Could the theory of evolution as it stands be wrong??

Forums: Philosophy
Email this Topic • Print this Page

Hi I have been reading and contribution to Mr Marshall blog and find his ideas on evolution very interesting

His idea concurs a lot with mine, I used the argument from Intelligent Design

A New Theory of EvolutionI'll get to the details of that in a minute. First I need to explain why randomness only destroys information.
If we start with the sentence
[CENTER][CENTER]"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"
[/CENTER]
[/CENTER]

And randomly mutate the letters, we get sentences that look like this:
The 6uHck brown fox jukped over the lazyHdog
Tze quick bro0n foL juXped over the lazy doF
Tae quick browY fox jumped oGer tgePlazy dog
The iuick brown fox jumped lver the lazy dog
The quiikQbKowSwfox .umped oveh the lazy dog

You can apply all the natural selection to this in the world and you'll never accomplish anything besides destroying a perfectly good sentence. You can go to www.RandomMutation.com and try for yourself.

Why doesn't this work?
Because it's impossible to evolve a sentence one letter at a time - even if you deliberately TRY.
Technically, this is because random mutation is noise and noise *always* destroys a signal. Claude Shannon called it information entropy. Entropy is not reversible. Noise never improves a signal. It only mucks it up.

The only way for this to work is: Evolution has to follow the rules of language. NEW THEORY OF EVOLUTION:[/CENTER]
[/CENTER]
[CENTER][CENTER]There is a mutation algorithm that makes intelligent substitutions when species need to adapt to their environment.
[/CENTER]
[/CENTER]

It works very much like the sentences I just showed you. DNA actually re-arranges itself like a computer program that rewrites itself on the fly.

Now here's the kicker:
This is not new. It's actually more than 60 years old!
It's only new to those who are hearing it for the first time.
It's not just a wild hypothesis, either. It was discovered by geneticist Dr.
Barbara McClintock in 1944.

Dr. Barbara McClintock's U.S. Postage stamp includes a diagram that shows how genes are intelligently transposed by the Mutation Algorithm in DNA

She was decades ahead of her time and she received the Nobel Prize for this discovery in 1983. Her picture is now on a U.S. Postage Stamp and she's one of the greatest scientists in the history of biology.
But even now, people ask me, "Why didn't they ever teach this to me in biology class?"

Maybe Barbara McClintock could answer that question.

Her discoveries were so radical, so contrary to Darwin, that for most of her career she kept this to herself. She described the reception of her research as "puzzlement, even hostility."

Based on the reactions of other scientists to her work, McClintock felt she risked alienating the scientific mainstream, and from 1953 stopped publishing accounts of her research.

Why don't they teach this in most biology classes now?
I'll just say, it's not because her findings haven't been verified.
And it's also not because the "random mutation" model works. You may or may not have noticed, but it actually doesn't work at all. I've been publicly debating this online for 5 years and I have yet to have one person send me a link or refer to a book that says, "Here is the actual experiment that proves random mutations drive evolution."

There is no such paper or book, so far as I know. The random mutation theory, sadly, is an urban legend.

INTERESTING FACTOID: This same process of intelligent evolution is how your immune system learns to fight off germs it's never seen before: It systematically tries different combinations and once its 'cracked the code' on the invading disease, it passes those changes onto daughter cells. Your own immune system is a miniature model for evolutionary biology.

Dr. James A. Shapiro of the University of Chicago is one of the leading researchers in this field. Let me share with you about what he's discovered about protozoa.
What I'm about to pass along is profound, almost miraculous. I want you to read and re-read this a few times before you go on:

A cell under stress will splice its own DNA into over 100,000 pieces. Then a program senses hundreds of variables in its environment and then re-arranges those pieces to produce a new, better, evolved cell.thatNow imagine for a moment that DOS 1.0 was never modified by any Microsoft programmers. Imagine that after 1981 the boys in Redmond, Washington never touched DOS again.

Instead, by analyzing the programs it ran, by sensing changes in hardware, DOS "grew" new parts, all by itself. Imagine that it added icons and a mouse, automatically, and after a process of evolution, Windows emerged.

Imagine that after a time, Windows developed Internet Explorer - all by itself - just by adapting to the changing environment of the computer. By re-writing and re-arranging its own lines of code.

Imagine that it then developed networking features. Imagine that, sensing that it needed an email client, evolved Outlook Express. One day the Outlook icon was suddenly there on your desktop. You clicked on it and as you began to use it, it added and subtracted features to suit you.

Imagine that, sensing that it needed virus protection, that it adaptively developed defences for those viruses.

Sometimes the viruses would take out some computers, but the computers that survived were even more resistant.

Imagine that the viruses also self-adapted and continued to try to worm their way in, in a never-ending competition of duelling codes.

Imagine that ALL of this adaptation happened over a period of years without a single software engineer ever touching it. Imagine this happening automatically just because it got installed on billions of computers.

Oh, I almost forgot: imagine that the very latest version of Windows could still fit on a single 750 megabyte CD-ROM.

If DOS 1.0 evolved into the Windows of today without any engineer touching it, would you say:

-That accidental file copying errors, culled by natural selection, were responsible for these evolutionary changes?

(When have you ever seen a software program or computer virus that accidentally evolved new features through a accidental copying errors?)

-That the original engineer who wrote DOS 1.0 was so incredibly skilled that he actually devised a program that could self-adapt? That it could upgrade itself without downloading another friggin' Service Pack?
If evolution is true, then God/evolution is an even more ingenious programmer than the old-school creationists ever imagined Him to be.
[/CENTER]
[/CENTER]
Perry Marshall
[CENTER][CENTER]Read more about this fascinating New Theory of Evolution:[/CENTER]
[/CENTER]
Newsweek Magazine: "Was Darwin Wrong About Evolution?"
"Darwin: Brilliantly Half Right, Tragically Half Wrong"
"A 3rd Way" - James Shapiro's alternative to "Creation vs. Evolution"

Technical Paper (college level, peer reviewed, clearly written, highly recommended): Shapiro's "A 21st Century View of Evolution"
Share and Enjoy:

Topic Stats
Top Replies
Link to this Topic

Type: Discussion • Score: 0 • Views: 10,376 • Replies: 218

No top replies

@Alan McDougall,

Firstly, Rules of Speech is manifest, as it is, due to the process called evolution.

