An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins
or
Why Richard Dawkins Is Wrong (about… everything)
Addendum: I add the parenthetical to the title because if Dawkins is wrong about random mutation/natural selection being the cause of macro-evolutionary change (as the formation of the eye), we might as well say he’s wrong about everything. Hang in and you will understand why this is true.
Professor Dawkins,
I’ve read two of your books, The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene, plus I have listened to many of your lectures and debates. I have also studied the works of those who disagree with you — on the process of evolution, not necessarily regarding change over time/descent with variation/common ancestry. I have also heard you state that those who do not agree with you are ‘either stupid, ignorant, dishonest, or even evil,’ and am offended by being thusly labeled, since I do not agree with you. You pull no punches, Sir, so I will likewise not hold back in this open letter to you.
As stated in my previous post, the essence of Darwinian evolution — as opposed to ‘change over time’ or ‘common ancestry’ – is that it lacks foresight, i.e., genetic mutations are truly random; when a mutation occurs, there is no plan as to further mutations. Evolution does not ‘know’ anything. Anything.
To be specific (which Darwinists including you, sir, only rarely do), I agree with you that the fully formed animal eye, say, the human eye, formed very gradually, over many generations and possibly over many ‘lower’ species.
But you also claim that at no point in the step-by-step process, was there ever any sort of plan as to final morphology or purpose. And in that step-by-tiny-step process, each and every step must be of selective advantage. This last bit is so very important, as I know you would agree. It’s a bit of a shame that Charles Darwin left that caveat out in this extremely important quote:
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed [like the eye], which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications [all of which must have selective advantage], my theory would absolutely break down.”
I will assume – and I know this to be true – that you would agree with my insertions. In any event, let’s assume so for now. There was a bit more to the above quote, so in fairness let’s include it:
‘But I can find no such case.’
As you have often stated, sir, you can likewise find no such case, but I can. In fact, many cases. But according to both you and your Mentor, one is all we need, and as I say I’m going with the eye, since it still gave Darwin himself the shakes (and for good reason):
‘The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder…’ (Darwin, later in life)
And I believe I will make more than one argument against both you and your Hero that has hitherto never been made. We’ll see.
To any lay person who has ever examined the exquisite complexity of the eye, the idea that it arose from random process sounds not only counter-intuitive, but against simple common sense.
Professor Dawkins, I will herein show whence this counter-intuitive feeling springs, even given your disagreement with it. I will show you that the evolution of the eye (as representative of the evolution of any organ or body plan) cannot possibly have occurred in the fashion you espouse in your books and lectures, i.e., via random mutation/natural selection.
Right: We’ll see. First, let’s quote your Master again:
To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.
Calm down, sir! I know you are (at least metaphorically) screaming in my face that this quote is taken out of context. Okay, so let’s let The Big D continue on:
When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science.
Well put, isn’t it, sir? Thing is, your Master is misleading us here, since it was not only ‘the common sense of mankind’ that was completely wrong on old time astro-physics, but all of mainstream science as well. Hey, I’m just sayin’…
Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection [based on random mutation], though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory.
‘(T)hough insuperable by our imagination…’ It’s interesting that elsewhere in The Origin of Species – and since then by Darwinists like you up the wazoo – The Master uses the phrase (or some such like it) ‘I can imagine…’ preceding a ‘scenario’ of something leading to something else. Yet here we have an example of ‘insuperability’ (on top of ‘absurd to the highest degree’). And recall that we need just one example and the theory ‘would absolutely break down.’ Again, just sayin’.
(Darwin again): How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms, in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility.” [All my emphases]
(In the spirit of ‘Just sayin’: ‘(I)t does not seem impossible’ seems a weak qualification in support of a theory telling us how we got here.)
I know: I keep quoting Darwin when it’s you, Professor Dawkins, I’m really after. Suffice to say that you should so far have no problem with my little essay, or at least you can have no complaint that I’m quoting your hero out of context.
This is the sort of creature (euglena) Dawkins figures fired up the beginnings of the eye. Okay, let’s try that…
Sir, please keep in mind (re the last quote) that your Master is still referring to the eye, and that he is telling us that ‘lowest organisms’ are ‘capable of perceiving light’; he then refers to sight as ‘this special sensibility.’
Professor Dawkins, it appears that you often language like ‘capable of perceiving light’ in ‘proving’ that the eye arose with no foresight by ‘the process’ of Darwinian evolution. Given this, I believe we should define our terms. Indeed, as we’ll find in this controversy, the devil is in the terminological details.
I assume you agree that vision is indeed ‘a special sensibility’ and that it is synonymous with ‘capable of perceiving light.’ I would ask you, Sir (plus my kind readers), to keep this Darwin-uttered phrase in mind (referring to primitive creatures) as we look at a little montage of you telling us about the eye and how it arose from a random process (yes, yes, I know: ‘A random process plus natural selection):
Now, your having gotten at least an idea of where I’m going with this Open Letter, let’s play a game of Q&A, with me making educated guesses on your responses to my questions/observations. (I would like nothing better than your correcting me where I go astray in the following):
Allan Weisbecker: First, let me quote from one of your video clips:
‘Here for example is euglena, which is a single celled organism, just has a little eyespot at the head end of the cell and that eye spot is sensitive to light, so it can’t form an image, it can’t see anything. All it can tell is whether it’s light or dark. So that could be a first step.’
You and others in the video montage use terms similar to ‘it can tell’ or ‘it can discriminate ’or ‘differentiate ’or ‘it can know’ regarding a single-cell creature and the first step towards vision. Please explain what you mean.
As in our video, in this one Dawkins likewise needs complex equipment to demonstrate what a mindless microbe would ‘see.’
Richard Dawkins: That’s short hand for ‘light sensitive,’ ‘sensitive’ being defined as ‘able to react to environmental stimuli’; in this case, light.
AW: How does the eyespot do that?
RD: Chemically, the basic light-processing unit is likely a light sensitive specialized protein called opsin. A primitive eyespot permits organisms to gain only a very basic sense of the direction and intensity of light, but not enough to discriminate an object from its surroundings.
AW: Again you call it an ‘eyespot’… Okay… Let’s assume the sudden appearance of a light sensitive spot on a simple organism’s skin, or outer membrane, depending on its complexity. (Euglena being a good example, often used by Darwinists, including you, Sir.) What’s the selective advantage?
RD: As mentioned in the video and elsewhere, the organism can tell where the light is coming from.
AW: Again you say, ‘Can tell’… It would seem that this one-celled, brainless creature is processing information.
RD: I suppose that in a very simple sense, it is.
Dawkins has some one-celled euglenas in the jar. He likes to describe the little creature’s ‘inner life,’ i.e., what it ‘knows’ and ‘sees’ and how it figures out where the light is.
AW: Really? Please explain how the information processing works, showing how the eyespot gives selective advantage. Let’s assume – although it could go either way – that the organism would better survive in darkness because light is damaging to its DNA. This is mentioned in the video regarding euglena.
RD: As the organism moves away from the light, it will sense the light getting dimmer and continue going in that direction–
AW: There you go again, saying, ‘it will sense’ the light…
We are assuming that the organism (like euglena) has never before had an eyespot and now a ‘random mutation’ has given it one. I would submit that as a neo-Darwinian who believes in random mutation as change-initiator, you must be able to show even just in theory how the organism (or any organism) is going to gain selective advantage from the ‘light sensitive’ spot it was just now ‘randomly’ blessed with. To be more specific: How would the euglena ‘know’ what the light means?
RD: As I say in the video, the euglena is now equipped with light-sensitive–
This ‘shows’ what euglena does after it learns about the sun and…Life, the Universe and Everything.
AW: You’ve already said that; repetition is not explanation. It would seem to me that this supposedly ‘light sensitive’ patch can only be of selective advantage if its immediate and sudden presence causes the creature to move in a direction where ‘things are better’ in a real, life-preserving or enhancing sense. Otherwise there would be no biological reason to pass the mutation along to the next generation, and the ‘start of the eye’ would go Poof! Surely you agree here.
RD: In principal I agree but you’re over-analyzing what is meant as an example of–
AW: But let’s back up and see what we really have, and what that might imply. We have a creature that at least up until now has never experienced light in the visual part of the spectrum but now has a patch that… hold on a minute. Let’s bring back a relevant quote from The Man himself:
How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms, in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility.”
Professor Dawkins, that first emphasized passage bothers me, in that the process of ‘light sensitivity’—what it is,
The girl is about to enter Dawkins’s ‘Euglena Inner Life Machine.’
how it came about, and, especially, how it would appear as a mutation (if it does appear, how often?) – would seem of great concern. Likewise, do we not need to carefully define what we mean by ‘capable of perceiving light’? I presume this phrase is synonymous with ‘it can tell’ or ‘it knows,’ when referring to light’s direction.
RD: I suppose so…
AW: Why would you (and your paradigm) assume that the creature is capable of perceiving light, given that neither it nor its ancestors has ever done so before? In fact, given that you are a scientist, in the video and in your books you do a lot of shameless and totally misleading anthropomorphizing, that is, attributing human capabilities and reasoning to a one-celled creature. I mean, why not ask it if it’s ‘enjoying life’.
RD: That’s absurd.
AW: In your video clip you have a girl squinting at a projected image that is supposedly what the euglena sees. Do you not see how absurd that is?
RD: That was just a demonstration—
Dawkins is telling her she’s going to experience ‘light’ just how a euglena does, when it’s blessed with vision for the very first time. How it will be able to ‘tell’ which way to swim. Crapola? Yep.
AW: –a ‘demonstration’ of what a one-celled creature with no brain, no nervous system at all, sees. Professor Dawkins, are you familiar with the studies of how humans react in suddenly gaining the sense of vision?
RD: No, but I don’t see what—
AW: In wondering how it might have gone with an organism’s first ‘glimpse’ of light. I’ve looked into how people who were blind since birth react when suddenly given sight – and this is after being told they would experience something new and amazing, a new way to perceive the world around them (how do you prepare them for seeing?). From an article in The New Yorker:
The is the girl ‘seeing’ what a one-celled, brainless microbe ‘sees.’
In 2011, Dr. Pawan Sinha, a professor of vision and computational neuroscience at M.I.T., published his answer to an almost-four-hundred-year-old philosophical problem. The philosopher William Molyneux, whose wife was blind, had proposed a thought experiment in the seventeenth century about a person, blind from birth, who could tell apart a cube and a sphere by touch: If his vision were restored and he was presented with the same cube and sphere, would he be able to tell which was which by sight alone? The philosophical camps on Molyneux’s question divided roughly through the centuries into those who believe that certain qualities, such as the roundness of spheres, are innate and shared among the senses (the Yeses), and those who insist that, to understand roundness, the eyes must have already seen roundness (the Nos). [End quote]
What would it be like to see for the first time. For a human OR a microbe?
I was immediately in the ‘No’ camp, and it turned out I was right. It took weeks for the newly sighted to ‘understand’ what visual images represented, what they meant. They had to learn to tell a cube from a sphere visually, for example, which they could do perfectly when blind, by their sense of touch. I emphasize the time element, i.e., weeks, because a newly acquired feature. i.e., the eyespot, must be of immediate selective advantage for your definition of evolution to work.
To re-formulate the point: You – as a neo-Darwinian – have to show how a sudden new sense would lead to altered behavior, and how that behavior would be of selective advantage.
At the level of phenotype, you need to show the physical connection between the ‘eyespot’ and the nervous system (although euglena doesn’t even have a nervous system) and then in turn with the mode of movement of the organism (with euglena, a flagellum), in order to merely show the physical possibility of altered behavior, let alone the selective advantage.
RD: But you see, the light sensitive eyespot—
AW: by the way, sir, given you’ve branded me stupid, ignorant, dishonest, or evil, you have some nerve calling it an ‘eyespot’ when all it’s doing is chemically reacting to light of a certain wavelength.
Addendum: In subtext, the term ‘eyespot’ infers ‘planning ahead’— knowing that an eye ‘is coming’—which is misleading, given that in Darwinism, no such planning or seeing the future is allowed.
A reminder of what sort of creature we’re talking about…
Seems to me that if a euglena had any response to some new, sudden chemical reaction zapping it on its ‘head’ (as you refer to it in the video), the reaction would be some sort of primitive agitation. The idea that it would say to itself, ‘Oh, so that’s the direction the light is coming from! I better go the other way!’ is beyond absurd. It’s either stupid, ignorant, or dishonest. I’ll give you a pass on ‘evil.’ This is in effect a lie, which you repeat over and over in your various propaganda.
RD: I don’t care to be insulted by—
AW: –getting back to your theory on the beginnings of the eye, the best you can hope for with your eyespot-randomly-appearing-out of nowhere, is if in addition to the almost (and I have to say it) miraculous appearance of the eyespot, you have another, simultaneous mutation occur that somehow connects the eyespot to euglena’s mode of movement (the flagella), although just where and how the ‘processing of information’ takes place — since the creature has to ‘know’ that the eyespot’s chemical reaction is related to the location of the light source – is likely a paradigm-busting issue on its own.
And the odds of two simultaneous, selective advantage-giving mutations occurring simultaneously, are… well, let me quote one of your ‘favorite’ I.D. folks, Dr. Steven Meyer:
‘Have you ever seen a mutation simultaneously affecting two separate components of the body and producing structures that fit one another precisely? … have you ever beheld three, four or five simultaneous mutations with matching structures producing coordinating effects? … How many chance occurrences would it take to build this extraordinary creature [or organ, such as the eye?] [Myrmelion formicarius]’? [Note: I lost this link]
See that line going off to the left? That’s meant to be a nerve. This would be a SEPARATE mutation from the eyespot, and would have to occur simultaneously for the eyespot to be of selective advantage. The odds against this are… more than astronomical.
