Evolution and Intelligent Design

[Kurieuo]

There is a discussion over Evolution and Intelligent Design available in text, RealPlayer or Windows Media Player formats at http://www.uncommonknowledge.org/900/924.html.

It is between Massimo Pigliucci (Professor of Ecology and Evolution, State University of New York at Stony Brook) and Jonathan Wells (Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Culture, Discovery Institute). I found it interesting and just thought others here might to.

Kurieuo.

[Believer]

Interesting debate, all I can say is that we will find out at death about everything or nothing. But Jonathan Wells says give Intellegent Design 2 decades and it will be equivelent or better than the THEORY of evolution.

[Anonymous]

If ID needs 20 more years before it can be taken seriously, why on earth are so many trying to push it now?

[Mastermind]

If ID needs 20 more years before it can be taken seriously, why on earth are so many trying to push it now?

Because it's not being taken seriously thanks to bigoted atheists, not lack of evidence.

[Battlehelmet]

I also believe ID will only getting better and sharper and time rolls on, It would be fun to see the ToE crumble piece by piece. Creationism is of God, is what most atheist fail to realize. I think it's incredibly stupid to think oneself smarter or wiser than God.

[Battlehelmet]

There is a discussion over Evolution and Intelligent Design available in text, RealPlayer or Windows Media Player formats at http://www.uncommonknowledge.org/900/924.html.

It is between Massimo Pigliucci (Professor of Ecology and Evolution, State University of New York at Stony Brook) and Jonathan Wells (Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Culture, Discovery Institute). I found it interesting and just thought others here might to.

Kurieuo.

Thanks for the link..It's good ammo

[Kurieuo]

If ID needs 20 more years before it can be taken seriously, why on earth are so many trying to push it now?

It is obvious you didn't listen to the show as this was not what was said.

Kurieuo.

[Believer]

Interesting debate, all I can say is that we will find out at death about everything or nothing. But Jonathan Wells says give Intellegent Design 2 decades and it will be equivelent or better than the THEORY of evolution.

At the current rate of Intelligent Design research (ie zero) it will take an infinite number of decades to become equivelent to the theory of evolution. I propose that the Intelligent Design insitutes stop spending their time in public debates, media manipulation and legal battles and spend time on scientific research, you know, like scientists do.

Your capitilisation of the word theory is odd. Do you realise that theories are the ultimate goal of science and are endpoints of the scientific process?

As Dr Marburger, science advisor to President Bush said: "Evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology. Period."

[/i]

If I wan't to capitalize THEORY, I can, because it's just that, a THEORY with holes and gaps, while you base your beliefs on "what you see, is what you get" (i.e. atheism), A huge percent of the forums members here hold their beliefs to Intelligent Design as well as 87%-90% percent of America based off a Census report. Change through the Bible doesn't happen by reading words but by rather a divine intervention in ones life to transform the person, it happaned to me. I used to be agnostic, and God convicted me, simple as that, and I converted. Some people resist, some don't. Also do you think in yourself it is possible God gave us science so he could leave hints about him but not the full thing, so the whole world wouldn't convert? I think so.

[Dan]

As Dr Marburger, science advisor to President Bush said: "Evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology. Period."

That's hilarious because the person who runs this site is a biologist and doesn't believe in evolution

Stop spewing out generalized dribble. Have you ever seen the fossil record? It doesn't correspond with evolution. At all. Have you ever spoken to biologists on both side of the argument? I doubt it, it's not wise for someone to do something that wold debunk their entire argument. You're just generalizing and using hearsay and rumor to try to propogate your point, that doesn't work in science. You need hard evidence to prove your point and that's exactly what you don't have. Ever hear of Antony Flew? He was a prominent atheist who turned deist because of intelligent design. It's getting stronger contrary to your blind view of the matter. It is growing in strength every day and evolution is being debunked every day.

[BobSmith]

If I wan't to capitalize THEORY, I can, because it's just that, a THEORY with holes and gaps

Sure you can. Just like the THEORY of gravitation has holes and gaps. And the THEORY of relativity, quantum THEORY, the THEORY of flight, germ THEORY of disease...etc. All scientific theories have holes and gaps, yet they are endpoints of science. A scientific theory cannot elevate into a fact because they are models.

Also do you think in yourself it is possible God gave us science so he could leave hints about him but not the full thing, so the whole world wouldn't convert?