Secondly, intelligent mutation is a quality assigned or which characterises as successfullness or betterment. Although i should add, that both attributes are tainted by the human bias, and the limitation of language. By itself, mutation means changeness.

Whether it is higher to lower or lower to higher can be debated, but the process of change, theoretically, called the process of natural selection can hardly debated in intelligent circles. However, i do not suggest that it cannot be argued against.

Quote:

This is an engineering feat of the most amazing proportions imaginable.
Consider this.

Its a good statement......... if i substitute the words engineering feat with the word 'natural act'.

1 Reply

@Jackofalltrades phil,

Jackofalltrades;104671 wrote:

Firstly, Rules of Speech is manifest, as it is, due to the process called evolution.

Secondly, intelligent mutation is a quality assigned or which characterises as successfullness or betterment. Although i should add, that both attributes are tainted by the human bias, and the limitation of language. By itself, mutation means changeness.

Whether it is higher to lower or lower to higher can be debated, but the process of change, theoretically, called the process of natural selection can hardly debated in intelligent circles. However, i do not suggest that it cannot be argued against.

Its a good statement......... if i substitute the words engineering feat with the word 'natural act'.

I would like to energize this topic with a few points of my own

The present theory of relativity supposes that the single cell is simple. Cells process information, store and retrieval They have a language and decoding system They have a mechanism foir error detection, correction and for quality control. They have a transportation and distribution system. Automated addressing system. They have embedded in there code an assembly process and modular construction system and self reproduction manufacturing plants

Cells are more complex than the space shuttle. Darwin theory although titles the "Origin of the species" never really spoke about the origin but the diversity and variation of the species

DNA is a code and any code that is randomly altered usually ends up as nonsense.. No one has answered the question how did life was created out of the basic elements. As far as mutation I can not recall even one mutation that has been an advantage to the entity or its fellow creatures.

Homology suggest a common ancestor but I see a common designer keeping to a proved design.

What about the lack of evolution as far as plant life is considered?

1 Reply

@Alan McDougall,

I am already pursuing this argument on another thread, but my basic outlook is that the theory of evolution is not wrong but it suffers from being treated as a religion by some thinkers; and there may be an underlying order in the cosmos (as many philosophies and religions say) which tends towards particular types of outcomes through the means correctly identified by Darwin.

on the other hand, I think the whole idea might actually be a missing link (no irony intended) in Western philosophy. It might be used to make sense out of a lot of previous thought, instead of invalidating it.

---------- Post added 11-23-2009 at 08:52 PM ----------

actually there is an old word, long since discredited, which described the self-organising capacity of organic life - that is 'entelechy'. I don't know if it is true or not, of course it is probably not according to current science, but it is a lovely word, and also a nice idea.

---------- Post added 11-23-2009 at 08:55 PM ----------

and actually I am sure there are plenty of examples of evolution that conform exactly to the Darwinian model. I am sure that it happens as described, except that there is a also tendency in living systems towards a range of outcomes, so change is not 'random' in the sense envisaged.

1 Reply

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;105329 wrote:

I am already pursuing this argument on another thread, but my basic outlook is that the theory of evolution is not wrong but it suffers from being treated as a religion by some thinkers; and there may be an underlying order in the cosmos (as many philosophies and religions say) which tends towards particular types of outcomes through the means correctly identified by Darwin.

on the other hand, I think the whole idea might actually be a missing link (no irony intended) in Western philosophy. It might be used to make sense out of a lot of previous thought, instead of invalidating it.

---------- Post added 11-23-2009 at 08:52 PM ----------

actually there is an old word, long since discredited, which described the self-organising capacity of organic life - that is 'entelechy'. I don't know if it is true or not, of course it is probably not according to current science, but it is a lovely word, and also a nice idea.

---------- Post added 11-23-2009 at 08:55 PM ----------

and actually I am sure there are plenty of examples of evolution that conform exactly to the Darwinian model. I am sure that it happens as described, except that there is a also tendency in living systems towards a range of outcomes, so change is not 'random' in the sense envisaged.

The universe was created by God, approximately 14 billion years ago.
The properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life.
While the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, it is possible that the development of living organisms was part of God's original creation plan.
Once life began, no special further interventions by God were required.
Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes.
Humans are unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanations and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the knowledge of right and wrong and the search for God.

Do you concur with the above premises?

2 Replies

@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall;105333 wrote:

The universe was created by God, approximately 14 billion years ago.

Maybe. It is not necessary for any thing to create the universe. I have a few explanations.

Alan McDougall;105333 wrote:

The properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life.

I don't agree. 99.99% of the universe is hostile towards what we consider life. If it were so precisely tuned I would think it would have been far more supportive towards life than it is.

Alan McDougall;105333 wrote:

While the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, it is possible that the development of living organisms was part of God's original creation plan.

I wouldn't exactly say it is unknown. We have a pretty good theory as to how life arose. Some experiments have been conducted with good success on reconstructing conditions theorized to have been on earth which made the arising of life possible.

Alan McDougall;105333 wrote:

Once life began, no special further interventions by God were required.

So could you fathom a universe that never required any intervention at all?

Alan McDougall;105333 wrote:

Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes.

More than likely.

Alan McDougall;105333 wrote:

Humans are unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanations and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the knowledge of right and wrong and the search for God.Do you concur with the above premises?

I wouldn't call humans unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanations. The process by which we came to be self cognitive was not something that happened over night. It was a gradual progress of many failures and successes. We bare many of the scars of that process but most ignore them. While developing the ability to use tools to aid in the process of acquiring food we lost many of the natural abilities and strengths that most animals have. Maybe due to having more available time in between meals, and using that time to be leisure rather than productive.

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Thanks for the response guys
How about this?