Although I’ll soon get deeper into probability theory, Dr. Meyer’s point is that as soon as you need two (or more) ‘coordinated’ mutations – in this case the eyespot plus some mechanism to ‘connect’ it with behavior – you run into numbers like… well, to quote Dr. Meyer once more:
If one also factors in the probability of attaining proper bonding and optical isomers, the probability of constructing a rather short, functional protein [an eyespot being a protein] at random becomes so small (1 chance in 10^125) as to approach the point at which appeals to chance become absurd even given the “probabilistic resources” of our multi-billion-year-old universe.
Actually, the above odds are best related to finding the ‘eyespot’ mutation on its own, let alone pairing it with another mutation, wherein you’d have to multiply the two numbers, as in 10^125 times 10^125.
Once you see it this way, you realize how astronomically improbable (physically impossible) it would be to have all the mutations necessary to occur by random chance, since they would all have to appear simultaneously. To repeat: A ‘light sensitive’ protein (or cell or group of cells) with no means by which to affect behavior is not sufficient to afford selective advantage. It therefore ‘dies on the vine’ evolutionarily.
Addendum: When you so glibly describe how evolution ‘works’ you never mention the fact that whatever mutation you are describing – here, the eyespot appearing on euglena – the mutation is a ‘one-off’ event, occurring on a real, single little creature, out there in the world. A valid question: What are the odds that the eyespot mutation will occur to this individual creature? Although in practice, the question may not be (with the current science) answerable, it is a real, not theoretical, question, with a real, numerical answer; a number perhaps like Dr. Meyer’s 1 chance in 10^12 for ‘the probability of constructing a rather short, functional protein’. Surely, the odds here are not far from those he quotes. Something like winning the lottery multiple times.
AW: Have you ever seen or heard of the mutational appearance of a ‘light sensitive’ patch appearing on a primitive animal, or animal of any kind? In the laboratory or elsewhere? Are there peer reviewed papers on this?
An average protein molecule. Odds against it appearing randomly are… see text…
RD: Well, no, but surely we can imagine–
AW: There you go again with ‘surely we can imagine.’ What sort of science is based on imagining the root cause of an organ as complex as the eye? Not to mention assuming an event (the claimed mutation) that no one has ever witnessed or measured or calculated the frequency thereof.
RD: There is nothing impossible about a light sensitive protein mutation.
AW: My next question was going to be about probability. You know, odds. What are the odds that a light sensitive patch mutation would occur on, say, euglena. But it would appear that the probability — as far as you know — would be… zero.
RD: No, it would not be zero.
AW: How do you know? This is science, Sir.
RD: Because eyes exist! How else–
AW: That’s circular reasoning. Presuming the truth of the matter at issue.
RD: How else would the eye form but starting with a light sensitive patch mutation?
AW: How about a ‘gamma ray sensitive patch’ mutation? Do you think out of all the random mutations that ‘surely we can imagine’ that maybe preceded the ‘visible light sensitive patch’ for euglena, evolution gave ‘gamma ray sensitive’ a try?
RD: Well, if such a thing were possible…
AW: Why wouldn’t it be possible? What’s so special about visible light (or ultra-violet light)? It’s on the same spectrum as gamma rays. Or X-rays… or for that matter, radio waves. I mean if there is no plan or foresight to evolution, why would it favor ‘visible light’ sensitive? After all, according to you, life is just the meaningless laws of physics and chemical forces doing their random thing.
What are the odds? is a question neo-Darwinists pretty much never ask.
RD: Okay, if a gamma ray sensitive patch were possible, it might have been tried and found of no selective value.
AW: How about a swastika patch?
RD: You’re being absurd.
AW: No, I’m just following the logic of evolution working in a completely random fashion, with no plan and no foresight. Why can’t you imagine a patch shaped like a swastika on a euglena’s ‘head’? Or my initials? Or how about ‘C.D.’ for ‘Charles Darwin’? Do you think euglena gave those a try before it stumbled upon a ‘light sensitive’ patch?
RD: I don’t see the point of this. The absurdities you mention would all be rejected by natural selection.
AW: I’m just showing how busy the mutation mechanism would be, trying out all sorts of useless stuff.
RD: But they’re all absurd.
AW: Nothing would be absurd to a random process. Besides, you’re the one who repeats the phrase ‘surely you can imagine’ before you theorize the appearance of some new biological characteristic. ‘It’s not impossible,’ ‘it might be possible,’ ‘it could happen,’ and so forth. It’s tiresome, hearing that crapola, by the way. Kipling did it so much better with his ‘Just So’ stories.
RD: If you’re going to continue to insult me…
AW: Like calling someone ‘either stupid, ignorant, dishonest, or evil’?
RD: Anyone who doesn’t accept evolution–
No one has ever witnessed or measured or calculated the frequency of an ‘eyespot’ mutation, yet Dawkins claims it’t the ‘first step’ in the evolution of the eye. Is something amiss here?
AW: If the first step of the process is truly random, there should be no favoritism toward the appearance of biologically favorable traits like ‘a light sensitive patch.’ I find it incredible that you ‘imagine’ the appearance of ‘an eyespot,’ given that no one has ever witnessed the phenomenon, not in the laboratory, not anywhere else. You refer to your version of evolution as a ‘fact’ and as ‘proof’ you have to imagine things never witnessed.
RD: Talk of gamma ray patches and swastikas is ridiculous!
AW: Professor Dawkins, I’m just showing you where your logic and your random process leads, i.e, to places you’ve never thought to consider.
Addendum (from 9/23/19): I was just swaying in my hammock re-listening to Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box (a book I cannot too highly recommend). He talks about his daughter’s toy fish that swims in the bathtub, and lists all the mechanisms (four, I think) that have to be in order for the toy to be operable. This is his ‘irreducible complexity.’
In our case (the selective advantage of an ‘eyespot’), the exact same principle applies, in that a Darwinist has to ‘connect’ the eyespot to ‘swimming’ — which would mean multiple simultaneous mutations of just the right sort (statistically impossible) — and even this point leaves out the whopper issue of how the creature ‘knows’ what the light patch means.
Darwinism sounds so good, so in tune with a materialist worldview, that devotees just ‘hand wave’ away issues like those delineated in this essay.
TWO EYES ARE BETTER THAN ONE (but how did it happen?)
AW (continuing after RD took some aspirin): Professor Dawkins, if I were to ask you why (in the Darwinian sense) animals have multiple eyes – the vast majority having two – you’d probably say something about depth perception and binocular vision being of selective advantage, right?
RD: Yes, correct. I believe all vertebrates have two eyes, although some more primitive species have more than two.
AW: But you’d agree that the evolution of the eye started with one.
RD: Yes, but fairly soon after the first eye appeared, the second eye evolved, the advantages of vision being so powerful.
Whence came that second eye? Methinks it’s a good question.
AW: Okay, but let me ask you a simple question: When the second eye evolved, did it have to start from scratch?
RD: I don’t think I follow.
AW: The second eye evolved via random mutation and natural selection, right?
RD: Certainly, yes.
AW: Well, did it have to start all over again in the evolutionary process? As you describe in the video, starting with a randomly appearing light sensitive patch? Then the random processes filtered by natural selection continued. Right?
RD: Right. Yes, that makes sense. After the first eye was of very obvious selective advantage.
AW: So I repeat the question: Did the second eye in its evolving from nothing, have to start from scratch?
RD (hesitant): Yes, of course it did. Start from scratch. Evolution has no foresight.
AW: Or memory. It doesn’t remember anything it’s done before.
RD: Of course not. That would be against the whole Darwinian idea…
Since the eye has supposedly evolved multiple times and if the process is random, how come both eyes on any given animal match in design? Just asking. Got an answer, Prof?.
AW: How many times have eyes independently evolved in the history of life? I’ve read as many as 40 times. Which is why some species’ eyes are somewhat different in design than others.
At this point Professor Dawkins blinks and looks away.
AW: You know what my next question is, don’t you?
RD: I… I suppose I do.
AW: I’ll ask it anyway. Just in terms of ball park thinking, what would the odds have been that when the second eye evolved it would turn out identical to the first? I mean given that evolution has no memory, and can make no plans for the future. According to Darwinism, ‘the process’ doesn’t know anything. It has no sense of what ‘worked before.’
You know, it has no foresight.
Because if it did have foresight, not only would Darwinian evolution go Poof! but so would the whole materialist, naturalist, reductionist paradigm. They’d all go Poof! Or am I missing something?
RD (weakly, almost by rote): Creatures with two eyes have an advantage over those with only one…
Folks with one eye get along fine, and learn monocular cues to depth perception. Yes, a two-eyed creature has an advantage over a one-eyed one but the point still remains: According to Darwin, the second eye would have no ‘memory’ of the first eye as to how to build itself, so would have to start from scratch. Given the randomness inherent in your naturalist process, there is no reason it would wind up identical to the other eye. Yet it has. So there must be some sort of plan for the eye. A design, one that is real, if not obvious to us. Not yet.
Really. In a random process, what are the odds? Design is the only answer.
RD: Look at body plans. Four legs–
AW: That’s different: body plans did not start with one leg, given that one leg would not do the job.
RD: Maybe the second eye formed by duplicating the genes for the first eye.
AW: That may be how it happened, but that process is the very definition of design. Like the process saying, ‘One eye worked! Let’s make another!’
RD: No, no, no. Impossible.
AW: An eye design would mean there is foresight.
RD: (even more weakly): Symmetry?… I mean… it just wouldn’t look right if our two eyes were not identical in design. Bi-lateral symmetry…
AW: Symmetry, bilateral or otherwise, amounts to a design aesthetic. I’ll then ask how that fits into your materialist paradigm. Looks right? Symmetry? My God… I mean, my golly… you’re getting desperate.
RD: I suppose I am. Let me think about this and I’ll get back to you.
END OF PART ONE (I’m far from finished)
As I say, if someone can refer to me as ‘either stupid, ignorant, dishonest, or even evil’ I can let it all hang out as to how I feel about him. Which is this: Although Dawkins is partly a ‘useful idiot,’ he is also a conscious promoter of an elite agenda that goes back many generations and has evolved into a globalist power structure that has taken the concept of ‘the survival of the fittest’ to its logical extreme, and which maintains and increases its power through various levels of mass mind control and duplicity, ‘science’ being one of the main agencies of deceit.
But this is a subject for another time. The following quote from one of the Powers-That-Be (PTB) minions, Aldous Huxley (the grandson of ‘Darwin’s Bulldog,’ T.H. Huxley) will give an idea of the motive behind this agenda, an agenda that neo-Darwinism is very much a part of:
“I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves... For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.”10 (my emphasis)
Huxley, Aldous, Ends and Means (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1937), 270.
#
I suppose the proper title to this essay would be ‘A Fantasy Conversation With Richard Dawkins’ but my hope is to get a response from the man. I’m hoping an ‘Open Letter’ will get passed around and put pressure on him to respond; so I’ll leave it as is.
Allan (September 27, 2019 at 10:19 pm),
I reject your opening accusation (i.e. in your reply to me; this is not a reference to your piece), but we’re not going to distract ourselves by arguing over it.
Quotations can be good. So, here are a few to identify your point that I was, and shall now again be, addressing:
“AW: Again you say, ‘Can tell’… It would seem that this one-celled, brainless creature is processing information.”
“you must be able to show even just in theory how the organism (or any organism) is going to gain selective advantage from the ‘light sensitive’ spot it was just now ‘randomly’ blessed with. To be more specific: How would the euglena ‘know’ what the light means?”
“this supposedly ‘light sensitive’ patch can only be of selective advantage if its immediate and sudden presence causes the creature to move in a direction where ‘things are better’ in a real, life-preserving or enhancing sense.”
I’ve had some further thought, and used a little knowledge I’ve gained, either from, or prompted by “GB”, in the interim, and I can now propose something with a lesser degree of abstraction. (Emphasis on “lesser” – I’m still light years away from explaining the euglena atom by atom.)
(While looking up the plural, I’ve read that a euglena is an organism already blessed with an “eyespot”. So, I should have been starting off talking about whatever was the organism that preceded the euglena. I’m just going to crudely insert “pre-” prefixes, as appropriate.)
Let’s imagine you’ve been cast in the role of the pre-euglena. At this particular instant, you are many fathoms down, floating on your back (i.e. facing upwards). Your one and only trick is to peddle your feet (as if on a bicycle), and this you do incessantly.
The effect of your peddling efforts is, I believe you’ll agree, to impart some sort of motion.
To ensure your foot movements produce linear motion, rather than a rotation of your body, we’ll fit you with a fin.
It’s an entirely fixed fin, because the pre-euglena would not have the intelligence to operate a moveable one. (And, probably, it has no sensors for the Earth’s magnetic field, or gravitational field, to provide the inputs for its intelligence, anyway).
The particular fin, fitted to you, is such that, facing upwards as you are, your peddling propels you upward.
Of course, there are various convection currents, and cross currents, in your ocean. So, you won’t remain facing in any direction for very long. When you’re facing down, your peddling will propel you downwards. When you’re facing east, your peddling will propel you eastward. Etc.. Over the longer term (measured in hours, or maybe days), you get nowhere. You are just taking a random walk (or a random swim, really). A name that has been given to this is Brownian Motion.
What good is Brownian Motion to the pre-euglena? Well, although, over the course of a day, or so, the pre-euglena “gets nowhere”, it does sweep through a considerable volume. This enables it to encounter enough of the nutrients upon which its life depends.
This, I assert, describes the status quo ante.
But, then came Act II. And using the change, …
Curtain up, and you now feature as the mutated pre-euglena, which we can probably start calling the euglena.
