems to hold on to what are obviously suppositions on their part. They believe that since their unproven explanation is the best natural one, it is the correct one. Up until very recently, I too tended to believe this, taking a similar approach. As I waxed about a bit in my last e-mail to you, what has chafed me recently about those in the secular web community is the absolute refusal to even allow a line of thinking that goes against their worldview. This growing intolerance is bothering me, as the secularist community seems to be increasingly more defensive and myopic. So, since this question will gain me only ridicule and exile in this community, I will ask you — what are some good books on the argument against TENS that an inquiring mind such as mine should endeavor to read?

I thought that TIA was one of the best refutations of neo-Atheist arguments I’ve ever read (they hate you on the secular boards btw, if I didn’t know any better, I would say you are made of straw). Here is to hoping that RGD finds continued success.

I’ve always felt that one is defined by one’s enemies as well as by one’s friends, so I am pleased to be hated by such a collection of contemptible intellects. Unfortunately, I really can’t recommend any good books that make a case against TENS because I have never read one on the subject. This is in part because I have very seldom heard any author making what I consider to be the substantive arguments against TENS, and in part because my interest in the subject is tertiary at best, I’ve only read pro-evolution books by the likes of Dawkins, Dennett, and Gould. My skepticism of TENS is largely endogenous, with a few bits and pieces that I’ve picked up on the Internet such as the revised Haldane’s Dilemma and the application of Chomsky to the tautology of natural selection.

But, I’d like to open this discussion up to suggestions from others, for books that people feel most effectively defend TENS as well as those that most effectively dissect it. I tend to prefer to read those books that most effectively defend their subjects, because then I can see how easy or difficult it is to pick apart that optimal defense. I’m presently in the process of reading Dawkins’s latest, and if it is truly the optimal defense of Neo-Darwinism that its more enthusiastic reviewers apparently believe it to be, I am increasingly inclined to believe it will not be very difficult to demonstrate that TENS is in serious trouble.

I have even discussed writing a book on the subject myself with my publisher, but I’m not convinced that it is necessary. My suspicion is that TENS will eventually implode with or without my assistance in the matter. While there are certainly scientific and atheistic interests who will cling to the Neo-Darwinism in the face of any contrary future evidence, they are neither as powerful nor as powerfully incentivized to hold to it as is the case with political and financial authorities and Neo-Keynesianism.

Mailvox: a new find

GT would like to know what I think about the fossil record in light of this newly announced discovery:

Researchers in China and the UK say they have discovered the fossils of a new type of flying reptile that lived more than 160 million years ago. The find is named Darwinopterus, after famous naturalist Charles Darwin. Experts say it provides the first clear evidence of a controversial type of evolution called modular evolution.

My first thought is that all new fossils should be named after St. Darwin of the Galapagos. I want to see them all named Darwin Darwin Darwinus and anything less would be an insult to a particular agglomeration of atoms that coalesced for a few decades before dispersing more than a century ago. I have to admit, I find the cult of the dead scientist to be tremendously amusing, especially given the way in which this particular dead scientist’s theory has done little more than ride the coattails of Mendel’s for sixty years. But it keeps a number of socially awkward men happily occupied without bothering anyone, and as we know from Keynes, digging holes in the ground stimulates the economy, so it’s all good.

But in answer to the question, there are two ways of looking at this, that of the true believer and that of the skeptic. The true believer, naturally, will point to the discovery and say: “look, one more gap filled!” That’s a perfectly reasonable perspective, and indeed, it fits with the True Belief that given enough time, chance, and government funding, every gap in the fossil record could theoretically be filled. Just do enough digging and eventually there won’t be any room for doubt. At which point, presumably all the evolutionary biologists can go home and spend their days singing songs to St. Darwin since there won’t actually be any need for their so-called science once the bone collection is complete.

