Natural Selection (Evolution)

by dhw, Monday, November 28, 2011, 17:40 (4553 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: I am prepared to modify my position, but only after I get some more clarity on what my fundamental problems ARE. (It became clear to me that in the intervening months, my inability to communicate is NOT helping things... your questions were good, but they lead me to the conclusion that we're not talking about the same thing, and this is MY fault.)

David has answered most of your numbered points, so I’ll summarize what I see as your fundamental problems. The main one is that you’ve obviously been under such pressure lately that you’ve forgotten what we were actually discussing! I asked you five specific questions on 13 August, and on 14 November you gave direct, very grudging answers to only two of them. The bones of contention between us were your insistence 1) that your definition of NS as “the process by which an organism undergoes environmental pressure and responds to that pressure in its genotype” had superseded the conventional one, which for brevity’s sake I will simplify to “NS is the process by which those forms of life best suited to the environment will survive”; 2) that NS and evolution were synonymous.

You agreed that your definition applies to adaptation, and that adaptations and innovations must take place before they can be selected. You did not give me the straight answer I asked for to the question whether NS was SYNONYMOUS with the term evolution, you did not give me a reference confirming your claim that “professional scientists” reject the conventional definition in favour of your own, and you did not explain why the beta-lactamase experiment is not a perfect example of beneficial mutations surviving and flourishing as per the Darwinian definition of NS.

As regards current evolutionary theory, both David and I have consistently argued that NS is NOT responsible for adaptations and mutations. Only you have pursued that argument, by insisting that NS and evolution are synonymous. This is a device often used by atheist evolutionists to ridicule their opponents, because it’s against common sense and observed experience to reject NS, whereas evolutionary theory as a whole contains a great deal of disputed speculation. Your fourth point is a similar sort of equivocation. You say that NS is “the primary mechanism of WHY WE SEE THE SPECIES WE SEE.” Yes, because Nature selects those species best suited to survive, and gets rid of those that are unsuited. We see what we see, and we don’t see what we don’t see. But no, because NS does not explain the mechanisms that cause adaptation and innovation. NS is therefore not the primary mechanism for the physical changes without which we would not see the species we see.

As far my own view of evolution is concerned, I firmly believe in Darwin’s theory of common descent and in the process of Natural Selection as I have defined it. Current areas of dispute, as I see them, include his insistence on gradualism (I would opt for Gould’s punctuated equilibrium), and the mechanisms that lead to change, with the possibility that epigenetics may play a far greater role than random mutations.

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Sadly, Matt, I think Abel has given up on us, so I doubt if you’ll get a reply from him on the ID thread.