On your stomach is now, what you’ve called, a LSP.
When sunlight is falling upon the LSP, a photocatalytic effect accelerates the process by which you extract energy from your store of nutrients. An unsurprising consequence of this is that you peddle a little bit harder.
So, when you’re facing upwards (from whence the light comes), you’re propelling yourself faster. And (as I defined things) the direction in which you are propelling yourself is also upward.
Your overall motion, of course, is still pretty much Brownian. If we don’t watch your performance for very long, we could easily mistake it for a repeat of Act I. However, while you’re never going to be confused with a missile, there is a definite drift, or bias, to your motion: you are gravitating toward the light source. This (thank you, “GB”) is phototaxis.
Life is better, nearer the surface. (I’m not going to concoct any explanation. Please accept it’s “just so”.) Hence, when we shoot the sequel, it’ll feature lots of organisms with LSPs (lots of euglenas).
Q.E.D. ? Can you buy that? (Not the film rights, obviously!)
Thought I’d work on my next post today and am not going to try to dissect your argument, other than to thank you for the accurate quotes, which sum up this matter pretty well. This passage does stand out, however:
‘When sunlight is falling upon the LSP, a photocatalytic effect accelerates the process by which you extract energy from your store of nutrients. An unsurprising consequence of this is that you peddle a little bit harder.’
Whence comes this observation? This theory of cause and effect?
I hope folks are not trying to follow this thread, which might be confusing to the point of ignoring the points made in the original essay. I trust this is not Denis’s agenda.
Denis, how about we move on. I’ll try to finish the next post by tomorrow.
Allan,
“Whence comes this observation? This theory of cause and effect?”
We are discussing a single mutation sustained by the organism. The effect of the mutation was to make an important part of the organism’s metabolic process become photolytic. (That’s one cause, one effect. Its source is mere supposition. It is well beyond me to prove that any such mutation was a possibility for our base organism, or, indeed, for any organism, ever.)
Now (assuming the part of the metabolic process in question was the rate determining step) the metabolic process accelerates as the intensity of incident light increases. (Another cause, another effect. This one is borne from definition. That’s how photolysis is, and, because I have assumed that it is the metabolism’s rate-limiting reaction that has become photolytic, the speed of the whole metabolic process is now light sensitive, with positive correlation.)
As the metabolic rate is now correlated with the incident light intensity, so too is the supply of energy / fuel to the flagella. (Another cause, another effect. If a process runs faster, its output arrives at a faster rate.)
As the flagella’s fuel supply is now correlated with the incident light intensity, so too is the rate at which it thrashes about. (Another cause, another effect. This one is analogous to opening the throttle on your motorhome and noticing the engine turns faster, and then closing the throttle to slow it down again.)
“I trust this is not Denis’s agenda.”
I can assure you your trust is well founded. Glad to see you haven’t succumbed to paranoia!
“how about we move on”
If this is in reference to your earlier allegation against me: Allan, I thought we had!
“I’ll try to finish the next post by tomorrow.”
I look forward to your next piece, in a capacity of reader.
I know you have let me slide by several times cause ya know I’m just another suffering human being raised by the Silent Gen God bless them.
We are not these bodies. This is fun to discuss I assume and I am not minimizing anyone’s passion to think and question everything.
Yet I know deep in my heart space that I am a spiritual being. I am Love. We are all One. Everything is.
This is truly an exercise and the work involved awakening in your own way. There need be no rules.
The secrets are in our Hearts. Once you are able to Love only to be as free from the matrix as possible then you will be.
Love is always the answer to everything. It is our destiny.
Life is fucking hard. It’s perfectly apparent through Allan’s Essays. Feel His Pain!
This is how you stay in Love
Feel His Pain! Or hers. You cannot permit yourself to lead with your mind. This is guaranteed doom. You must learn to lead with your Heart. This is all you must do while here.
It comes out from each of us in very different ways. I mention only what I believe. I believe that Head Forward is a major issue with Western Civilization.
Leading with the mind will always bring suffering.
Of course I suffer as well of of course I have head forward. I am doing my best to stay in my heart space.
We are creators of everything. Your wish is all that is required when you know the result. You must know the result.
Many of us are amazing examples of our ability to create but we have no clue while it occurs.
As I look back at my life I see some of my adventures were incredible and seemingly impossible as you look back. Yet at that time when I did that deed I knew the end would be an amazing business.
This is what we are. Creators.
Sorry Allan if I am out of line. I understand if you don’t post it.
^Never a Truer word said Brother^
On the other hand, every time I lead with my heart and not my mind, I find my trust has been misplaced. Or maybe I don’t understand you. ‘Lead with your heart.’ What does that mean in a practical sense? Give me an example of how leading with your mind led to doom. Maybe that will clear up my foggy interpretation of your message.
‘Lead with your heart’ certainly sounds good. An old friend asks to borrow money. I lead with my heart and say, Sure, brother, here it is. Now I have one less friend and less money.
If I led with my heart now, I’d probably drive 2,000 miles and put a bullet in his gut. Whaddya think? (Keep in mind that this is just an example.)
You lead with your heart, and lend “friend” (who isn’t a friend) a few quid….HEARTLESS friend doesn’t want to pay the money back to you.
A persons car has broken down in the middle of nowhere, the motorist with heart will stop to see if they can do ANYTHING (maybe not much?)…but they still stopped – and almost can certainly do at at least something every time.
Some BIG examples – Nikola Tesla (huge heart) wanted to give people of the world FREE electricity…Morgan the bankster found out, and killed the project without question.
Everyone should watch this, the greatest pioneer Doctor Scientist/Inventor who ever lived – Dr Roy Rife (monster heart) and what “they” did to him > https://youtu.be/nkQLlZxXLeI
Here’s how to “lead with yr heart”: Friend asks to borrow money. Yr head says ” oh I should lend, it’s the right thing, it’s acting from my heart”. Forget that emotion/thought nonsense. Sit quietly, relax, put the question to yr True Feelings & wait for response. Whatever that is, yr head will quickly rationalise & organise around. A ‘Yes’ feeling? Fine, only a few bucks, time of need, it’ll come back. Maybe not a ‘Yes” feeling? Fine, it’s yr money, you’re not loaded, is repayment likely? Point is, if you’re relaxed, not driven by monkeymind, but calm & really Feeling, you can “trust yr gut”, True Feelings are always right! Don’t be sucked in by emotions – revved-up heartbeart, juices, many thoughts. Language is tricky – ever hear someone say ” I feel confused”? Bullshit – confusion isn’t a feeling, thoughts can be confused. So – driving 2,000 miles? Is that a calm relaxed feeling you have? Or angry wound-up thinking/emotive response? Not really heart (True Feelings) at all…
People, here is a small fox that flies > https://youtu.be/5FK9tWT5pA4 🙂
….the point being folks, if “evolution knows nothing, and plans nothing”, why hasn’t it grafted real working wings on MANY MORE critters??….isn’t flying the most efficient way to travel & survive?..
…Answer, – because ‘evolution’ is the biggest crock of crap lie going!!
I just sent Denis an email and am thinking why not share it? Here it is:
Denis,
What’s up with this (latest) comment? Sorry, can’t make heads nor tails of it and have lost track of the good point you made… somewhere. How about a little ‘editing’ with these? Figure out your point, write it, then look at it and put yourself in the reader’s place before you hit Send.
You have something to say but it’s lost in the noise, I’m afraid. (I’ll be disappointed if this message results in a long reply.)
allan
I’m tired and may take a few days rest before my next post.
Allan, all I got out of that very long post was , Denis said this > ” So, I’m rooting for Allan, really. However, I would like the satisfaction of actually understanding the disproof.”
It’s all going above his head, and he can’t see the forest for the trees?
Allan. A brief summary (I’m sure Denis will correct if required) would be that Denis believes that Neo-Darwinism (what he calls ToE) is the best explanation for the observed variety of species. He feels he doesn’t have to support this theory but calls on doubters to provide evidence that it is not so (a reasonable enough standpoint). I believe he acknowledges that every genetic change must not confer genetic disadvantage on the organism but does not feel this is necessary in the development of phototaxis in the Euglena. He believes non-living matter is inanimate (and therefore has no level of consciousness) but also believes that non-living (his term is inanimate) matter can collapse a light wave into its particle state such as occurs when a a photon starts an oxidative reaction (knocking off an electron). I also think he is of the view that a Euglena has no level of consciousness and therefore the difference between a dead Euglena and a ‘revived’ live Euglena is simply the matter of removing the condition that caused its ‘deadness’ (I might be putting words in his mouth at this point – there is a lot of inference here). Enjoy your rest Allan!
GB (September 26, 2019 at 9:08 pm),
Thank you for your perseverance on the comprehension.
If you can bear with me, I’ll take each of your conclusions, in turn.
1) (belief) – Correct, but I also included an acknowledgement that the matter of whatever I happen to believe is entirely irrelevant. Good point re nomenclature. I should have used “ND”, sorry. This was purely accidental (notwithstanding the amount of repetition).
2) (obligations) – My point was that ND (See, I’m learning!) can be defended with theory and, maybe, hypothesis, as well as with theorem and fact. (I’ve a qualification of that, which I’ll make at the end.) I am not calling upon doubters. People, here, have been publishing challenges of ND; I have been enjoying reading, and trying to understand, some of these. I have endeavoured (in my entirely unqualified state) to construct some sort of defence to some of the challenges. I prefer to avoid using the verb “support”, because it frequently has connotations of emotional commitment, inapplicable to me, in this instance. (What most of us are supporting is a football team.)
3) (genetic disadvantage) – I can’t find where I said anything about that, in the specific post you were analysing. Maybe you were suffering some horrible flashback? Anyway, what I’d been suggesting is that there are degrees of disadvantage, that the rapidity at which the mutation disappears from the live population will vary commensurately, and that, at the lesser end, the mutation could hang around for quite a while, at least under favourable circumstances. I have also suggested that propagation of disadvantageous mutations is much less impaired when the organism is an asexual, rather than a sexual, reproducer. (If that hypotheses is correct, it should be very well known, amongst people who know what they’re talking about.) I have not, anywhere, suggested the euglena’s phototaxis development is somehow exempted from the normal constraints upon genetic inheritance.
4) (inanimate) – It’s not a matter of belief, but of the word definition I was using: “inanimate – adj., Not having the qualities associated with active, living organisms”. (In truth, I was specifically thinking of the never been alive instance of being inanimate.) The idea that an inanimate object has no level of consciousness does seem to follow from the definition, as consciousness would probably be included as a quality associated with (many, common) living organisms, but I’m not going to be upset if it actually is a matter of belief.
5) (collapsing a light wave) – Please leave off with the quantum mechanics, already! I believe in photochemistry and photocatalysis, but, more importantly these (I believe – sorry!) are proven chemical / physical phenomena.
6) (Euglena has no level of consciousness) – I have no clear grasp of where “consciousness” starts. So, I do not know whether the euglena’s responses to environmental stimuli would qualify as consciousness or not. My point was that, if incident light can initiate a chain of reactions in an inanimate object, it is quite plausible it could do so, analogously, in a living entity, i.e. without the need to involve any form of consciousness (regardless of whether the living entity has consciousness). I neither made, nor intended, any reference to bringing back the dead. (Has your “check inference engine” warning light come on?)
Brett, September 26, 2019 at 8:53 pm, suggested I was not “see[ing] the forest for the trees” (which I’ve always known as “wood for the trees”, incorporating an ambiguity that turns out to be irrelevant). That resonates with something troubling me:
My confidence that I’ve correctly grasped what the goal/game is, here, has been on a downward curve. I’m now feeling that I’ve bounced into a group of guys playing chess and started trying to play draughts (checkers). That’s obviously only going to cause irritation all round.
A major thing, for which I had failed to account, stems from ND being a (in the non-literal sense) living theory, one iteratively revised to accommodate new observations and newly constructed counter-rationale. It is that ND presents us with two levels of goal: we might disprove the current version of ND, to have ND not dead, but resting, in addition to, the greater prize, of finding the silver bullet from which ND will never come back.
Sadly, my (inexpert) efforts have been in the direction of sketching a new piece of theory that could be incorporated into ND (should ND actually have need of it) to accommodate the counter examples/arguments Allan has set out. Such efforts were futile in the context of refuting that Allan had scored a goal of the first type. Denying Allan that goal would have required finding genuine facts, and employing them in combination with actual details of the current ND, something, I think, that you (GB) had been trying to point out to me.
Even were I doing the correct thing, in sketching patches for ND, it has been very slow to dawn on me that there are quality and plausibility criteria for any new piece of theory. I’ve been ignoring that rule of the game and repairing (if at all) with inferior parts.
Well, the number of comments proves the topic Dawkin & Evolution is of great interest.
I’l be dying to see how this story unfolds …
Me too! I do ask you all to quit encouraging Barbara. I’m on the verge of deleting her dumber comments, crapola like this:
you’re just making fun of another more successful writer, no? Your arguments are as good or as bad as Dawkins Allan. REALLY? NOTICE NO SPECIFICS HERE.
Dawkins says: “it’s evolution stupid!”. You just say “no, it can’t be!” But you don’s say what it is.
DO YOU ALL UNDERSTAND HOW STUPID THIS COMMENT IS? DOES SHE EVEN THINK OF THE WORK I PUT INTO THE ESSAY AND SHE CLAIMS IT AMOUNTS TO You just say “no, it can’t be!”
HOW LONG SHOULD I PUT UP WITH SHIT LIKE THAT? I AM PAYING WORDPRESS FOR HER COMMENTS.
The holes in the evolution theory are not enough to prove it wrong. So, in your opinion there was planets and stuff, then there was the big bang and now there are planets and stuff again?
