bleedblue22 Posted October 31, 2015 Share Posted October 31, 2015 Ah thanks for the response(s) (Vacuum flux, you as well)! I've heard things about the Discovery Institute that make it seem like a pretty sketchy organization. They seem to have a clear religious agenda, no matter how they try to deny it. In the recording, I attempted to press the speaker on his insistence that intelligent design is a purely "scientific" theory and not a theological one. He was saying that intelligent design does not necessarily imply a designer. He also refused to account for the mechanism God might have used and yet priviledged it over the well observed phenomena of natural selection to bridge these biological gaps as well. It's clearly not science. It seems they imagine God as this tinkerer who steps in every now and then to help change one species into another. Why God couldn't just get it right the first time and have life evolve by itself, or better yet just produce well designed life in its final form from the get-go (as the designer hypothesis naturally predicts) beats me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSpooky Posted October 31, 2015 Author Share Posted October 31, 2015 Might I hazard a guess that it was William Dembski? Wait no he's not actually an evolutionary biologist... who was it?I've been to a Dembski talk and was less than impressed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bleedblue22 Posted October 31, 2015 Share Posted October 31, 2015 I don't know if I should give out his name on a public forum. He didn't know I was recording at the time so in the rare case that this would get back to him, he might get mad. He didn't draw a very big crowd and I don't think he's one of the head honchos at DI. He definitely wasn't any of the names you listed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSpooky Posted October 31, 2015 Author Share Posted October 31, 2015 I don't know if I should give out his name on a public forum. He didn't know I was recording at the time so in the rare case that this would get back to him, he might get mad. He didn't draw a very big crowd and I don't think he's one of the head honchos at DI. He definitely wasn't any of the names you listed. If you know him personally or spoke to him personally I can understand that. Me, I recorded a public speech with Percy Schmeiser when he visited campus and called out all his bullcrap lies about genetic engineering. In California at least it's legal to record public speeches like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Llwellyn Posted November 1, 2015 Share Posted November 1, 2015 the mice have to adopt some sort of survival strategy, by perhaps running away faster. The adoption of a strategy -- how exactly does this happen? Is the new strategy itself a new mutation that happens to the mouse from some sort of external cause? Or does the mouse choose a new behavior? (-- In whatever sense it might be possible to talk about a choice made by a mouse.) Ernst Mayr said that behavior is often the pacemaker in evolution, a new behavior pattern appearing prior to the origin of more specialized, facilitating structures. Mayr gives us an example of a new strategy: "When an arboreal bird becomes more terrestrial, as did the mocking bird-like ancestor of the thrashers (Toxostoma), this shift set up a selection pressure of strengthening and elongating the legs and strengthening the bill use for digging in the leaf mold and soil." But where are the new strategies coming from? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSpooky Posted November 1, 2015 Author Share Posted November 1, 2015 the mice have to adopt some sort of survival strategy, by perhaps running away faster. The adoption of a strategy -- how exactly does this happen? Is the new strategy itself a new mutation that happens to the mouse from some sort of external cause? Or does the mouse choose a new behavior? (-- In whatever sense it might be possible to talk about a choice made by a mouse.) Ernst Mayr said that behavior is often the pacemaker in evolution, a new behavior pattern appearing prior to the origin of more specialized, facilitating structures. Mayr gives us an example of a new strategy: "When an arboreal bird becomes more terrestrial, as did the mocking bird-like ancestor of the thrashers (Toxostoma), this shift set up a selection pressure of strengthening and elongating the legs and strengthening the bill use for digging in the leaf mold and soil." But where are the new strategies coming from? In the simplest models of classical evolutionary biology, those strategies are simply biological traits that exist as one variant among many in a gene pool. Naturally occurring mutations provide this variation, environmental stresses causes the less fit variants to die out which lead the fitter ones to survive. These aren't necessarily behavioral abilities to survive. Humans and perhaps a few other intelligent species are unique in that we don't just transmit genetic traits to our children that can enhance their survival. We also transmit behavioral ones as well, through education and training. But this is another layer of complexity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RogueScholar Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 Yeah, "strategy" is more metaphorical when used in this context. It's not uncommon for us to use language that is somewhat anthropomorphic or "intelligent" sounding to talk about concepts or processes. I'll often talk about where electrons "like to live" when discussing molecules and chemical bonding. Clearly, electrons tend to be delocalised and don't make a conscious decision to "live" somewhere, but it's a useful metaphor nonetheless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrSpooky Posted November 2, 2015 Author Share Posted November 2, 2015 Yeah, "strategy" is more metaphorical when used in this context. It's not uncommon for us to use language that is somewhat anthropomorphic or "intelligent" sounding to talk about concepts or processes. I'll often talk about where electrons "like to live" when discussing molecules and chemical bonding. Clearly, electrons tend to be delocalised and don't make a conscious decision to "live" somewhere, but it's a useful metaphor nonetheless. Yeah this is definitely very true in chemistry. Like even the terms hydrophilic and hydrophobic literally means "water-loving" and "water-fearing"... professors will describe them to students this exact way to make things sound more tangible. Or how elements "want" to achieve a noble gas electron configuration, or how they "are happy" when that is achieved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Llwellyn Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 I'll often talk about where electrons "like to live" when discussing molecules and chemical bonding. But would it really be a metaphor if we talked about an animal that chooses a new abode because of what it "liked"? Is it really only humans that can engage in novel behaviors, not determined by pre-existing genetic repertoire, in response to obstacles? Surely there can't be such an abrupt disjunction between humans and other animals. What do you make of the theory of the "Baldwin Effect" -- which says that perhaps the mouse does indeed "adopt" a "strategy" rather than simply being passively molded by genetic mutations that are happening to it? Is it easier to imagine that random mutation assembles a new strategy within a mouse, or that the mouse acts differently from what law would have previously determined? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_effect If the Baldwin Effect is at work, then perhaps it could be said that even intelligent selection could itself be natural. Going to the original post perhaps "on its own," nature designs itself in order to satisfy the internal logic of the life process. There is intelligent action found within nature that is also of nature. "Intelligent Design," (in a neo-Darwinian sense) then, would not be an anomaly to the process of natural evolution. Karl Popper said something similar: "Without the organism's struggle for survival there would be no evolution. And this means that it is only the organism's fight for life, its problem solving, its constant search for a better environment, for better living conditions, its active evolution of its own preferences, of its sensitivity, that makes evolution possible. It is the only active agent." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RogueScholar Posted November 2, 2015 Share Posted November 2, 2015 I'm not exactly sure I understand what you are asking? I don't really see the Baldwin effect as a theory however. The Baldwin effect appears to be contained within the theory of evolution and can help explain how behaviour that is learned can appear to passed on. Clearly, this would be a Lamarckian approach. However, a simple example of the Baldwin effect would be a creature that has a gene that enables it to quickly learn how to open a certain type of box that contains, say some food. Clearly, this trait would allow said creature to "compete" with others that do not have the gene in question. So, it's the gene that enables the behaviour to be quickly learned that is passed along, not the behaviour itself. However, at some point, the behaviour may be learned so quickly, that it would look like it was the behaviour as opposed to the gene/genes that gets passed along. I think Richard Dawkins has a YouTube video where he explains this in detail referencing birds learning certain behaviours. You could probably find it rather easily. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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