Yes good point

[BobSmith]

Have you ever seen the fossil record? It doesn't correspond with evolution. At all.

I am not a paleontologist so I haven't even physically looked at any fossil (it would do no good anyway as I won't understand the features). All my understanding is through reading about it online and in books where all the long words are substituted for short words. I am convinced that on the whole the fossil record does correspond with what evolution expects. Yes this of course is based on trust that there isn't some uber-conspiracy out there trying to trick me, but I find that unlikely given the number of people involved.

From what I have seen the patterns in the fossil record are the kind of patterns that are needed for evolution to be true (eg low diversity to high diversity, low complexity to high complexity). There may be gaps and holes but what does fit is enough to convince me.

Some transitional fossil finds have been predicted before they were found using the evolutionary model. If someone can come up with a better model that can make predictions about what type of fossils should be found where then that would be a quick way to convince me. Do you know of any feature of the fossil record which Intelligent Design expects to be found in the future?

Have you ever spoken to biologists on both side of the argument?

I have read both sides of the arguments. But I haven't physically spoken to a biologist ever (well I might without knowing but it wasn't about this).

You're just generalizing and using hearsay and rumor

If you show me what statements I have made that are hearsay and rumour I am willing to admit it if I got them wrong.

.. to try to propogate your point, that doesn't work in science. You need hard evidence to prove your point and that's exactly what you don't have.

I am not trying to convince prove my point about evolution. Truth is that I just enjoy defending it. I know noone ever changes their mind on this topic online.

Ever hear of Antony Flew? He was a prominent atheist who turned deist because of intelligent design.

He does still accept evolution though. What he doesn't accept is life from non-life without intelligent intervention.

I hadn't even heard of Antony Flew until a month or two ago and I don't value his opinion on this issue over anyone elses because he doesn't have qualifications in biology or science as far as I know.

I see life from non-life via natural causes as a possibility, but not one with really any evidence whatsoever. Intelligent cause is a better explaination for the origin of life at the moment. In that respect I agree with Intelligent Design (although not the way it claims to definitely know life couldn't arise naturally). Where I really disagree with Intelligent Design is about where the species we see today came from. Intelligent Design says they appeared as we see them today with no previous versions.

[August]

I am convinced that on the whole it does correspond with what evolution expects. The patterns in the fossil record are the kind of patterns that are needed for evolution to be true.

Fossils in General.

David B. Kitts, PhD (Zoology). Head Curator, Dept of Geology, Stoval Museum. Evolution, vol 28, p 467

"Despite the bright promise that paleontology provides a means of 'seeing' evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most notorious of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them ..."

Francis Hitching. The Neck of the Giraffe or Where Darwin Went Wrong. Penguin Books, p.19

"The curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps; the fossils are missing in all the important places."

Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Palaeontologist, British Museum of Natural History, London. As quoted by: L. D. Sunderland. Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems. 4th edition, Master Books, p. 89

"...yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils ... I will lay it on the line, there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument."

G. S. Carter, Professor & author. Fellow of Corpus Christi College. Cambridge, England. Structure and Habit in Vertebrate Evolution. University of Washington Press

"We do not have any available fossil group which can categorically be claimed to be the ancestor of any other group. We do not have in the fossil record any specific point of divergence of one life form for another, and generally each of the major life groups has retained its fundamental structural and physiological characteristics throughout its life history and has been conservative in habitat."

Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University. Natural History, 86(5):13

"The history of most fossil species includes two features inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear ... 2. Sudden Appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and 'fully formed'."

Charles Robert Darwin. The Origin of Species, 1st edition reprint. Avenel Books

"But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" (p. 206)

"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory (of evolution)." (p. 292)

Stephen Jay Gould, Prof of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University. "Is a new general theory of evolution emerging?" Palaeobiology, vol 6, p. 127

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."

The abundance of fossils

David M. Raup, Curator of Geology. Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago
"Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology". Field Museum of Natural History. Vol. 50, No. 1, p. 25

"Darwin... was embarrassed by the fossil record... we are now about 120-years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, ... some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information."

Luther D. Sunderland (Creationist) Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems, 4th edition, Master Books, p. 9

"Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums are filled with over 100-million fossils of 250,000 different species.

The availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What is the picture which the fossils have given us? ... The gaps between major groups of organisms have been growing even wide and more undeniable. They can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection of the fossil record."