I IHAVE NEWS: WHEN YOU PUT HOLES IN A THEORY IT DOES PROVE IT WRONG. STUPID! AND WHAT IS THAT CRAP ABOUT PLANETS? I DON’T BELIEVE IN BIG BANG. HOW STUPID IS THIS WOMAN?
If a morphic field could speed this up, children would make high school in half the time today, and counting, don’t you think? Is this babbling?
You call my comments babbling just because I’m not a yes-sayer. Do you want here only people who constantly give you flowers?
SHE MADE A DUMB COMMENT AND I ASKED HER TO BACK IT UP. SHE DID NOTING BUT BABBLE MORE WITH NO EVIDENCE. NOT ONLY DO I NOT WANT YES-SAYERS BUT I AM ASKING FOR EVIDENCE/OBSERVATIONS THAT SHOW HOW MY POINTS ARE WRONG. I DO NOT ASK FOR BABBLING OFF SUBJECT AND MISDIRECTION AND INSULTS, LIKE:
There still can be changes in the environment without changes in the species or changes in the species without changes in the environment. For instance due to inbreeding. So there is no way to prove the theory wrong. Therefore such theory is not scientific. Q.E.D. Here you have it. I did that for you. Wasn’t that difficult, was it? Making fun of a popular writer did not prove anything. I gave you the prove on a plate. You’re welcome. YOU’RE WELCOME!?
QED??? THIS IS PURE NONSENSE. YES, EVOLUTION IS NOT FALSIFIABLE, BUT HER REASONING IS NONSENSE. THEN THE LAST COUPLE SENTENCES INSULT MY HARD WORK. DOES SHE KNOW HOW IGNORANT AND STUPID SHE IS? THE ABOVE IDIOCIES WERE VIA A SCAN OF HER BABBLING. I COULD GO ON ALL DAY BUT THIS IS MY LAST RESPONSE TO HER.
I’M ASKING YOU ALL TO QUIT ENCOURAGING THIS IDIOT. A REQUEST. IT’S A TIME WASTER FOR ME TO GO OVER HER COMMENTS FOR MISDIRECTION OR OTHER CRAP I DON’T WANT ON MY FORUM. I DON’T EVEN GET ENOUGH CONTRIBUTIONS TO PAY FOR WORDPRESS BUT MY TIME IS EVEN MORE IMPORTANT. I AM NOT GOING TO ANSWER THIS WOMAN BUT I WILL DELETE HER IF THIS KEEPS UP. (Yes, in her sea of babble, she occasionally brings up a good point. It’s too rare to deal with and set her off.)
IF SHE’S JUST TRYING TO STIR ME UP, FOR WHAT REASON?
10-4… However, you sometimes state you could use a little help now and then too. So you make it a bit confusing when you want/need the help. There is enough comments from her now and historically to show she doesn’t deserve to be here. It’s obvious she’s here for a reason – to raise your blood pressure and chew up time. This is obvious for a few others around here too. So do what you need to do with this situation and be done with it.
I know. I should just ban her and be done with it. She’s probably not a mole but might as well be one….
” It’s obvious she’s here for a reason – to raise your blood pressure and chew up time.” —- Correct Todd!. Are you guys sure it’s a woman?, anyway, Yes, she isn’t here to help much, that’s for sure.
I stopped responding to her a long time ago – just didn’t like her self-righteous style.
I don’t suppose a troll or agent behind every annoying person, I met a lot of a**holes in my life which fit that profile perfectly well. But OTOH, I don’t have a blog …
Mea culpa. I’ll sit on my hands if I have to!
you just took a few sentences out of the context. To misunderstand me on purpose IMO.
When you ask me for evidence you mean links? What kind of evidence is that? What about common sense? For instance I mentioned the morphic field and explained how to derive a prediction from this theory which does not work in reality. That is the way a theory can be tested. Is that really so hard to understand? You can find holes in every theory and this does not prove the theory wrong. A false prediction does. I wont follow this post anymore. It started to be boring.
Regards.
B.M.
RE not following this post anymore, I see you were (predictably)… not truthful. Sigh….
Enjoyed that Allan. Stirring up Darwin’s theory
That reduced the need for an Overseer for values
That encourage socialism, communism, nazi party
Dare I say regressive-ism.
And science “fiction” to allow the egos to take great
Liberty reaching for the truth VS the Supernatural
And asking and getting money for it. Giving
People a false sense of who and what we are.
We pretty much Share genetics with monkeys,
Cats (90%), cows, rats, etc.
Consciousness is the one that science has no clue.
My dad always said, “let your conscience be your
Guide”. I wish he had more.
The Black Widow did get a red hour glass on a jet black body. Probably is the genesis of humans considering red & black as representing evil.So a Swastika might be on a bug somewhere. Or it might be in consideration for the future…
I have been thinking of sight for quite awhile and wondering how we see the color black. It is my understanding that light comes to the eye, the eye doesn’t see something where it is at, we see reflected light from an object. So when light is absorbed in certain matter to make the color black and is basically the antithesis of light how do we see it? Does light reflect off black and carry black to the eye? If it does how does it do it? Colors are created through the interaction of light with matter then how does the reflected light carry that light/matter to the eye when it is no longer interacting with that matter? Maybe it is not?
Using the parallax method for finding the distance of a star would suggest we are seeing a star where it is at but elsewhere in MS science we see the image of a star after a year or a couple years journey through space.
I am starting to think we see the absorbed light where it is at and the divergent light after it is absorbed with matter where it is at. Anybody who wants, can fix where I may have gone wrong in my thinking. I ran into the Principle of non-interaction of waves but this is hard to imagine as images going through images, as a double faced mirror would suggest, yet no distortion to what the beholder of an eye sees.
Rambling off topic without any mention or rebuttal to Allan’s specific points of Neo-Darwin shortcomings.
BTW, I just remembered – why haven’t you uploaded your broom video for all us to see and vote on?
Yes, I am waiting for the first “broom” vid, that has been filmed , then REVERSED to try and suck in the gullible.
Ohhh, right! drud is the liar who claims to be able to balance a broom and lower it to a spot! I told you if you don’t do a video as proof, you’d be banned. I forgot. Thanks, todd, for reminding me. Drud, you are a liar. Do you understand? A liar. I’m calling you a liar publicly. What are you going to do about it?
And no, it’s not off-subject when someone lies and then tries to dodge that lie. All you need is a cell phone camera and a computer. If you can make comments here you can upload a short video. But you don’t. I have idiots who insult me (Barbara) and liars (you) here. I don’t like either but liars are the worst. Liar! (Holy shit, if someone said that about me and I could prove him wrong… I’d do it, no matter what it took.)
No outright liars on this forum. Anyone object to that rule?
Dude, if you can’t extrapolate and see the difficulty in balancing on a tightrope while balancing a broom on the other foot is a much more difficult than lowering a broom to the ground you need to work on your critical thinking. And if you call me a liar without any evidence whatsoever you need to work on your critical thinking.
NOTE FROM ACW: HERE WE GO AGAIN. THIS GUY IS A LIAR WHO WILL BE BANNED FROM THE FORUM FOR LYING IF HE DOES NOT PROVE HE CAN BALANCE A BROOM, ETC. I DELETED THE REST OF HIS CRAP HERE. THIS IS THE LAST WARNING. DO A VIDEO OR GET OFF THIS FORUM.
I haven’t run off to google or anything, but logic says the black gives off zero light, and the eye easily detects it….like at night time, when you have no torch light :-).
With the stars, yeah, most of the time you are seeing their image from 100,000s or many millions of years ago – and the star may or may not be there any more.
So if I see a black laptop 1/4 mile away the eye easily detects it where it is or does light reflecting from the black laptop come to the eye?
It’s NO light coming from black – right?….like when you are stuck inside a black cave with no torch, – zero light.
BTW, The wonder of the human eye, can spot a candle at at LEAST 3 miles away.
You may or may not be here to read this, if you have been banished – for good reason! 😀
If their is no light coming from the black laptop then how do you see it with no black light waves to bring the black laptop to your eyes. It would mean your eyes would have to reach out there to see it.
I may have messed up on the color thing actually according to them the color you see is the color that doesn’t absorb. A lemon doesn’t absorb yellow so it’s not really yellow, that is the color of light it refracts.
So if you have a yellow lens on a flashlight the lens is not really yellow it’s just not absorbing yellow light it’s refracting it. Yet when you turn on the flashlight ,all the colors of the rainbow combined, it turns white light into yellow light from a lens refracting yellow light? The light that is not in the lens? There is something is fishy with this theory.
Whats the good reason? Let me guess, what Allan said? Not long before all the critical thinkers are gone.
Here is the Deaths Head Hawk Moth to tickle your fancy > https://youtu.be/fWcoMstzxcc
Drud (and any one else), the black creates “dead pixels” – i.e light missing in the eyes picture screen.
If you take a picture of man in black and convert it to film then distribute the film to theaters are you seeing dead pixels with your eyes at the drive- in theater? No black is making it to the screen from the projector? Since the screen is kind of white at night wouldn’t you think that what you would see is too black and that the black that is in the film is not just blocking the light but sending a form of black light to the screen?
If the ‘Principle of non-intervention of waves” is true and the film itself is just refracting the colors embedded when the picture was taken then how come the refracting colors of the film itself are interfering with the light projected through them?
It doesn’t seem to happen in nature. The refracting blue sky coming down to the refracting green grass going up. A two faced mirror will show this but now turn the mirror 90 degrees and we have refracting colors of a house on one side and refracting colors of a car and some trees on the other. Now turn the mirror In 1 degree increments and all these refracting colors are intersecting but not taking on the characteristics of each other according to what the eye sees in the mirror.A chaotic mass of light waves going in all directions like a infinite pile of different colored pixie sticks going on invisibly in the air we breathe plus all the other waves. It’s truly a wonder if this is so.
When you film the refracting colors, make a negative, and send light through it, you do observe a change, in that the white light, takes on the characteristics of whatever ‘refracted’ color the projected light went through and then ends up on a screen for all to see.So there is interference in ‘captured’ light in film. Funny too that if you mix all the colors of paint it ‘refracts’ black but mix all the colors of light you get white. Material vs what is it?
Best I have read, just recently, ” Is light has been trolling physicists and thinkers for centuries.” I can by that.
That’s right,- the projector is throwing zero light at the screen where the black colored bits are.
If you mix all the colors in paint, It makes a brown shade doesn’t it?….I know it’s not black.
Hey, what created light you reckon? – evolution?? 😀
Brett you are not thinking very deeply. How does the screen which is white or grayish white at night become deep black if the projector isn’t throwing something deep black at the screen?
As far as color and light mixing look it up.
Here: http://www.colorbasics.com/AdditiveSubtractiveColors/
Stars, fire, lightning and light bulbs create light. I can figure out who created light bulbs on at least this planet but the other three I don’t know.
I did an experiment, I shined a flashlight through a green leaf and a yellow leaf and I got their respective colors on wall. Then I shined the light at the leaf away from the wall and did get a slightly less green bouncing back at the wall. It wasn’t the shape of a leaf although…but with a mirror I see a leaf but less disperse light.
Hey, I don’t care if I am wrong, I am seeing for myself through experience whether I am being BS’d or not.
I’ll tell ya, druddy, that’s an interesting point about the ‘color’ black. One of those deals that I might think of then go off on a tangent…
Thank you and good essay.
Drud (no reply box above) , because you are watching the screen in darkness.
AND, the fact that the light bearing colors CONTRAST against the ‘no light’ bits.
Have you noticed, when you look at someones eyes close, – the pupil is black , because there is no light coming out from the eyeball.
…..And have a close look at a projector film slide….the black bits are being shaded out, so no light reaches the screen.
Ok, Brett I guess you are kinda right on the black thing.Some light is used due to different shades of black.
https://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2015/06/16/how-do-projectors-project-the-color-black/
I am still perplexed by reflected light scattering on a wall with no form yet with a mirror I get an image of the object ( green leaf) instead of scattering light. I think if there is a creator he certainly wants us to think hard on things else he would of made things much more understandable…
Hey Drud, they are mixing LIGHT (colors) up there , I was talking about PAINT! 🙂
Your *God Light* made the starlight etc for you mate. Do yo believe or not believe.
“Evolution does not ‘know’ anything. Anything”
Well Said… I Concur- not that it matters in the scheme of things.
Aloha Allan and guests
“evolution has no memory, and can make no plans for the future. According to Darwinism, ‘the process’ doesn’t know anything. It has no sense of what ‘worked before.’
You know, it has no foresight.
Because if it did have foresight, not only would Darwinian evolution go Poof! but so would the whole materialist, naturalist, reductionist paradigm. They’d all go Poof! ”
pretty brilliant if i do say so myself 🙂
The War against Intelligent design wages on!
Ha! I agree! 😉
““I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves… For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.”10 (my emphasis)
Huxley, Aldous, Ends and Means (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1937), 270.”
Rebellion against The Logo’s ………………………………………………….
Thanks Allan for all you are doing, shining the light in dark places
Aloha
Yes, another critical essay!
A well written expose of Neo-Darwin’s weak theory on their mechanism of something. You’ve logically narrowed down the argument to the most fundamental aspect of the issue at hand, especially with your foray into the second eye. Not only is this second eye identical, but an aesthetically functional MIRROR to it’s opposing partner (shapes of the eyelids, inner [towards the nose] and outer, etc.)… What are the odds!. I have no counter-argument for any of your points, let alone the second eye and, therefore, agree with you. This is a damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t moment for the Neo-Darwinists. You’ve locked them into a corner.