The source of much of this post comes from various links of which I will try to track down, I kept this as a word document and have pasted it from my computer .I have added the source where available

On June 26, 2000, President Bill Clinton announced the completion of the Human Genome Project, which had just deciphered the sequence of DNA in a human cell. "Today," he said, "we are learning the language in which God created life." At the president's side was Francis Collins, director of the project, who had helped to write Clinton's speech. "It is humbling and awe-inspiring," Collins said, "to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God."

Therefore the limits of computability coincide with the limits of science itself. If the laws of physics did not support computational universality, they would be decreeing their own unknowability. Since they do support it, it would have been strangely anthropocentric if universality had turned out to be a property of a very narrowly defined class of interactions. Almost every class of physical process must instantiate the same standard set of mathematical relationships, namely those that re quantum computable." Julian Brown, Minds, Machines, and the Multiverse, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), p. 232

Brown states that computation seems to have been built into virtually every kind of physical interaction! Indeed, the quantization of reality seems to demand that the universe is a giant computer. Of Ed Fredkin,

"Fredkin saw that a universe in which everything was quantized would be analogous to a digital computer because in both, everything would be discrete and finite. In effect, the difference between Fredkin's view of the universe and the conventional view was like the difference between digital and analog computers. The idea that the universe is gigantic digital computer processing information was a view for which Fredkin became famous, if not notorious." Julian Brown, Minds Machines and the Multiverse, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), p. 59

Now, strict adherence to the laws of physics leads one down this path, like it or not.

The interesting thing is that
1.We can't tell the difference between living in reality and living in a simulation

2.Which means we can't tell if our universe was created or evolved?

3.If the universe is a gigantic quantum computation, there are only three options for how the computation started?

a.It was created by a Programmer
b.It has always existed
c.It popped into existence on its own

4.If brains are mere computers, there is no defence against the concept that we are simulations inside this gigantic computation. Indeed, if the laws of physics are all there is, then we simply MUST be a computation inside this grand simulator. And because the multiverse will bring into existence very logically possible universe, it must be granted that resurrection, in the form described, is logically possible and follows from believing that consciousness is mere computation.

5. In which case, we are vulnerable to having the program which makes us be ported over to another type of computer (those computers of the advanced civilization)

6. If the multiverse is added in to the mix, some of those universes will collapse in the proper manner to give an infinity of computational power, and in some of those, our programs (the ones creating our consciousness) will be simulated in a fashion which will feel like eternal life to us.

One final question, will it be us who are in that simulation or will it be not-us? Well, if we are merely computer programs running on a particular brain, it would be us, if our program is ported to another form of computer even if it is in another universe.

But one thing that prevents me from accepting the concept of consciousness as the output of a computer program (albeit very sophisticated), is that programs are portable and I have never seen anyone run a human program in the brain of a cat, or a parallel network of cat brains.

If brains are merely computing machines, and programs are portable as the Turing Principle requires, then why a human 'program' can't be run in a cat's brain? This and the Lucas-Penrose argument from Godel's theorem tell me that the way to avoid the implications outlined in this article is to simply accept the existence of the soul. But then, we would have to believe in all that supernatural nonsense rather than the rational logical, yes, scientific belief in resurrection and eternal life, not to mention the belief in doppelgangers. Tegmark explains:

"Is there a copy of you reading this article? A person who is not you but who lives on a planet called Earth, with misty mountains, fertile fields and sprawling cities, in a solar system with eight other planets? The life of this person has been identical to yours in every respect. But perhaps he or she now decides to put down this article without finishing it, while you read on.

"The idea of such an alter ego seems strange and implausible, but it looks as if we will just have to live with it, because it is supported by astronomical observations. The simplest and most popular cosmological model today predicts that you have a twin in a galaxy about 10 to the 1028 meters from here. This distance is so large that it is beyond astronomical, but that does not make your doppelganger any less real." Max Tegmark, "Parallel Universes" Scientific American May 2003, p. 41

So, now, nature has told us that it is possible to have resurrection and eternal life-even if God doesn't exist. To me it is fascinating that the universe seems to be set up in such a fashion as to make us run into these theistic ideas, even if we try to escape the concept of God.

How does one escape this logical conclusion? By denying one of the premises. If the Turing principle or the multiverse is false, then this conclusion doesn't follow. If our brains are not merely computers, but have souls, one escapes this form of resurrection but then faces a different situation all together.

But atheists should be aware that in escaping the Designer by living in the multiverse, logically brings them back to some of the things they were trying to avoid-resurrection, eternal life and unseen beings out there somewhere in the multiverse. If one doesn't like the implications of all this, don't gripe at me. I am merely reporting what is out there in the computational and physics literature-and all these guys I have cited, with the exception of Tipler, are atheists.

Maybe the heavens are declaring the glory of the Lord and maybe it would be better to merely believe in a God who can resurrect people in the good old fashioned way. Ockham's razor being what it is.

"Tegmark agrees that nature's fine-tuning cannot be passed off as a mere coincidence. 'There are only two possible explanations,' he says. Either the universe was designed specifically for us by a creator, or there exists a large number of universes, each with different values of the fundamental constants, and, not surprisingly we find ourselves in one in which the constants have just the right values to permit galaxies, stars and life." Marcus Chown, The Universe Next Door, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2001), p. 103

0 Replies

@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall;104616 wrote:

I'll get to the details of that in a minute. First I need to explain why randomness only destroys information.
If we start with the sentence

[CENTER]"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"[/CENTER]

And randomly mutate the letters, we get sentences that look like this:
The 6uHck brown fox jukped over the lazyHdog
Tze quick bro0n foL juXped over the lazy doF
Tae quick browY fox jumped oGer tgePlazy dog
The iuick brown fox jumped lver the lazy dog
The quiikQbKowSwfox .umped oveh the lazy dog

Well, this is your first foundational error in understanding the theory of evolution through natural selection.