Prof N. Heribert Nilsson. Lund University, Sweden. Famous botanist and evolutionist As quoted in: The Earth Before Man, p. 51

"My attempts to demonstrate evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed. ... The fossil material is now so complete that it has been possible to construct new classes, and the lack of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to the scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real, they will never be filled."

[August]

Do you know of any feature of the fossil record which Intelligent Design expects to be found in the future?

Not only the fossil record but also in general, as a part of ID theory:
(1) High information content machine-like irreducibly complex structures will be found.
(2) Forms will be found in the fossil record that appear suddenly and without any precursors.
(3) Genes and functional parts will be re-used in different unrelated organisms.
(4) The genetic code will NOT contain much discarded genetic baggage code or functionless "junk DNA".

[August]

From what I have seen the patterns in the fossil record are the kind of patterns that are needed for evolution to be true (eg low diversity to high diversity, low complexity to high complexity). There may be gaps and holes but what does fit is enough to convince me.

I think you are somewhat simplifying a complex argument. If you are basing your belief purely on the fossil record, then it is a leap of faith not supported by sufficient evidence, as can be seen from the quotes above. You may by all means believe what you want, but it is still just a personal belief, not fully supported by the evidence.

You agreed on a previous thread that the Cambrian explosion poses a problem for evolution, due to the sudden appearance of not just many species, but whole phyla, wthout precursors or transitional evidence. For evolution, and naturalist processes to hold true, the following criteria should be met:
(1) key expected fossil transitions must be found, but also (2) the amount of biological change must be mathematically possible given the size, reproduction rate, and mutation rate of the evolving population, the supposed time allowed for the change in the fossil record, and the rules of population genetics, (many of these characteristics may be dependent upon one another, but the point is that in the end, the numbers must add up), and also (3) all stages of intermediate macro- and micro- morphology of the transitional organisms must be conceivably functional and advantageous to survival.

If one of the above criteria is not met, then it is not possible that purely natural evolutionary processes could have done the job.

[BobSmith]

I think you are somewhat simplifying a complex argument. If you are basing your belief purely on the fossil record, then it is a leap of faith not supported by sufficient evidence, as can be seen from the quotes above

I know what many of the quotes are getting at. It the the argument is over two mechanisms - gradual, and non-gradual evolution. All those quoted are arguing for non-gradual evolution, rather than gradual. They all accept the fossil record is evidence for evolution and that transitionals exist. What they are arguing is that the transitionary stages are not always smooth and that there are long periods of stasis (in a given species, not in all species at once).

What someone has done is picked choice paragraphs out of their main body of text to make it look like they are critising evolution in general. They weren't.

Most of the quotes given can be looked up here by author: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/author.html

You agreed on a previous thread that the Cambrian explosion poses a problem for evolution, due to the sudden appearance of not just many species, but whole phyla, wthout precursors or transitional evidence.

Yes I did, but as a puzzle kind of problem rather than a worrying sort of problem. A lack of precursor fossils is not evidence for precursors not existing. Lots of animals simply do not fossilise at all, others only very rarely. Becase pre-cambrian fossils do exist but are so scarce and not in hard forms, it seems highly likely that life simply wasn't fossilising well back then. For example the earliest indications of multi-cellular life are worm burrows. But the worms themselves did not fossilise.

The first species in the fossil record will be the first phyla, as all species must belong to some phyla. Life during the cambrian was simpler than in any era since. It consisted of small sea-living creatures (no land animals), with basic forms. Cambrian life was far simpler and far less diverse than life is today. There is evidence of precursors, some of which look very similar to cambrian life: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/critters.html

Because these fossils are so poor, the internal structure cannot be determined and that prevents them being classified into various phylum. If the internal structure had survived I am sure a few phylum appearance dates would be pushed back.

For evolution, and naturalist processes to hold true, the following criteria should be met:
(1) key expected fossil transitions must be found, but also (2) the amount of biological change must be mathematically possible given the size, reproduction rate, and mutation rate of the evolving population, the supposed time allowed for the change in the fossil record, and the rules of population genetics, (many of these characteristics may be dependent upon one another, but the point is that in the end, the numbers must add up), and also (3) all stages of intermediate macro- and micro- morphology of the transitional organisms must be conceivably functional and advantageous to survival.

If one of the above criteria is not met, then it is not possible that purely natural evolutionary processes could have done the job.

I agree