I’m wagering a shiny penny that Dawkins will not be responding to this at all. If he does, the whole house of cards comes down, exposing this entire nonsense and threatening his livelihood, his income. I wish Darwin was still alive so he can share in this reckoning.
But maybe I’m wrong! Maybe he’ll get outraged, which would be another wonderful tell… As your saying goes (which I find so true), “You lie about someone, they’ll get angry. You tell the truth about them, they’ll get outraged”
Thanks for noticing the ‘corner’ aspect. Whatever they answer, they are done. I’m waiting for someone to show me what i’ve missed but so far just double-talk. We’ll see. It seems unbelievable that i could have noticed something missed for 150 years! I just aint that smart!
Don’t sell yourself short.
BTW, looks like Dawkins and Co. are on tour now thru end of October in the US.
https://www.richarddawkins.net/tour/
“Join Richard Dawkins as he shares the stage with Max Tegmark, Ann Druyan, and Amber Heard to discuss matters relating to science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values. The conversation will be followed by a Q&A and book signing.”
Why Amber Heard is there, I don’t know, but she sure looks good. Well, maybe I kinda do – probably related to PTB misdirection.
Would be tempting to crash the party…
Boy i really should show up there. I have questions for Tegmark too. I sent a comment to his forum but he banned it. I just asked a good question. Max wanted none of it. I then tried to put my observation on an amazon review of his book, but THEY banned it. I’d love to corner the scumbag.
All of Them Disinformation Specialists paid to rewrite history one subtle lie at a time 😉
It would please me to contribute some denaro for you to do so (if you needed help), if you really wanted to go. Heck, I would even try to go with you – would have to clear it with my better half-and-all…
Why do these people expose themselves to the [interested, ticket-buying] public? Is it for profit?
Because every now and then they’re going to get a question that pushes them way out of their preferred zone. Are they trying to keep their rhetorical chops sharp?
Because they don’t generally do well when out of the zone. None of us who have seen (like, on Youtube) Chomsky getting asked about Nein Won Won, or Goodman about NPR’s NLP, can ever muster the cult love going forward.
Do they reckon that overall the brainwash benefit preponderates over any damage caused by the occasional (looking at you, Mr. Weisbecker) paradigm-juddering gaffe?
Are they addicted to risk?
Tee Hee 😛
Your comments are very valuable. In fact, based on some of them I added material to the ‘Two Eyes’ section, and an addendum just above it. Thanks, folks!
I appreciate the thoughtful comments.
I’ve made two main points in this essay, and they are cumulative, meaning that if either is correct, Darwinism is shown to be false (random mutation/natural selection as drivers of evolution) . The first point — that an organism will get no selective advantage from the first step of eye formation — is not really new, although I think I show the point in a new way.
The second point is made by simply asking the question: In the formation of the second eye, did evolution start from scratch?
Either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as an answer debunks Darwinism’s/naturalism’s ‘no foresight’ assumption, which in turn debunks the paradigm itself. And I don’t believe the question is of the Have you stopped beating your wife?’ type. It’s a simple empirical query. People will try to double-talk their way around it, but they still must answer the question, and Poof!
Re the this second point,, I’m curious to know if I’ve missed something, i.e., am I right?
If I am right, I’ve posed a devastating rebuttal to the naturalist paradigm, one that may not have been noticed/voiced in the last 150 years. I’d like to know, either way. I tend to notice things others miss, but this one would be the Biggie.
Well the first point is very difficult to refute convincingly. The odds are stacked heavily against a simultaneous mutation generating 1. sensitivity to light, 2. the level of consciousness to know the difference (attraction or aversion), and 3. the ability to do something about it (swim in the correct direction). And all that is before you factor in that there has not been one single beneficial adaptation, in any organism, that has proven to be the result of a mutation (coding error). The rule always seems to be that mutation causes harm.
The conventional refutation of your second argument would be that Bilateral symmetry is a very early adaptation within the animal kingdom. In other words the bilateral symmetry would
have come before the development of photoreceptors. The chance development of a photoreceptor on one side of a bilaterally symmetrical organism could conceivably be replicated on the other side.
Nevertheless it does ‘double’ the complications in that for each step in ‘improving’ the function of the eye needs a corresponding and simultaneous development in other areas. If you get a higher clarity lens (not easy!) then you need the neural development to auto-focus in order to make use of it. You then need a re-engineered ‘ultra HD’ retina to make use of the image. You then need to replace the old neural network replacing with some high band-width cabling to transfer the image to the brain. At the same time you need a development in consciousness to tell the difference between predator and prey when you have never seen either except as the most blurry blur. Most of these adaptations, if they happened independently of one another, would be disadvantageous due to ‘wasted effort’ if not a decrease in performance over the Mk1 version. If you add in sexual reproduction that just further decreases your chances as you need to find someone who likes you with that crazy eye thing you’ve got going on on your dominant genes.
The argument that it ‘happened slowly’ in some ways makes it even more improbable as this simultaneous ‘mutation’ in at least 5 areas must have happened millions of times according to neo-Darwinist theory. Seems to me to be just as unlikely as some of Kipling’s stories.
Really good points,, including:
Bilateral symmetry is a very early adaptation within the animal kingdom. In other words the bilateral symmetry would
have come before the development of photoreceptors.
Thing is, any argument along these lines — it seems to me — is evidence of ‘Design.’ Although I’m sure Darwinians will agree with you, calling it ‘bilateral symmetry’ (which sounds good) does not alter the fact that it’s a design element that — according to the ‘theory’ — that should not be in a random process.
What Darwinists don’t do, that i try to do, is think about SPECIFICALLY how it would go, starting from ‘no eye’ to one eye then the means by which the 2nd appears. Seems you’re saying that random mutation/natural selection goes out the window with the second eye. As I write, it’s as if ‘the process; is saying, ‘One eye good! Let’s do another!’ then call it ‘bilateral symmetry.’ Either Darwinism has foresight or it doesn’t. Anything in between is on the ‘foresight’ spectrum.
But I may be wrong. In any event, thanks for describing it so well. Gives me a better grasp on what to think about.
Great post.
To me REPRODUCTION is one of the biggest “Designer God” indicators.
Good point! How in hell did ‘life’ suddenly do that? Seriously good point.
mystery of Human Origins and the Haplo X2a genome… no easy explanation
I’m gonna give that a good looking at.
Krusty, what is it about Haplo X2a genome that needs explaining? I didn’t get past wiki on it.
Brutal, incisive, and very, very funny – chapeau!
Barbara. In scientific method a hypothesis (or collection thereof forming a ‘theory’) stands, however shakily, until evidence is produced proving it impossible (or in this case infinitesimally improbable) . It is not necessary to first postulate an alternative – in either science or law it is quite enough to establish innocence without having to find a guilty party. So it is entirely correct of Allan to shoot down a hypothesis based on available evidence as he so eloquently does here.
Exactly. I do appreciate you all ‘ganging up’ on Barbara – shooting fish isn’t it? — since your comments are logical and correct.
GB (and others), a theory is only and only then scientific if it includes its own falsification criteria. Also you can’t prove the negative, so the provider of a theory has to deliver any usable proof (prediction) for it. What predictions does Allan make here? None. It’s just blabbing and making fun of another blabber. He does not even gives away his own view, which was what I asked for. Dawkins even shows more courage to openly question the creationist’s view using the evolution theory. All Allan does here is to question Dawkins. Not giving any alternative explanation. If it wasn’t God and it wasn’t the evolution, what was it then? If you cannot give any better answer, why question others in the first place? The evolution theory is not completely wrong. We can even observe evolution in the small scale, where butterflies and other simple organisms adapt themselves to changes in their environment. If for instance Allan asks hypothetically: “What are the odds that a light sensitive patch mutation would occur on, say, euglena?” And guesses “zero”. What Allan does not understand is, that after the mutation the species would not be an euglena anymore. We don’t know the entire evolution chain but it does not prove this chain does not exists. Dawkins and evolutionists in general claim, that the eye had to develop from something simpler, which is reasonable enough. Allan claims, that is impossible not explaining why and not giving any better explanations. We know simpler forms of eyes. In insects or jellyfishes for instance. The evolution theory may be full of holes, but this is not enough to prove it wrong. I’m not evolutionists myself and not a creationists either. IMO this is beyond our understanding and I’m not asking who created the eye or how did the eye develop, even though we can assume some development knowing simpler forms of eyes. We also know, the eye developed from the brain itself. The more complex the brain became, the more complex it’s eyes became too. I’m more interested in how does the eye translate very high frequencies from the electromagnetic wave we call “the light” into low sonic frequencies which the rods and cones in the retina can process. Because this is something we can analyze and it would help to understand lots of things better. It would be useful. No so questioning the evolution or the creation theories.
Barbara. In the same post you say both that Allan ought not to shoot down something that is wrong without replacing it; and at the same time go one to say that ” I’m not evolutionists myself and not a creationists either. IMO this is beyond our understanding…” It is often necessary in science to refute a theory (by proving it false) indeed it is the only way progress can be made. An unchallengeable ‘the science is settled’ theory is not science – it is a religion and this particular temple has some pretty zealous guardians. Once it is admitted on undergraduate evolutionary biology courses that we have no definitive theory that stacks up against the evidence, and that the field is therefore wide open for study, only then we will make progress. Multiple theories will be postulated and one by one they will get shot down as research yields new data disproving them. The theories that are left standing will become the mainstream.
“If you cannot give any better answer, why question others in the first place?”
Well, how about Building 7? Off-topic, I realize, but instructive nonetheless. Even NIST finally had to admit that B7 fell to the ground at a rate of acceleration due to free-fall, i.e. the same rate as a brick falling through thin air. This can only mean that all of the support structures gave way at the same time and offered no resistance whatsoever (at least for the first dozen floors or so). This has been attributed to the limited fires on lower floors that burned for several hours even though no steel-framed building has collapsed due to fire before or since. I cannot give a better answer because the logistics of any other option make my head feel like it is going to explode (implications of it all, and what not). But how can I not question this narrative? And the cost of not questioning this narrative? Trillions and trillions of dollars spent, and thousands and thousands of lives lost and ruined. There are many of us who cannot give a better answer, but surely we would have all been better off if we had paused to ask a few more questions in the first place?
And back to evolution, specifically complex design through random mutation, this stuff can be dangerous. It is being taught to our children as fact (it was presented that way to me), as an unassailable theory that you would have to be either stupid, ignorant, dishonest, or even evil not to agree with. This, in turn, becomes dogma. Textbooks are written, tenure given, and careers are built on it. All of which becomes very difficult to undo. Like a bad academic habit (although probably much more nefarious). Ever tried to reverse one of your own bad habits?
I think Allan is on the right track focusing on how something as complex as the eye could come about through random mutation and beneficial selection alone, but there are so many other problems with this theory. For one, it would stand to reason that it would require a lot of time, a whole lot of time. Yet after every mass extinction event, we know (through the fossil record) that every niche in the entire ecosystem has been repopulated with new and diverse species in short order. Can random mutation explain this? Or should I not even ask the question?
For the record, it wasn’t long ago (a couple of years) that I thought Allan’s foray into this subject was a complete waste of time. I was an atheist comfortably in the evolutionary camp. But, as it turns out, I hadn’t fully considered my position. I, for one, am glad someone is asking the questions whether or not they have a better answer…
Miles McQueen, discussing the reality of a hoax is wasting of time. All 911 videos are fakes.
As for the eye dilemma: it goes like this: Dawkins says everything even an eye can be created evolutionary, Alan says: no it can’t be because the eye is to complicated. Right?
Based on what does Allan guess, that an eye is to complicated for evolution? What are the limits of evolution? Until we don’t know them we cannot claim that something is to complicated for evolution.
“We can even observe evolution in the small scale, where butterflies and other simple organisms adapt themselves to changes in their environment.”
Insomuch as any organism can “adapt themselves”, aren’t you talking about the role of the epigenomic system here? The issue at hand is organisms having adaptions thrust upon them via random mutation, and whether or not these adoptions prove beneficial. Like Dawkins, you are anthropomorphizing here.
By ‘butterfies’ I think Barbara is probably referring to the peppered moth where both white and black species co-exist naturally and which was in every school text book at one time as an example of natural selection. The point being that this variation in the phenotype (and therefore in the genotype) ALREADY existed and could be thus selected for and against by natural selection (which is a mechanism most agree with – certainly Allan does). In the midst of the industrial revolution the black peppered moth was prevalent due to the grime on the trees and walls; post industrial revolution it was back to the white peppered moth. Not a proven mutation in sight and certainly no evidence for neo-Darwinism; just natural selection at work.
GB, natural selection is the basis of evolution, no?
Barbara. Natural selection does not form the basis of evolution. If you had a homogenous genotype (cloned GM corn for example) an unusually harsh selective pressure such as a voracious parasite could potentially wipe the species out entirely. No one member of that species would have an advantage over another and therefore Natural selection by itself therefore achieves nothing. The BIG question that Allan is posing is WHAT is causing that variation in the genotype in the first place. Neo-Darwinists (not Darwin himself) say ‘random mutation’ (without ever having found an example of a favourable mutation occurring in a lab or in nature). Naysayers point to the complete lack of evidence and the shear improbability – I would add the fact that the first and most beneficial advantage a species could evolve through ‘random mutation’ would be a better evolutionary mechanism; one that would allow for quicker adaptation to selective pressures.
DB, GM = genetic manipulated? What Monsanto and others do is exactly what breeders do: inbreed and select. Inbreeding leads to lost of alleles (similar chromosome sequences) and expresses certain attributes. They keep what they like and destroy what they don’t like. To my knowledge, this Monsanto corns have limited survival time and farmers who first complained don’t complain anymore. You have to understand that mainstream always provides its own controlled opposition. That’s all those horrible news about GM-corns overgrowing everything. It supports the idea, that they can manipulate the genes as they like. If it was true, it would have spread in the entire world already, which it didn’t.