The theory of natural selection proposes selective criteria giving advantage to organisms with certain changes in information over other without, or with different ones. Whilst the changes themselves might be called random they are in fact they are governed by criteria we can predict to a degree. Most such changes don't really affect the "signal" at all, not without a corresponding environmental factor that provides an advantage or disadvantage.

Quote:

The only way for this to work is: Evolution has to follow the rules of language.

According to who?

The evolution of a language has some interesting parrallels with the evolution of species, but it's not a strict analogy. You can make a useful point about evolution using language as an illustrator, but that doesn't mean they "Must Follow the Same Rules".

Quote:

DNA is no different.

It is, it's only got four "letters", but a bigger "vocabulary" than any human language.

Quote:

NEW THEORY OF EVOLUTION:

[CENTER]There is a mutation algorithm that makes intelligent substitutions when species need to adapt to their environment.[/CENTER]

Is this new? It sounds a lot like Lamarckian evolution which was proposed in the early 19th century.

Why did Lamarckism fall down?

a) Because animals produce variation without changes in their environments
b) because even when there is a change in the environment not all the variations produced result in improvements
c) if an animal population is forced into an unfriendly environment it's immediate descendants are no more likely to be adapted to it than the first generation.

Even Lamarck said he was probably wrong, and just proposed his hypothesis as a stand in until something better came along. When Darwin proposed evolution by natural selection most Lamarkians abandoned Lamarckism.

Quote:

She was decades ahead of her time and she received the Nobel Prize for this discovery in 1983.

She won the nobel prize for discovering genetic Transposition. She didn't win it for the theory as outlined above.

Quote:

Her picture is now on a U.S. Postage Stamp and she's one of the greatest scientists in the history of biology.
But even now, people ask me, "Why didn't they ever teach this to me in biology class?"

Because there's no body of evidence that supports the theory credited to her above (which is Lamarck's theory dressed up in a new suit anyway).

Her genuine discoveries, such as Transposition, are pretty advanced for school biology classes, but are taught at A-Level, university level and so on (in the UK at least).

Quote:

Why don't they teach this in most biology classes now?
I'll just say, it's not because her findings haven't been verified.

No, it is - she didn't publish this theory as it is stated, therefore she didn't pass peer review.

Therefore no verification through scientific consensus.

She has a nice idea, but I could have a nice idea about relativity or geology - if I don't explain my idea, show how it works, show how other people can repeat my method of demonstrating my idea - then you can't show it to school children, let alone expect them to use it as the basis of improved knowledge.

Quote:

And it's also not because the "random mutation" model works.

But it does - at least it does if you understand that the selective pressures are not really random at all, and that the random elements are a lot less random than the sort of chaos described in your jumbled sentences.

The following video might help explain why:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_RXX7pntr8

Quote:

You may or may not have noticed, but it actually doesn't work at all. I've been publicly debating this online for 5 years and I have yet to have one person send me a link or refer to a book that says, "Here is the actual experiment that proves random mutations drive evolution."

Try this for size, it's a pretty good start.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/sex/guppy/low_bandwidth.html

What you need to do is read a good book on the subject, because it's a process that isn't easily explained by a single article or a single reply to a forum post.

I suggest The Blind Watchmaker - which actually uses the same sentence example you gave but to it's true purpose. What we are looking at is a selective mechanism, not just a chaotic random generator. Your Inner Fish is also good, as is Why Evolution is True.

But until you actually study it you'll continue to be impressed by strawman arguments such as "it's all just random".

Which mean you'll never really know what the theory actual states or describes.

Alan McDougall;105322 wrote:

The present theory of relativity supposes that the single cell is simple.

Do you mean evolution - not relativity?

The present theory of evolution does not suppose the cell is simple - Darwin thought cells might just be protoplasm - he published his theory 150 years ago. That isn't "present". Since then greater understanding of the cell leads us to assume it was not the first organism. We have simpler things than cells to consider though, like viruses and so on.

So we know that early proponents of evolution would have been wrong to assume (if they really did so) that modern cells were the starting block. We are now making some headway into understanding the possible nature of the starting block via abiogenesis, which I will return to later.

Quote:

Cells are more complex than the space shuttle. Darwin theory although titles the "Origin of the species" never really spoke about the origin but the diversity and variation of the species

Sure, it's a semantical quibble really. Darwin's book "On the origin of species" constrains itself to describing a model of common descent leading to the variety of life we see today. It doesn't talk much about a starting point beyond his "hot little pool" hypothesis (the forerunner to abiogenesis). But it does point to the idea of common descent, and therefore an eventual origin even if the origin is only sketched out, and it certainly describes the origin of species, as a plural thing.

Quote:

DNA is a code and any code that is randomly altered usually ends up as nonsense..

Unless some sort of selective criteria is imposed that favours some of the resulting codes over others.

Forming a positive feedback loop.

Resulting in a code that isn't nonsense (though most human DNA is, as far as we can tell).

Quote:

No one has answered the question how did life was created out of the basic elements.

A scientific field called abiogenesis describes a number of possible hypotheses for how simple organic compounds could form self-replicating polymers.

Here's a video primer about it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhWds7djuWo

and another:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8nYTJf62sE&feature=related

Alan McDougall;105333 wrote:

The universe was created by God, approximately 14 billion years ago.

The properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life.

While the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, it is possible that the development of living organisms was part of God's original creation plan.

Once life began, no special further interventions by God were required.

Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes.

Humans are unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanations and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the knowledge of right and wrong and the search for God.

Do you concur with the above premises?

Disagreeing with 3 would mean proving a negative, and is therefore impossible, yeah - it might, but it might not...

As for the rest, you say:

1) The universe was created by God, approximately 14 billion years ago.

I would say:

1) Various accounts of the creation of the universe are given. I trust the one that states that all energy once existed in a singularity, which expanded and condensed into matter. No one has a convincing argument for why that was in my opinion.

You say:

2) The properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life.

I would say:

2) A tiny film of an environment able to support life is known to exist on a single planet among trillions. 99.99999999999999999...% of the universe is totally unable to support life, and life has only existed in the tiny place it has for a short time relative to the age of the universe.