The skeptic, on the other hand, notes this interesting sentence in the middle of the piece: “Researchers say that this could be evidence of what they call modular evolution – where natural selection forces a whole series of traits to change rapidly rather than just one.” Given the difficulty evolutionists have had over the last 150 years in demonstrating the ability of natural selection to permanently change even a single trait, this is a significant alteration to the historical theory. I’ve commented before on how a scientific theory in the process of failing requires adding increasingly contorted epicycles and “modular evolution”, like “punctuated equilibrium” sounds very much like one of those things.

Of course, in light of the recent news that paleontologists may not be able to tell baby dinosaurs from distinct species, perhaps the fact that the new discovery has a head and neck just like that of “advanced” pterosaurs, while the rest of the skeleton is identical to that of “primitive” forms indicates that we should assume these are simply three examples of the same species at different ages.

So much for the fossil record

Big dinosaur, little dinosaur, what didn’t begin with E?

Many dinosaurs may be facing a new kind of extinction—a controversial theory suggests as many as a third of all known dinosaur species never existed in the first place. That’s because young dinosaurs didn’t look like Mini-Me versions of their parents, according to new analyses by paleontologists Mark Goodwin, University of California, Berkeley, and Jack Horner, of Montana State University. Instead, like birds and some other living animals, the juveniles went through dramatic physical changes during adulthood.

This means many fossils of young dinosaurs, including T. rex relatives, have been misidentified as unique species, the researchers argue.

Obviously, the jury is still out on this one. But, if it’s demonstrated to be correct, it will be a tremendous blow to TENS. If paleontologists can’t even be relied upon to correctly distinguish between mature and immature examples of the exact same species, this will obviously cast serious doubts on the credibility of the fossil transition sequences between species that they have constructed.

I await with amused interest for the true believers to explain how a complete misreading of a significant portion of the fossil record should not be taken as a reason to doubt any conclusions that were made based on the incorrectly interpreted fossil record.

Revising the revision, again

A Dog Named Flea

Assuredly he lacks the spine
To ascertain the big canine.
Should we encounter in debate
He’ll meet a most odorous fate,
For in taking him down a peg
I have merely to lift my leg
And R. Dawkins will slink away
Wet, and wearing Eau de Day.

It doesn’t matter what the evidence is, evolutionary biologists are happy to change their story to suit. They’ve certainly had enough experience at it:

The story of a critical phase in human evolution may have to be rewritten after the discovery of two remarkable fossils in Kenya that have shed new light on the origins and behaviour of two ancient relatives of Homo sapiens. One of the fossils found near Lake Turkana has shown that two early human species thought to have evolved one from the other actually lived side by side for almost half a million years, redrawing the most widely accepted version of humanity’s family tree.

The discovery means that only one of the two species, known as hominins, can be a direct ancestor of modern human beings, and not both as was previously proposed. While scientists are still confident that Homo erectus, the younger of the two, ultimately gave rise to Homo sapiens, it is now suspected that the older, Homo habilis, was an evolutionary dead end.

Both are likely to have evolved from another, older common ancestor, a missing link that has not yet been found in the fossil record, which lived between two and three million years ago.

It’s probably to be found in the same place as Richard Dawkins’s magic original replicators and the rainbow-maned unicorns of Happy Happy Unicornitopia.

I’ve found the most judicious way to deal with people who ask if I believe in evolution is to respond with a single two-word question: “Which version?” That serves nicely to head off the irrelevant Creationist-ID-God tangent that otherwise tends to pop up, and leads to much more interesting discussions.

“Evolution works like this!”

“I don’t buy it.”

“You ignorant science-hating retard! You probably think the world is flat!”

“No, I just think that your scientific consensus is based on series of false assumptions, unproven postulates and a certain amount of chicanery.”

But 10 out of 10 biologists and geologists agree – hang on – um, okay, actually evolution works like THIS!”

“You do know that a model is only valued based on its predictive abilities… and you’re trying to sell me one that is not only in constant flux but can’t even reliably explain past events, right?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You’ve never done very well on the stock market, have you.”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.”