Mutations happen everywhere and every time. Some of them may be random, even though I don’t think anything in nature can be random. Which one is favorable and will survive is not easy to see because evolution is supposed to be a long time process. What we see is for instance that blond hair is vanishing and that skin color gets mixed without a winner. Also baldness seem to spread. I don’t have any reliable statistics here. It’s just my impression.
Allan: how is that mainstream? Where do I write mainstream? Not everything is a lie. Even mainstream needs a certain amount of truth to stay convincing for the majority. I’m just mostly drawing different conclusions.
GB, see my comment to Brett. It goes for you too. I wish we could have your rebuttals without her nonsense. Look at the time she takes to write long rambling mainstream nonsense.
Sorry Allan – couldn’t help myself. Actually I think her posts are useful examples of the kind of muddled thinking that is so prevalent in areas seldom challenged, and therefore instructive to the non-specialist and person with genuine interest. I kind of miss ‘X’ too!
I’m still here, albeit banned.
Thank you Allan. No reply box on some of Barbara’s posts, but above she said > “GB, natural selection is the basis of evolution, no?”
You are correct with the No here Barbara, – it is the butterfly DECIDING (under it’s own steam) whether to go over there to that place , or another place with ‘free will’ – on the spot.
Have you ever tried to catch a butterfly?, they are very intelligent at evading capture!
Solid entry. The “evolution” of multiple symmetrical eyes in almost all of the current animal kingdom is an excellent argument that correctly questions the random mutation that is supposedly occurring.
The monkeys at typewriters and tornadoes that produce 747s are also valid arguments and should not be easily dismissed with the de facto “Well, we are here…so it happened somehow.” Yes, we are here…and yes, it happened somehow…and life and the universe are even more complex than we can possibly imagine…yet the best evidence points to random luck which brought it all about?!?
That simply does not follow.
Well put. And I’m going to nail Dawkins on his ‘Methinks it is like a weasel’ crapola next time, although it’s been done before. That he could leave this lie in a book from the 1980s and not apologize for…. well, you’ll see what I mean. Dawkins is the sort of ‘true believer’ who thinks it’s okay to lie for ‘good cause.’ A fanatic, in other words.
No. I don’t believe Allan is “just making fun of another, more successful, writer”. It’s not as if Dawkins is a paperback writer of pulp fiction. He holds a doctorate from Oxford, numerous honorary degrees, and has received multiple “scientific” awards. He is the de facto mouthpiece for a massive pillar of mainstream science, Darwinian evolution. And if Allan’s assertion is correct re: “those who do not agree with you (Dawkins) are ‘either stupid, ignorant, dishonest, or even evil’”, and I’ll assume it is, then Dawkins is clearly the one who threw down this particular gauntlet and put the target on his own back.
Your next point is basically that if Allan is going to blast holes in Dawkins’ arguments then he should have all of the answers as to what is actually going on, “If it is not evolution what is it, Allan?”. Really? How the hell should he know? This science (all science really) is in its infancy. If we can’t ask valid questions without having all the answers at the ready, how the hell are we going to get anywhere near the truth? I am not a student of Dawkins’ work but Allan does make some good points, no?
You then go on to state that for some questions “we’ll never know”. Really? Maybe, but what is the harm in asking them. And you go further to assert which questions we should be asking – presumptuous, no?
While I do agree that Allan offers the solution of a Designer a little too quickly, maybe the role of epi-genomes comes into play here, Allan is usually light years ahead of me on research and by the time I begin to catch up I see his point more clearly. Symmetry certainly looks like the work of a designer but is hardly proof of it. And yeah, maybe a fictitious conversation is a little unfair but it wasn’t much of a dialog, was it?
And don’t forget Allan’s point in including Huxley’s quote. There is a benefit to the PTB’s espousing “meaninglessness”. As a leading proponent of atheism and random mutation, Dawkins is at the bleeding edge of this agenda, no?
Thanks again, Miles. But I don’t believe I ever mention a Designer. This is one of the flubs the I.D. boys make, i.e., assuming a Designer when all they’ve done is debunk Darwinism’s mechanism. A ‘design’ could be built into nature without a ‘God’ living in the clouds as designer. Where the design came from is not my problem. This is a different kind of question.
Ah, an important distinction that I clearly missed. Thanks for the clarification.
bu you admit the existence of a “design” Allan. So you claim a design without a designer but you are sure this design did not happen via evolution, right? This is convenient for you but not helping. To find holes in a theory is not enough to prove the theory wrong. For this you have to find a prediction derived from the theory, which you can prove wrong. I demonstrated this recently with the morphic field theory of Rupert Sheldrake. The theory claims that a morphic field makes learning a skill once achieved easier next time anywhere else. If that is true, learning to write had to be very easy for future children once after the writing was invented. But children still need the same amount of time to learn how to write. Now as in the past. Therefore a postulated morphic field plays no role in it. Q.E.D. That is the way to prove a theory wrong Allan. How could one do it with the evolution theory? This theory claims that changes in the environment can cause changes in species. There still can be changes in the environment without changes in the species or changes in the species without changes in the environment. For instance due to inbreeding. So there is no way to prove the theory wrong. Therefore such theory is not scientific. Q.E.D. Here you have it. I did that for you. Wasn’t that difficult, was it? Making fun of a popular writer did not prove anything. I gave you the prove on a plate. You’re welcome.
Anyone who actually likes Dawkins, after he rudely calls anyone – stupid, ignorant, dishonest, & Evil – who doesn’t believe him, needs their Head Read!!
His attitude SUCKS!.
You are misdirecting Barbara. Allan has eloquently shot down a theory (neo-Darwinism) or at least pointed out that it is suffering from fatal injuries such that it’s imminent demise is inevitable – lets call it ‘natural selection’. Since you can’t defend neo-Darwinism (it is getting near impossible to do) you obfuscate. Allan may choose to postulate an alternative mechanism of evolution in another of his posts and at that point I’d be happy to pick apart your reply above (cut and paste if you like).
you say
But children still need the same amount of time to learn how to write. Now as in the past.
Do you have ‘proof’ of this or are you just saying it b/c it seems this way to you? Show me studies that back up your ‘QED.’
Allan, in the entire civilized world the children need about 12 years of school education to reach what you in the USA call high school level and the rest of the world knows as matura. It was so 200 years ago when mass school education started to spread. This level of education contains approximately the same amount of knowledge and skills everywhere and makes it comparable not only between countries but also between different times. In the past children had to learn even more than today. Think of Latin and Greek which was mandatory.
If a morphic field could speed this up, children would make high school in half the time today, and counting, don’t you think? Is this babbling?
You call my comments babbling just because I’m not a yes-sayer. Do you want here only people who constantly give you flowers? Is that it? I think you can do better than that. You want comments, you have to live with some amount of critic ones too. I may digress sometime but I only write something when I’m convinced to contribute. I’m not a native English speaker and expect a bit of patience for grammatical errors. Other than that, I consider my language skills good enough for this kind of conversation.
Barbara, you are ALL misdirection (again) and offer no direct rebuttal to Allan’s Neo-Darwin’ failures nor your do you offer specific proof that school curriculum hasn’t changed over the last 200 years in children’s ability to learn faster.
1) You ignored my previous comment to Sheldrakes IQ research.
2) Writing is now being taught in Kindergarden, when in the past it was not.
3) Both physics and differential calculus that were once taught in secondary/college schools are now being taught in high school.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=14&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjbnrzRqezkAhXWtp4KHbgYBhMQFjANegQIAhAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fpdfs.semanticscholar.org%2F7199%2F998693a6e7cc67196e33a41a80aa6610f139.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2LD9SHvQX1FTG6W1vhNDzA
There’s more evidence out there showing this trend. But, as I’ve stated earlier, this isn’t your agenda, is it? You are only here to misdirect.
Prost… 🙂
Todd, children in Kindergarden may now play some games with letters but it is still the age of 8-9 when the most children start to read fluently. And acceptable writing comes even later. I could read fluently when I was 6 years old by the way. My grandma taught me that. I don’t claim that the curriculum did not change Todd, I only stated that it still takes about 12 years of school education to reach the same level since there is mass education. Which is not that long. Don’t invent things I didn’t say, will you? If I missed a comment of you, sorry. In this format it is not easy to keep the track. I usually stop following a post, when I have to go to another page for older comments. In your education-link they say:”Physics (known originally as “natural philosophy”) had been taught at the secondary level in academies and high schools(!!!) since the early 1800s,” Before that, there wasn’t any mass education Todd. Very few people could read and write, even less had degrees. But it confirms what I said. Thank you.
A good essay with some good arguments raised.
On the evolution of the second eye, it would have been my understanding that the relevant section of chromosome got duplicated. As far as I am aware sections can get duplicated. Basically a form of cut and paste. If you consider all the fingers, it must be simply one plan with 5 slight modifications and then duplicated. The similarity of the layout in terms of the bones of the arms and hands/fingers to the legs and feet/toes clearly to me suggest distant duplication going on.
On the why not have gamma ray sensitivity, -indeed why not but since there are few gamma rays it would be no use. Visible light is dominant and carries information from the immediate environment so will be used. As far as I know fish in muddy rivers have sensitive more to the red end of the spectrum in their eyes because red light penetrates a bit further. And aren’t mosquitos sensitive to infra-red which is useful for detecting heat -i.e. the location of hot warm blood vessels.
Nevertheless the key point of how the things gets started and the requirement for coordinated beneficial mutations remains. There has to be some other “evolutionary” mechanism at play. It seems that the lesson from life or biology is that it tends to make use of whatever is to hand nearby.
A related point is if this other mechanism can give more direction to the evolution/design of a given creature and speed it up as it were -i.e. to produce what is improbable, that must say something about the speed of the process and adaptation.
One final point is that it seems Darwin was less dogmatic than his followers as at least he recognised that his theory could fail if certain assumptions were false.
You write: ‘it would have been my understanding that the relevant section of chromosome got duplicated.’
Notice the passive voice. HOW did it get duplicated is the question, isn’t it. Because it was ‘convenient’ to evolution? Sounds like design.
RE the ‘gamma rays’ and swastikas I was showing how ridiculous the random aspect is.
But thanks for the thoughtful response.
You have to read Allan’s post again, slowly and carefully, to comprehend the truck sized holes and gaps in the evolution thinking (Dawkins or anyone else’s). What was before the “big bang”?? – the UNIVERSE, with all the planets & stars, happily existing and going about their business.
Thanks to yo and Miles for saving me the trouble of responding to someone who clearly did not want to ‘hear’ what I say.
Brett, even a broken chain stays a chain. The holes in the evolution theory are not enough to prove it wrong. So, in your opinion there was planets and stuff, then there was the big bang and now there are planets and stuff again? Anything goes or what?
LOL! sorry but a broken chain is useless & “open circuit” as a chain.
I’m saying the “Big Bang”, is another ridiculous PTTTB B.S lie, and the universe always existed….because it goes forever in size (for one thing).
….And nothing is “simple” in nature, as the Dawkins camp want you to believe.
Especially not eyes, they are as complicated as hell.
There are too many mind blowing magic tricks in nature, to disavow it as “evolution by shear chance”.
Here is another ‘fox’ to roll into the Dawkins hen house of cards, this caterpillar literally liquifies inside it’s chrysalis , to become newly assembled as a butterfly over about 10 days > https://youtu.be/euuCrnqEoeU?t=189
Barbara, have you ever read any books by Lobsang T Rampa?….the answers are in there. It’s up to you if you want to believe, or not believe.
You’re answers are valuable to everyone here BUT Barbara. Btw, I’m starting to get a bad feeling about her. Yes, I was wrong about someone, but what is the point of her babbling? Given her comments, what is she doing here? Our time is valuable and she is wasting hers reading my blog and commenting. Why?
” each and every step must be of selective advantage”
That this should be requires some explanation.
There are many heritable traits that are not advantageous, some even disadvantageous. A mutation might propagate for one or many generations before combining with some other mutation that, in concert, confers the advantage. Indeed, the advantage might arise from the combination of a larger plularity of mutations. With each generation, the number of organisms available to sustain the next required mutation increases exponentially. For us, today, it’s a doubling, but the more primitive the life the larger the factor seems to be.
The creation of an advantage allows the mutants to do better in the environment, and, usually more significantly, to out compete the non-mutants for limited resources. However, exponential growth is the major factor in both the advantageous and nonadvavtageous cases. The advantageous case merely benefits from a greater reproductive factor.
This occurred to me also.
Thanks for writing it out so well.
Should say I have no special expertise.
I appreciate the thoughtful comment but you missed my main point. You say:
‘The creation of an advantage allows the mutants to do better in the environment, and, usually more significantly, to out compete the non-mutants for limited resources.’
As I repeat several times, WHERE is the advantage? If you can’t show the advantage of a mutation., as in a ‘light sensitive patch’ (that doesn’t cause any behavior change)… poof…
You repeat the word ‘advantage’ many times. Where is it? Re your ‘There are many heritable traits that are not advantageous, some even disadvantageous.’ I don’t understand the logic here, except that it sounds like my swastika mutation might hang around waiting for some metaphorical SS to combine with…
Allan,
Sorry. I thought it was a given, in your analysis, that some mutations confer an advantage. Thus, where I referred to an advantage, I merely meant the result of one such mutation.
It does seem to me that most mutations will be negative. I think that is related to the concept of entropy; the new state will typically be less ordered than the original. However, I see no reason to believe every change (or mutation) must be detrimental, rather than being roughly neutral or actually good. Anyone who has suffered a markedly bad mutation drops out of the gene pool, so what we observe is affected with survivor bias. We see the results of the rare beneficial mutations (accumulated over millions / billions of generations) but none of the decidedly detrimental mutations, barring those that have just occurred to individuals of the current generation.