You say:

4) Once life began, no special further interventions by God were required.

I say:

4) Life need not have a supernatural origin as abiogenesis provides clues to a purely naturalistic process. Once life began evolution describes in detail how it could have grown in complexity and variety.

You say:

5) Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes.

I say:

5) Humans are part of the process. They are a type of great ape as understood according to taxonomy (they are monkeys, tetrapods, vertebrates and animals too) and seem to share a common ancestor with all living things on Earth.

You say:

6) Humans are unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanations and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the knowledge of right and wrong and the search for God.

I would say:

6) Humans display a unique degree of sapience in comparison to that observed in other animals, but nothing about that is inexplicable to evolution. All social animals display some form of behavioral code, and human morality is just a more intricate construction along the same lines. The search for god is something many humans do without, and may answer a metaphysical appetite that might be explained through an understanding of natural history.

1 Reply

@Alan McDougall,

Dave Allen;105385 wrote:

Humans display a unique degree of sapience in comparison to that observed in other animals, but nothing about that is inexplicable to evolution.

I do wonder why musical genius evolved. I mean, how good was Mozart at running away from lions? Forgive me, I am being facetious. But it seems to me that if all we have to explain our faculties is 'adaptive ability', then there is a considerable amount of human ingenuity that seems surplus to requirements. When you get to the level of saying 'well human scientific ability will surely increase the ability of the race to propogate' I would say this is a still a moot point. Scientific knowledge has also given us the means to blow the planet to smithereens, and the fact that we haven't done so is due more to politics than science.

I also think it is frankly belittling to the human species to view us as 'just another animal' when we are so patently and obviously different from any creature on the planet. I often wonder if scientists adopt this attitude because it is easier to manage a species than deal with the difficult questions of a human subject (that goes for Dennett, especially).

As for the theories presented in the links which Alan presented, I am sure there is something in this argument that 'DNA encodes information, and information cannot be reduced to matter'. A lot of people are saying this. There is a difference between a code and a pattern, the difference being that a pattern just occurs naturally, but code means something, so for a code to exist, there must be someone for it to mean something to. Meaning itself, in terms of the information necessary to shape hands, eyes, wings, and so on, may be encoded in the fabric of the cosmos at a level above, or below, the 'physical layer' where changes actually take place. If there was such a layer, after all, how would it turn up? How would you know if you were looking at it? Physical science never deals with formal or final causes, only with the efficient cause. I think Darwin identified the efficient cause, but it might be possible that there are stil formal and final causes which have simply not been idenfied yet. It does not make Darwin's theory wrong, but suggests that it is incomplete. And as James Shapiro says in that white paper, it ought not to be heresy to suggest that the Theory of Natural Selection may not be complete.

1 Reply

@Alan McDougall,

Alan -- if you want to critique evolution, you need to do it in scientific terms and not using logic or using thought experiments. There is PLENTY of established science that would seem counterintuitive -- until you do the science. We don't adhere to evolutionary biology because it's logical. We do because it's the answer we repeatedly get when we look at the world.

3 Replies

@jeeprs,

jeeprs;105484 wrote:

I do wonder why musical genius evolved. I mean, how good was Mozart at running away from lions? Forgive me, I am being facetious. But it seems to me that if all we have to explain our faculties is 'adaptive ability', then there is a considerable amount of human ingenuity that seems surplus to requirements.

Well, I understand the facetiousness, but let's try and see if we can propose why it might be an evolutionary advantage to be a musician.

Now before we go further, let me make it clear the following is just my hypothesis, it's not solid theory such as evolution is, but cobbled thoughts from other theories.

Appreciation for music does seem to be naturally hardwired. I posted this some time ago about the reasons we seem to appreciate music:

Quote:

I suggest you (and everyone else) check out "How Music Works" by Howard Goodall on YouTube.

In it he explains the theory behind melody - it seems like each and every human instinctively recognises 5 notes that form the basis for folk music world over. As Goodall explains they are as characteristic of humans as the five fingers of the hand (semantic quibbling about thumbs and mutations to be saved for another day if you please).

This taken it is likely that the five notes might be some sort of evolutionary legacy - perhaps related to mating or alarm calls of hominid ancestors.

The five notes form the basis of the pentatonic scale (pentas - Greek for five). Now extra notes have been added to the five by different cultures, in the west we use 8 notes (plus various sharps and flats), in India there are more than 20. But the same five do seem universally used.

Now in the harmony episode he explains the clever bit, if you pluck a note on an instrument like a harp what you actually hear is a chord, each note is really made of two or more quite audibly different notes. You can reveal these notes on a stringed instrument (guitar will do but harp is best) by muting the string at certain lengths and listening for the harmonics. These notes are quite audible - but quieter than the main note and harmonic with it - so you parse them as a single note when you hear a string being plucked.
[CENTER]YouTube - How Music Works 3 - Harmony - Part 2[/CENTER]

Once it was found what these "hidden notes" were western composers first thought of harmonising them. For example the hidden notes in the note C (called the first) include E (called the third) and G (called the fifth). Because instruments used by western composers such as lute and spinnet easily facilitated playing multiple notes at once (other cultures at the time did not have many instruments like this) it led to them experimenting with harmony. If you play C, E and G at once what you are doing is playing a chord - C major.

Minor chords are played by lowering by third by a single step - so the E in C major becomes the E flat in C minor.

That's the theory - now for the hypothesis:

Why do major and minor chords (and by extension scales and keys) help evoke strong emotions?

Well, I reckon the major effects a strong positive response due to being one of these "naturally" recognised notes beefed up to the max. It is something we naturally respond to in the singing voice but amped up due to the hidden notes being made explicit and harmonic. Hence why major chords are often thought of to be uplifting "happy" sounds.

A minor chord is slightly dischordant, it is literally emptier because of the reduction of the third. In effect you are hearing something that, subconciously at least, you recognise as missing something. Hence why minor chords are often thought of as unsettling "sad" sounds.

So we can see that there are naturalistic expanations for why we find music moving.

Now we have to understand Mozart's environment. He wasn't in much danger of lions, so running from them wasn't an issue. He was presented with a niche to exploit in the fact that Vienna at the time - having the luxury of not having to worry about lions - sought distractions such as music.

Mozart - a gifted musician - was able to exploit this for a short while. The evolutionary advantage to respecting genius is, I feel, obvious - human ingenuity has contributed so much to our success, think about paradigm shifts such as making fire, or clothing - obviously human societies which responded warmly to genius would outcompete those that did not.

At the same time moderate jealousy might also prove an advantage - provided it didn't go too far it might spur people on to acheive genius themselves.

Now, all things in moderation of course. Various theories are put about regarding the details of Mozart's death, but they all agree that he worked so hard at his music (for various reasons) he neglected his health, sickened and died before producing much of a lineage.

So actually, he would have been better of running a bit, exercise is a good way of boosting the immune system.

Some theories suggest a bitter rival, Saleri, contributed to his death, so jealousy in moderation is needed too, and Mozart would have been better off "running from a lion" in a metaphorical sense.

Quote:

When you get to the level of saying 'well human scientific ability will surely increase the ability of the race to propogate' I would say this is a still a moot point. Scientific knowledge has also given us the means to blow the planet to smithereens, and the fact that we haven't done so is due more to politics than science.

Well, that's not a belief I have much faith in myself.

But scientific understanding is certainly fettered needlessly, I think, by those who seek to criticise it without actually learning what it teaches.

Quote:

I also think it is frankly belittling to the human species to view us as 'just another animal' when we are so patently and obviously different from any creature on the planet. I often wonder if scientists adopt this attitude because it is easier to manage a species than deal with the difficult questions of a human subject (that goes for Dennett, especially).

My objection here is twofold.

I wouldn't say a mole is "just another animal" so why would I say a human was? What's important about biology is recognising the unique qualities of all organisms, and what's unique about us is sapience, which no other animal possesses as far as we can tell.

Also, what terrifies me about the attitude of many of those who dismiss biology is the wholesale destruction of life. The dismissive nature of the "just animals" attitude strikes me as leading us into an uncertain future, because those "just animals" are important components of ecosystems humans need to survive.

Secondly - species are constructions of hindsight. They don't really exist if your perception is deep in regards to time.

0 Replies

@Alan McDougall,

The universe was created by God, approximately 14 billion years ago.
The properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life.
While the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, it is possible that the development of living organisms was part of God's original creation plan.
Once life began, no special further interventions by God were required.
Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes.
Humans are unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanations and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the knowledge of right and wrong and the search for God.

Do you concur with the above premises?"

No.

0 Replies

@Alan McDougall,

thanks Dave I will have to take this in some more. But I am still resistant to the idea of trying to explain all human attributes by way of evolution. (By the way, an aside, Pythagoras was one of the first exponents of both harmony and mathematics in which he saw many things of esoteric significance.) Don't you think it seems a little demeaning in that it seems to subordinate culture to survival? I mean, there is a difference between 'living' and merely 'surviving' - and there is a lot that occupies the space in my view. Of all art, culture, literature, philosophy, and so forth. This move to explain all of our capabilities just seems a crafty trick whereby the science department can lord it over the humanities.

And I do think the human is different 'in kind' to other creatures. Obviously I recognise our evolutionary heritage (marvellous book on the matter on Amazon called 'Your Inner Fish) but on the other hand, the human imagination is able to penetrate realms which no animal can. This was recognised by the various traditional cultures in different ways. And besides, the word 'sapiens' itself signifies a quality which other species are not capable of.

(I have to sign off and do something serious But will return to this point!)

1 Reply

@Aedes,

Aedes;105489 wrote:

Alan -- if you want to critique evolution, you need to do it in scientific terms and not using logic or using thought experiments. There is PLENTY of established science that would seem counterintuitive -- until you do the science. We don't adhere to evolutionary biology because it's logical. We do because it's the answer we repeatedly get when we look at the world.

Accepted but this is an interest of mine! Evolution does make mistakes but I must research that and return with facts not statements

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2007/08/cockupology.html

Below is just a tiny list

As miraculous as living things might seem at first glance, a
closer look reveals that evolution's blind blunderings often fall well short of perfection.

Claire Ainsworth and Michael Le Page peek under the hood of life to assess the parts and
processes where things seem to have gone spectacularly wrong.

Claire Ainsworth and Michael Le Page. New Scientist 195.2616 (August 11, 2007): p36
(4). (2548 words)
COPYRIGHT 2007 Science news and science jobs from New Scientist - New Scientist.

THE FEMALE PELVIS Human adaptation to walking upright has made giving birth more
dangerous for women than for any other primate

LINEAR CHROMOSOMES The ends of linear chromosomes erode as cells divide, something that
cannot happen with circular chromosomes

EXTERNAL TESTICLES In harm's way VAGINA AND URETHRA NEAR ANUS Leaves women
prone to genital and urinary infections

WISDOM TEETH Many of us have jaws that are too small for these third molars

MUTANT GLO GENE Like most primates, humans cannot make vitamin C, rendering us
vulnerable to scurvy unless we get plenty in our diet

THE APPENDIX No known function but if it gets infected it can kill you

WINDPIPE NEXT TO THE GULLET Means choking is not uncommon

ULNAR NERVE Runs behind the elbow, where it is unprotected (think funny bone), instead of in
front of it

VULNERABLE BRAIN CELLS A few minutes of oxygen deprivation causes permanent brain
damage in humans, yet an epaulette shark can survive for over an hour without oxygen

PARASITIC DNA Our genome is littered with "jumping genes" that can cause genetic diseases

ODONTOID PROCESS This extension of the last neck vertebra can easily fracture and damage
the brainstem

FEET After coming down from the trees, we ended up walking on the "wrists" of our lower limbs,
leading to all sorts of structural weaknesses

THE Y CHROMOSOME It is gathering mutations because it can't swap DNA with the X
chromosome

VULNERABLE HEARTS A little heart damage triggers a disastrous cascade of events that causes
further damage

HAIRY BOTTOMS Who needs them?
Page 5 of 5
9/23/2007

2 Replies

@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall;105549 wrote:

Accepted but this is an interest of mine! Evolution does make mistakes but I must research that and return with facts not statements

As miraculous as living things might seem at first glance, a
closer look reveals that evolution's blind blunderings often fall well short of perfection.