If we have never observed a beneficial mutation occuring, that could be because we have not been looking hard enough for long enough.
If your swastika hasn’t made the organism unviable (or to suffer social exclusion to the extent of annihilating its sex life), then, yes, it’s still there, awaiting some collaborative mutation. (But swastikas were present in prehistoric times, as well as, somewhat more recently, in India. So, the SS might be beaten to the punch – we can hope.)
The report of absence of a potential (theoretical, as GB wrote) beneficial change seems quite a challenge. However, I understand “we” have identified flaws in DNA, responsible for various conditions. Can we be sure the flawed DNA resulted from a mutation of good DNA, rather than the reverse? Maybe the flawed specimens just missed out on the fix. (I’m referring to heritable flaws, like sickle cell anmemia, not some mutation that is newly occurred in the induvidual.)
(I’ve never seen any DNA and so I can’t truly know it’s a real thing! German has two subtly distinct words for knowledge that addresses this, but I can’t remember either of them.)
Sorry if I’m sending this twice. Phone reported some error with the Chrome data saver. Please delete as appropriate.
Probably your response was intended more to quiz me on the light sensitive patch.
OK, I’ll try it this time, but I hadn’t taken it on because I do have some sense of the limitations of my depth!
1) if the first mutation was not markedly detrimental, it could have survived for many generations, hence being extant in very many individuals (although only a tiny fraction of the entire population), eventually to be combined with a second mutation that really started it motoring.
2) Of the individuals with the first light detector, some would have had a disposition to chase the light, some others to flee it, and a third lot mught be without any such disposition. Either the first or second group was actually doing the right thing (probably the light chasers), the other was making a mistake. Clearly, group 1 or group 2 will have been more successful than the other two groups and than the non-mutants. Hence, that tribe would increase. (Why would an individual that can detect light have a disposition to chase or to flee it? Well, why not? – Best I can do, sorry!)
An important point is that the creature is not going to react to the light patch’s presence b/c there is no connection to the means of movement, nor will it “know’ what a buzzing light patch MEANS. it would take multiple simultaneous mutations for any behavior change. That’s that, IMO.
there are other issues but above sums up the big ones.
I’m far, far, from an expert on how genetics/inheritance/mutations work, but the ‘experts’ IMO are likewise clueless. So I try to stick to simple issues, like if a change is actually advantageous. If it ain’t, then it goes nowhere, according to Darwinist rules. I try to show that their rules, taken at face value, are meaningless.
But be advised that the Huxley quote at the end is important re motive for the lies.
Allan,
re the important point that “there is no connection to the means of movement”, etc. – Is that a fact? I have absolutely no idea how the single-celled whatever-it-was operated before it acquired its light patch. I can grasp something about chemical reactions (though I’ve never seen an electron …), but that living thing is completely beyond my comprehension. So, I cannot say how the addition of the light patch affects the behaviour of the system.
Yes, the light patch is connected to the propulsive mechanism; the two are part of the same system. No, I cannot map the circuit from one to the other, nor assess what, if anything, the interconnectivity achieves, but my ignorance of these is no proof that something useful is not happening. I’ll readily accept that there are other people much more able to dismiss the possibility of any (productive) interaction, but do they truly know? The white world still lacks the understanding to create living entities from scratch.
I disagree that a non-advantageous change goes nowhere. Organisms clone themselves. If the organism is sexual, the change goes to, on average, 50% of its descendants (TBC). If the organism is asexual, it will be present in all its descendants.
If you mean “goes nowhere” in the sense that the organisms blessed with the non advantageous change make no headway against those that lack it, then yes, I agree, except if the lackers happen to have exceptionally bad luck! My point is that how disadvantageous the change is will govern how rapidly the lackers make headway against the withs. The withs may survive long enough for us to record them today, or long enough for one of them to collect that second change which creates the winning combination.
“Survival of the fittest” was a gross oversimplification. Organisms find their own niches. Within a niche, it is the fittest that survive, but there are also a few that survive by shifting to a different niche.
I think we have a psychological problem of perceiving probabilities as being “impossibly” low. Maybe we are underestimating population sizes, but it could also be that life has been evolving for much longer than Wikipedia tells us.
The probability of your birth is useful only for comparison with some other probability calculated for your coming to be there, reading this, via a proposed alternative process. Numerically, the chance of your birth is infinitesimally small. Yet, there your are, in all your glory. We cannot use statistics to disprove your existence. (But that might be worth trying on the IRS!)
(At least) one thing I wrote (September 24, 2019 at 11:43 pm) requires correction:
In the sexual case, the mutation propagates, on average, to 50% of the children, not 50% of the descendants (i.e. the children, plus grandchildren, plus great grandchildren, plus great-great …).
So, if the average applies to every family (i.e. exactly 50% of the children inherit the mutation), then, assuming the mutants never breed with other mutants, the proportion of mutants in generation n, of the original mutant’s descendants, would be 1 in 2 to the power n (2^-n). If the complementary population (the individuals that are neither the original mutant nor a descendant of it) is increasing in step, then the proportion of mutants in each generation of the combined population would also decrease with this, same, rate of 1 in 2 to the power n.
Thus, the mutant proportion would be subject to exponential decay, something that certainly sounds like, as Allan put it, going nowhere.
However, notwithstanding this, the number of mutants is still exponentially increasing, providing each family has more than two children. If each family is having 1000 children, which is not unreasonable for drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly), the fourth generation will comprise mutants eight times as numerous as the people now living on our planet, and the mutants in the eleventh generation will exceed the cube of our current human population – not exactly going nowhere.
We all realise my calculation is not generally applicable: Populations are typically constrained by available resources, and, with the total population limited, the exponential decrease, in the proportion of mutants in each successive generation, becomes the dominant factor. However, for particular lifeforms, at particular times, there can be room for a good run of unconstrained growth. Moreover, on the other side, inbreeding will significantly reduce the mutants’ proportional decline, particularly if a mutant-rich subpopulation becomes isolated for any reason.
Denis, i think it was your latest comment – i can’t tell w/ this stupid tech structure — was really good. Exactly what I was hoping for — a well put and thought out Darwinist response — and I will answer it tomorrow. Writing is like that. You write semi-nonsense and then suddenly it all comes together. Good for you. Made me think. (You’re wrong, but how I show you this is the point.)
The trouble with the ‘mutation’ theory Denis is that no-one has yet found a provable example of a beneficial mutation since it was first postulated as the mechanism driving evolution and believe me they have been looking ! Not only has one not been found – nobody has even found a theoretical change in the DNA that could conceivably be beneficial to that organism. Change the DNA and you change the structure of the amino acid; change that and you end up with a wonky protein that does its job less well than previously. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus won the Nobel Prize in 1995 for their work on the Fruit Fly genome where they went through every plausible gene as a candidate for evolution and found change any of them to be detrimental if not outright fatal. It is safe to say that whatever causes variation in the genotype of a population it most definitely is not mutation.
GB, that only means, that we are not able to simulate the evolution in a laboratory. Your distinction between a variation and a mutation is artificial. All breed pets are mutations caused through inbreeding. And they can be considered genetically impoverished. Yet still they survive because humans like to pet them.
You said “And they can be considered genetically impoverished. Yet still they survive because humans like to pet them” – > that is a pessimistic and exaggerated statement.
Only the very small percentage are genetically “challenged”.
Brett, all pure breeds have a shorter life expectancy and get sick more often. What breeders do is following two (or more) different paths and then cross them into hybrids in hope to complete the missing alleles, which never works 100%.
People who keep pure breed pets and sell their offspring often call themselves breeders too. But they only inbreed further already impoverished species. That’s called “overbred”.
Barbara. You could not be more wrong – breeding characteristic traits of dogs (or Peas) involves no mutation whatsoever. I have not, until now, ever heard anyone try to argue that it is. Selective breeding of desired characteristic traits – (effectively a kind of steered natural selection) is NOT the same as mutation. You are selecting for characteristics that are ALREADY present within the genotype. The scope of what you can achieve as a breeder is limited by the variation in the genotype and this is one reason why nobody has yet bred a dog that can fly. ‘Mutation’ is considered to be a random change (an ‘error’) in the nucleotide sequence of the genome (DNA) which is therefore hereditary. Neo Darwinists postulate that it is by this mechanism (random mutation) that the variation in the genotype (from which you can breed your prize poodle) is generated. Allan disagrees. So do I.
GB,
Yes, I’d say you are right that selective breeding introduces no new mutation.
However, I believe Babs was challenging your claim that genetic variation is not caused by mutation.
A mutation is almost, if not entirely, a synonym for a variation. You were, though, using “variation” in the sense of an existence of multiple variants. So, the synonymity is not applicable. The BMW 3 Series is available as a number of variants, but such variation is certainly not the result of any mutation!
But, if two organisms differ in solely one gene, how can you be sure that this variation (I.e. existence of two variants) is not attributable to that gene difference? If it is, how can you be sure the difference did not result from a change to the gene? If it did, how do you rule out the change being a mutation?
GB, “Mutations result from errors during DNA replication” (Wiki). Inbreeding causes mutations. Breeders select some of them which they like. Breeders in this context belong to the same selecting force which according to evolution theory selected some mutations over others. What humans can do is very limited of course. We can do some crossing though. Zebras with horses, Muslims with Christians, etc. :-). Again: I’m neither an evolutionist nor creationist. All I tried to express here is that Allan is as wrong in his fake interview as Dawkins is in his “popular science” books. Dawkins is more successful though. And more fun. (no offence Allan)
Denis Oven: selecting breeding creates no mutations, inbreeding does. That’s all they can do. All the geneticists. Meddling with chromosomes in a laboratory never ever worked. They claim to create insulin genetically but they are not allowed to use it in medicine because it destroys cell cores. It’s not working and dangerous poison. All the news about ears and other body parts created genetically in laboratories are jokes. Monsanto created all its manipulated corn via inbreeding too.
GB, a theory is troubled not by an absense of confirmatory evidence, but by a presence of contradictory evidence (but I’m sure you knew that).
As you described it, the Nobel Prize work does sound like the latter. However, maybe the fruitfly is at the zenith of its evolution. (They’re a buggar to eliminate from the kitchen, anyway!)
It’s difficult to believe that the scientists attempted to analyse every possible modification to each of the fruitfly’s genes (but I certainly do not have the expertise to make a real judgement). It’s also astounding that they could reliably tell what the impact of each modification would be. (Or, were they changing the genes of actual flies?) That sounds very close to the scientists having the knowledge to design totally new species of fly.
I guess I should try to find the paper.
Hi Denis. Mutation is not (or should not) be a synonym for variation. Mutation is usually classified as a mechanism – one that may lead to a permanent variation in the genotype (although a positive variation has yet to be shown that of course doesn’t mean it isn’t so – it is just looking less and less likely). Variation is the end result. The key discrepancy between neo-darwinists and intelligent design theorists is HOW this observed variation occurred; was it ‘mutation’ (and therefore random) or was it in some way planned. I would add that ‘planned’ could also be subdivided into planning with consciousness or without. Without would involve some hitherto undiscovered positive feedback mechanism from the environment as postulated first by JB Lamark (and supported in some respect by epigenetics -although not to the extend of explaining the evolution of entire new species). Evolution with consciousness would involve some element of consciousness (obviously) either belonging to the organism ‘wishing’ to evolve (Sheldrakes MR theory being an example) or belonging to some deity that ‘made it so’ (some variant of creationism).
BTW you are spot on in that “a theory is troubled not by an absence of confirmatory evidence, but by a presence of contradictory evidence”. Been trying to get Babs to understand that for about 3 posts! It is this that makes Allans critique of existing evidence a valid continuation of a noble scientific tradition, despite Barbara’s protestations that he is desecrating the temple without having first built a replacement for everyone to file into.
GB,
Thank you.
“When I use a word, … it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
As you cannot have failed to notice, I am not a geneticist. I tried reading some material on the internet, this afternoon, and I’ve no doubt I never will be. (I could not get past “allele”.)
So, I’ve been using words not as technical terms but as things with everyday meanings.
By “a mutation”, I’d intended the changed gene (or the difference between the original gene and the changed one), and by “a variation”, I’d also intended the changed gene, as being something somewhat different from the original (or, again, the difference between the two). Perhaps I am slightly sloppy in how I use, or understand, those two words, but it seems their meanings come very close to coinciding, if not truly doing so.
I’m not (here) being argumentative, but just trying to express something about how discussions of complex, abstract, concepts can accidentally spiral into total confusion, with an increasingly heated argument amongst parties existing only because they are misconstruing each other.
This forum might be better if we could draw pictures.
Anyway, the definitions you’ve set out seem quite apt for the field of discussion, and I’d have benefited from being aware of, and adopting, them, at the outset.
I’m not going to pretend to confirm what you have written, but I’ll go as far as to say it all sounds OK to me (i.e. there is nothing that makes me doubt it). (On the assumption it is, indeed, correct) it’s a very useful summary.
Thanks: Good answer. Plus Denis says: ‘So, I cannot say how the addition of the light patch affects the behaviour of the system.
Well how about using logic. Darwinists say it’s a ‘light sensitive patch’ (that we never witness) so HOW is it going to know ANYTHING. I’m not going to repeat my post. The critical thinking is there and I’d prefer if comments directly dealt with my points.
And Barbara’s many many comments are now starting to misdirect from my points. Pet Breeders? How many comments is she going to make, after oversimplifying my essay and doing no one any good by doing so. More misdirection.