Evolution isn't trying to make a perfect being. The process is fueled by survivability. But that doesn't mean it needs to improve and make organs that are indestructible either.

It is a huge blunder to think evolution is an attempt to make a perfect being.

Every species has a niche. Ours happens to be problem solving using intellect to acquire the necessities of life. We are so good at it that it allows us to be leisure. With free time to do other things we have acquired other abilities, such as artistic creativity. Sure these other traits are useless in a survivalist position. Knowing the perfect key of C wont help you get dinner if you were lost in the woods. Unless it attracted some kind of animal to play that note, you will probably end up starving.

I think people are stupid sometimes. They try to take two extreme cases and smash them together and say how does this make sense. They completely ignore all the elements involved.

There is no thought behind evolution. The process is one of unintentional mutations. If those mutations in some way give the animal better chances at survival then the chances of passing those traits onto it's offspring are good. As time goes on those traits might either become dormant or more common in generations down the line.

One huge example of this process is dogs. People ignore the fact that dogs are actually wolves which we have purposely mutated their genes through selective breeding. Chiwawas were not natually found in nature, they were breed by humans over many generations of dogs to finally have the traits that some humans find appealing.

If someone says that there is no evidence for evolution, all you have to do is point out about five different types of dogs and say look. Sure dog breeding is not the best example of evolution but it points out the KEY element to what evolution is. Natural selection.

A chiwawa would probably not survive in the wild, but since they don't have to, they survive because we supply the needs which in nature wouldn't.

I think I have stated the case quite clear enough.

2 Replies

@Krumple,

Krumple;105550 wrote:

Evolution isn't trying to make a perfect being. The process is fueled by survivability. But that doesn't mean it needs to improve and make organs that are indestructible either.

It is a huge blunder to think evolution is an attempt to make a perfect being.

Every species has a niche. Ours happens to be problem solving using intellect to acquire the necessities of life. We are so good at it that it allows us to be leisure. With free time to do other things we have acquired other abilities, such as artistic creativity. Sure these other traits are useless in a survivalist position. Knowing the perfect key of C wont help you get dinner if you were lost in the woods. Unless it attracted some kind of animal to play that note, you will probably end up starving.

I think people are stupid sometimes. They try to take two extreme cases and smash them together and say how does this make sense. They completely ignore all the elements involved.

I hope you dont mean I am one of the stupid ones due to my questions which I believe are valid

Ask questions, get related articles, discuss & read online at
http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/testable-hypothesis-id-1

Alan,

A common misconception is that Evolution and Intelligent
Design are an either/or proposition.

Today I'm going to tie the two together in an elegant way
and show that they compliment each other beautifully.

A common criticism of Intelligent Design is that it offers
no testable hypothesis.

Today I'm going to lay that accusation firmly to rest. With
a whole series of predictions about what evolution research
will show us in the next 3 to 20 years.

The most important thing you could possibly know about
Information is that it's always written top-down, not
bottom-up. Therefore information also has to be modified or
re-written top-down.

Random mutation assumes information is bottom-up, and that
is the most fundamental reason why that theory is failing.

The highest layer of information is intent. All coded
information is driven by intent. Intent results in meaning
which results in sentences which dictate words which
dictate letters.

(Not the other way around.)

Everything I predict in this series, then, comes from a
proposition that evolution is an engineered process and is
programmed to happen; and that the program itself is
intelligent and operates in a top-down fashion.

Onward with my testable hypothesis:

1) Evolutionary adaptation is the work of a "Mutation
Algorithm."

Cells employ a built-in algorithm, which engineers
re-arrangement of Mobile Genetic Elements (as observed by
McClintock and Shapiro). Genes and Chromosomes are
re-arranged in a fantastically beautiful process which
produces useful adaptations and new species.

I call this the Mutation Algorithm. It is a program which
attempts to evolve when necessary and computes the optimal
path to a desired result. This algorithm is described as
exhibiting some form of intelligence.

This Mutation Algorithm, in combination with natural
selection, explains what random mutation and natural
selection cannot.

2) The Mutation Algorithm tests design options like blades
on a Swiss army knife. DNA has a huge "bag of tricks" and
is able to mix and match combinations of eyes, feet and
claws, joints, digits, hair, skin and fur colors and
patterns, switching out different "blades" as environments
change.

It builds animals on a common chassis of head, spine,
heart, lungs, stomach and limbs. It ferociously defends
this core chassis from being corrupted by random mutations,
while switching out different variables in the head, spine,
heart etc.

3) The Swiss army knife "blades" include variables that
adjust the structure of incredibly complex systems with
simple changes.

For example the length of a giraffe neck could be "dialed
in" by a single gene which controls the length of nerve
fibers, muscles, esophagus and number of vertebra, all at
the same time.

This explains both small and large variations in species.
DNA fills the ecosystem with every imaginable variety of
life because it's designed to. It adjusts these variables
until the creature is maximally adapted to its environment.

4) The Mutation Algorithm is normally at rest. It goes to
work whenever the population is under extreme stress. This
is why we see the pattern of "punctuated equilibrium" in
the fossil record.

There are long periods of stability where there is no
change, because the Mutation Algorithm is dormant. When
there is a crisis, it activates and begins to test novel
features.

5) The Mutation Algorithm operates within populations, not
just individuals.

The Mutation Algorithm catalogs past mutation attempts so
that it does not get "stuck" repeating past failures.
Organisms somehow share information so that they can
collectively test a wider variety of mutations than any one
organism could attempt.

Efforts to find a mechanism by which organisms share this
information will eventually be rewarded. And the mechanism
that is discovered will be as surprising and revolutionary
to biology as Einstein's theory of relativity was to
physics.

6) Evolutionary pathways are not random and purposeless,
they are mathematically optimized in advance to reach
desired destinations in the smallest possible number of
steps.

An analogous process is the Taguchi method used in Quality
Control, which creates a very small set of manufacturing
experiments, which represent a very large number of
possible manufacturing combinations.

It systematically tests them via a "design of experiments"
process, then generates a new design which is a nearly
optimal combination.

Thousands of possible design combinations are evaluated
with only a few dozen tests.

Then more inputs are gathered, new designs are generated
and the test is run again.

DNA does something very similar with arrangements of
modular biological components, literally calculating and
anticipating possible evolutionary steps. It senses inputs
from its environment and optimizes the experimental
process.

(The Taguchi hypothesis and related concepts from Quality
Control, Kaizen and Six Sigma also help explain the
phenomenon of punctuated equilibrium.)

The same process that DNA uses can be quantified and
adapted for use in manufacturing and process control.

Comparisons to Quality Control and manufacturing are very
useful when considering evolutionary theories.

The theory of Neo-Darwinism, which in the 21st century is
now fighting for its very life, proposed that evolution
proceeded as a function of random mutations combined with
natural selection.

A direct analogy in manufacturing would be if we made a
production line where incoming parts were randomly and
carelessly modified; then a QC check simply discarded all
unsuitable assemblies at the end of the line.

That would be the most wasteful and inefficient quality
control system imaginable. Soon it would also result in the
most wasteful and inefficient factory imaginable. The
employees would be laid off and the plant would close.

There is no manufacturing facility in the world that makes
products that way. Quality Control is always an extremely
deliberate set of inputs combined with rigorous analysis of
the outputs.

My hypothesis is that DNA operates much the same way as a
Kaizen / Six Sigma manufacturing operation. DNA not only
actively participates in the mutation process, it also
monitors the natural selection process.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where I'll talk about the layers of
information in DNA and new discoveries that await us in
computer science. In Part 3 I'll talk about human genetic
engineering, the Human Genome Project, and a new Anthropic
Principle that specifically applies to DNA.

Perry Marshall

1 Reply

@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall;105551 wrote:

I hope you dont mean I am one of the stupid ones due to my questions which I believe are valid

No alan I don't think you are one of the stupid people.

I really don't think anyone is actually stupid. Sometimes I think people have a motivation for their statements as an attempt to discredit certain scientific knowledge. I might call them stupid, but they really aren't stupid since they are probably aware of what they are doing.

0 Replies

@Krumple,

Krumple;105550 wrote:

There is no thought behind evolution. The process is one of unintentional mutations. If those mutations in some way give the animal better chances at survival then the chances of passing those traits onto it's offspring are good. As time goes on those traits might either become dormant or more common in generations down the line.

I think this is what is being called into question. In fact I question it.

Consider this: if it is true that 'nature is dumb' and all of life has come about through 'unintentional causes' then ipso facto the only purposes in nature are those which conscious beings - that is, ourselves - are capable of forming.

But by the same token, if there are no purposes, other than those which you and I are able to form, how is there any relationship between human beings and nature? In other words, we alone are capable of forming an intention in a universe with everything else is completely unintentional.

In traditional Western philosophy, man was understood to be 'a rational soul in an intelligible universe'. Now we have become 'strangers in a strange land'. And yet, if we are so strange, how is it that our judgements can be thought to be true? In other words, if it is true that nothing has purpose, then there really can be no anchor for the purposes we think that we have. They too must be, ultimately, accidents and flukes, as are we, the 'accidental tourists' in the universe.

Hence I am really coming around to the view that there is a cosmic intelligence; or maybe, that human intelligence is not the only form that intelligence takes. And this is not actually radical; it is extremely conservative. In saying this, I am saying nothing that Plato, Liebniz, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant or Hegel would say. It is the idea that life has come about by chance that is the radical departure from the Western tradition, and I'm not buying it.

1 Reply

@jeeprs,

There is a saying, "Water always finds its own level."

From the onset it would seem that water has some form of intelligence, but it doesn't. The water is at the mercy of gravity and thus it is gravity that makes water behave in ways that seem intelligent.

Let me go further with this. Watching a torrent of water streaming down a dry river bed and coming to a blockade of boulders the force of the water tries to go through them but can't. Instead the water might move around them if the force is strong enough or the space allows the water to do so.

This above concept is exactly what is happening behind evolution. It is taking the most natural approach given the possibilities. What are the elements?

Efficiency with gathering food. If an animal can not eat, it can not survive long enough to procreate. The more efficient the animal is at acquiring food the more likely it will survive in harsher conditions where food might not be as plentiful. This is only one element and it follows the quote I first posted. There is no thought behind it. It either succeeds or fails, there is no in between.

Also on top of this, there are times when animals might have idealistic survivability but an environmental change might impact that survivability and no longer support the survival of that animal or species. In other words if the universe was in some way intelligent and supports the endeavor for life, why is it not more accommodating towards life?

I bet the extinction of the human race won't be from something we do to ourselves. I bet it will be something the universe throws at us in which we weren't expecting.

I have read that there have been several cases recently of near asteroids that were large enough to create planet wide devastation. These asteroids missed the earth by only hours. Had the planet been in a different position we might not even be having this conversation. The thing about this is, eventually that kind of impact will happen.

So if there was intelligence behind the universe and life, why is it throwing bullets at us?

0 Replies

@Alan McDougall,

I don't think there is much the matter with natural selection as a biological theory. However it is clear that the meaning of the theory has been used in the context of many issues which were previously understood to be philosophical and/or religious. It also might be the case that it is not as complete as it has always been held to be. So it is fair to question the extent to which it provides a complete account of the nature of life and the universe. The fact that no discernable purpose can be observed in the level of the interaction of species with the environment does not necessarily mean that there is no such purpose. If there were a 'purpose', a 'grand design', how would you test for it? How would it show up?

Saying 'it all happens just so' is not an explanation of anything.

1 Reply

Could the theory of evolution as it stands be wrong??

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know