“it’s a ‘light sensitive patch’ (that we never witness) so how is it going to know anything?”
Allan,
I think the concepts may be sufficiently abstract that I am not truly grasping your meanings, or adequately expressing the noises in my head.
But, anyway …
I believe neither the euglena (I’ve scrolled back up to find the name, this time) nor the light sensitive patch needs to “know” anything.
We are aware of inanimate (chemical) compounds that behave in a particular manner (a.k.a. undergo a reaction) in the presence of a catalyst. These inanimate compounds know (in any sense) nothing about anything. Yet, they respond, predictably, to a change in their environment, i.e., the introduction of the catalyst. We also know some chemical reactions are catalysed by light (which is particularly pertinent to the instant case).
Our euglena, under the most basic analysis, is simply a collection of compounds. Thus we can imagine (sorry!) that light, striking the euglena’s newly-appeared LSP, would initiate a chain of reactions that makes it interact with its environment in a predictably different way.
I wrote “imagine” to acknowledge the fact that I have merely drawn on my very limited knowledge, and essayed some reasoning, to explain why I do not rule out that a euglena, suitably equipped with an LSP, would, indeed, gravitate toward incident light.
I have, admittedly, presented no grounds for confidence that such an entity can actually be created. (I would, if I could.) However, you, unless I’ve badly misunderstood, are trying to disprove the possibility of the this euglena with enhanced behaviour. Hence, surely, the onus is on the other side of the argument. (I know, don’t call you Shirley.)
You have postulated that, the euglena having acquired its LSP, required at least one other mutation, to connect the LSP output to swimming, before it became any better off.
I have just described how that might not be the case; the LSP could create the sought behavioural change the instant it appeared. Thus, something you may be holding as so obvious as to require no explanation is far from obvious to me. This may purely be down to my stupidity, in which case it would be of no benefit to you, and quite likely entirely futile, for you to continue discussing this with me. (Apparently, proving 1 + 1 = 2 occupies hundreds of pages, and yet pretty well everyone just treats it as obvious.)
You have enquired, in addition, how the euglena “knows” how to react to the signal from its LSP. To labour the question: the euglena has its LSP, the LSP has been appropriately wired up to the euglena’s swimming module, but how does the swimming module / the euglena have the foggiest idea of how it should react to the entirely new signal?
I tried to address that point a day, or so, ago, but made rather a botch of it, sorry. (The noises in my head were a bit off.)
A few paragraphs up, I explained why I can imagine that something would happen. Let’s assume the (identified by us) advantageous result is for the flagella’s movements to change in such a way that the euglena’s motion becomes orientated to have the LSP facing forward (e.g. if the euglena had been floating, several fathoms under, with its LSP on top, the euglena rises). That specific response is certainly something. Therefore, I can imagine it is exactly what happens (and happens consistently – the generic response was already defined – by me – as predictable). No knowing, or “thinking”, on the part of the euglena is required. Yep, that’s a “just so” story (a hundred years too late).
Of course, while I imagine that single, positive, outcome, you can imagine several other than positive ones: the euglena moves away from the light, it heads left/right, it goes around in a very tight circle, or it “pays absolutely no notice”, etc..
What assists me here is that mother nature does not have only one shot at creating a light-chasing organism; she’s not going to run into a dry funding round.
If that first crack didn’t succeed, the mutant euglena probably died pretty quickly, or its mutant descendants fizzled out over a few generations, or maybe rare descendants are still hanging out, like those of your primordial Prince Harry.
In time, though, mother nature will try again. Perhaps with an LSP at a different location on the euglena, perhaps with a euglena that’s a more evolved version of the first one, perhaps with something we’re no longer calling a euglena.
Eventually, mother nature might succeed, and we, once we enter the arena, would find the evidence of her success; we could then theorise (unbeknownst to us, correctly) that it was so, just so.
Based on my explanation of it, I do not regard the euglena’s advantageous behaviour as, in any way, intelligence-driven. To me, it’s merely a chemical-mechanical (or, perhaps, electromechanical) response. But, then, I am completely unclear about where intelligence actually begins.
I suspect you will protest, or maybe just laugh, that nothing I suggest sounds at all likely, but my prepared response is “how likely does it need to be”? No matter how many faces we have on our dice, if we roll them enough times, we will get snake eyes. How many dice is mother nature rolling, and how long has she been in Vegas? (That penultimate sentence, given the context, is my best line in a very long time and I’d like to have been able to close with it.)
Hi Denis. “I believe neither the euglena….needs to “know” anything”. Belief imo is not a great start point in presenting an argument but you are right – it either does or it doesn’t have consciousness. This should (and has been) the basis of research.
“These inanimate compounds know (in any sense) nothing about anything.” This is an assumption of course, and the validity of your subsequent argument doesn’t seem to be dependent on it….which is puzzling. Talk of catalysts likewise seem irrelevant and I’ve never heard a ‘photon’ being described as a catalyst before – mildly ionising radiation in its shorter wavelengths certainly, a quantum particle requiring consciousness to collapse from its wave to its particle form – most definitely, but a catalyst?
The remainder of your post does not seem to address a mechanism for evolution (although the “Eventually, mother nature might succeed,” part hints that you suppose that random mutation leading to positive variation in the phenotype as the mechanism. Those wishing to lend support to this theory should attempt to demonstrate:
1. Is there any evidence for random mutation generating a single positive change in any organism.
2. If there is then what is the rate of incidence of positive mutation (eg 1 in every 1000 generations, one in a million etc)
3. Has there been sufficient time on the current understanding of the timescale of this mechanism to have generated the number of species we observe today.
Greetings, GB,
Re. your “September 26, 2019 at 2:09 pm” response (These pesky “reply” buttons seem to have a randomness all of their own!):
I used the statement of belief to introduce a proposition. My proposition served to deny the entire basis of Allan’s question. (If a question is ill-founded, it cannot be answered.) So, my proposition was completely relevant (right?).
I chose “believe”, in the first person singular, rather than “suppose”, as second person imperative, (a) because I am comfortable about stating how the world looks to me (but without actually thinking anyone’s in the slightest interested) and (b) because I feel it aids the narrative if the writer takes a side and, thus, can conveniently flag, when he mentions an idea, whether it supports or opposes “his” side.
Having stated my proposition, I immediately proceeded to argue for its validity. I Believe that’s quite a normal way of debating.
That inanimate compounds know nothing is pretty well a matter of definition (in my head, at least). I fully accept, however, that, strictly speaking, it is open to question. The questioning may be equivalent to debating the proposition: “no object is inanimate”, i.e., all objects are alive, but for many of them, e.g. this lead balloon, we have not developed the capability to detect their life signs.
However, I am sure we can agree that my “assumption”, as you called it, “inanimate compounds know nothing about anything”, is either a fact or a standing theory.
That distinction is immaterial to my purposes: Toward my goal of defeating Allan’s attack upon the Theory of Evolution, I may rely equally upon fact and standing theory. (The difference is just that a standing theory may, itself, at some later point be disproven, thus invalidating my defence of ToE. (Also, if I introduce a theory that’s laughable, I’m not exactly helping, but I’ll attempt to park that notion!)) This may be what you meant by “validity of your subsequent argument doesn’t seem to be dependent”, but then I don’t know why you would call that “puzzling”.
Having just checked a little of the internet, I know you’ve identified another instance of me being slightly confused, here in the case of my mention of “reactions … catalysed by light”. The correct (I hope) term for what was in my head is “photochemistry”. I may have overheard the word “photocatalysis”, somewhere, and misdirected myself as a result. As it turns out, I think I could equally have used photocatalysis as the basis for my argument.
I was establishing the principle that inanimate compounds react to their environment, including the presence of particular other compounds (or elements), and (jointly or severally) light, in that environment. I then applied that principle to show that the behaviour of the euglena could alter, in response to light being incident upon its LSP, and that this change in behaviour could be completely independent of the euglena knowing anything about any thing. I am unable to see irrelevancy in the chemical / physical phenomena I used to establish the principle.
“remainder of your post does not seem to address a mechanism for evolution” – Well, my goal was to invalidate Allan’s point (posed as a question), in the middle paragraph of his September 25, 2019 at 2:25 pm post. (I’d quoted Allan’s quotation from my earlier submission, which he’d used to preface his point.) So, I don’t see it as a fault that my tendency to ramble did not extend to me essaying “to address a mechanism for evolution”.
I agree that your demonstrations, 1 – 3, would be great, maybe even worthy of a Nobel Prize (but, confidentially, I think I’d bag one quicker if I started trying to sing like Bob Dylan). However, I was, in all of my submissions, simply defending ToE by attempting to invalidated Allan’s attacks upon it. Respectfully, I dispute that any such demonstration is required for that.
To confirm our mutual understanding of the term:
Theory – “A supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something”
Theorem – “A general proposition not self-evident but proved by a chain of reasoning; a truth established by means of accepted truths”
Hypothesis – “A supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation”.
When we contrast with theorem, it’s pretty clear that theories, by definition, are unproven.
I’ve used, a few times, “standing theory” to denote a theory that has never been disproved. There’s probably a level of tautology, there, as we tend to stop talking about theories, once they’ve been exploded, but I think it’s preferable to be emphatic. I would say pretty much the same about “hypothesis”.
In the above definition of “theory”, I see “ideas” as comprising facts, theorems, other theories (which we might call “sub-theories”), and hypotheses.
If the rationale (corresponding to, or being comprised by, the “system”, of the definition) were flawed, the “theory” would be invalid, and thus not what we (probably) mean by “a theory”.
So, because ToE is a standing theory, rather than a theorem, it is necessary that at least one of its elements is either a standing sub-theory or a standing hypothesis (i.e. a component unproven but not, so far, disproven).
Your questions, 1 – 3, are, in effect, just pointing to elements of ToE and calling out that these are no more than standing hypotheses or standing sub-theories. That is otiose, in the context of disproving ToE; all it achieves is confirmation that ToE is a theory, and not (yet) a theorem.
BTW, I would not describe myself as a supporter of ToE. I have no skin in this game. Within the limitations of my current knowledge, I judge ToE as providing the best extant explanation for the world I perceive around me. The time I have spent reading, and typing into, this page will be massively better rewarded if I do witness Allan disproving ToE. So, I’m rooting for Allan, really. However, I would like the satisfaction of actually understanding the disproof. Hence, I have an interest in testing Allan’s points.
I guess this is the one that made SOME sense. The annoying thing about your little essay is that it appears you didn’t pay attention to MY essay (or didn’t read it), even though you claim you are debunking it.
How about quoting my main points and showing how I am wrong? Not ‘straw man summations’ but actually specifically showing me where I am wrong. I am not going to re-write my work to show where YOU are wrong. See, I already did that: the “Open Letter to Richard Dawkins.’ You can find it if you scroll up a ways.
sorry Allan If I’m bothering you. It’s not that many comments, others write much more and much longer statements than I do. The breeders angle is short time evolution. You seem to consider every critic as misdirection. I dealt with your points but it is you, who ignores my arguments. You did it in other posts too. I’m not oversimplifying your essay. You’re inventing answers from Dawkins that match your opinion about him. That’s oversimplifying, no? Regards. B.M.
Breeding isn’t evolution Barb (or at least nobody has ever attempted to prove it is – it would be a revolutionary break through and a final and complete refutation of neo-Darwinism if it was). It is Mendelian Genetics – linking characteristics in the Phenotype to the genes in that organism that give rise to them.
….Sorry I forgot to add, I think Dawkins worships the *All seeing eye* symbol without a doubt.
All seeing eye, eye of Horus, sacred almond (mandorla, luz, etc.), vesica piscis, etc.
These symbols are all referring to the same paradigm shifting truth (unsurprisingly occluded by a myriad of junk explanations thereof).
Aside from its use by Christians, you will even find the vesica piscis hidden within the star of David (hexagram, seal of solomon, etc.).
Love this Allan!, your posts are always awesome, but this one is one of your best, and that – “RD: Talk of gamma ray patches and swastikas is ridiculous!” – LOL!! , you are so correct! :-D.
Yes the eyes are an amazing subject, and they don’t always use lenses for focus, I think it was at least the crayfish eye, that uses an amazing mirror refraction design.
And yes, like you said, if someone has one of their 2 eyes blind, or getting very blurry, the brain automatically “defaults” to the good eye!.
Of what benefit is my random tinnitus? To save mosquitoes lives flying about my head at night? When did mosquitoes randomly acquire noisy wings and irritating secretions and how is that a benefit to their lives?
I wonder how much time it will take for flies to realize not to fly into my cabin and go to the window! Enough bothersome noise and I break out the Big Sucker (satan in fly speak) and up the tunnel they go. I even let them go outside to inform their buddies but apparently the tunnel ride is enjoyable like many sins. Might have to smack a few and pin ’em to the door. Cruel I know, but if I can assist mankind and flies in their evolution (theory) perhaps I will be remembered as one of the great scientists of old! The great anthropo-whatever!
Yeah, your tinnitus caused by years of loud noise off & on? – like mine?..
Its like asking, what are the advantages of all these weird diseases, including the common cold?, or gradual blindness from old age etc.
It is another mysterious chapter of questions to ask – our “Maker” – whatever it is.
And those pesky flies, mosquitoes, ticks, fleas and lice etc, – I wish we didn’t have to contend with those too. They seem like some kind of cruel punishment at times, and only the flies have their use, from what I have seen.
One thing I know for certain, humans are as fragile as fine china, and don’t belong here on this planet Earth, that’s my opinion.
Also I have been told, human DNA has been damaged by nuclear fall out, and I believe it….on top of the fact, that we live in a matrix of lies & deception.
And it is definitely HUMANS causing it, – the approx. 6% Psychopaths, that gravitate to the control posts.