Intelligence & Evolution (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, November 21, 2013, 14:04 (3803 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You cite Paul Davies as supporting you, but I can find no mention of your divine preprogramming-plus-dabbling anthropocentric theory (do please give me a reference), and he doesn't even accept your attack on Darwin. 
DAVID: It is my idea, no reference except in my head.-Thank you for your honest answer.-dhw: Davies accepts that evolution happened, and so do you. Why, then, this constant sniping at Darwin? What else apart from random mutations and gradualism makes you so hostile?
DAVID: I have every right to use Davies as I wish. -Not when you claim that he supports your personal theory of evolution.-DAVID: I agree that some process of evolution occurred but it may not be by the simplistic way Darwin proposed from his ignorance of what we now know. The weaknesses in Darwinism are more than gradualism and randon mutations. Most mutations are detrimental. The theory sounds like a simple dramatic process, but: doesn't tell us how species appear (there is a guess)...-And the guess is random mutations, which we have rejected.-DAVID: [...] natural selection is another way of saying survival of the fittest, a tautology, so NS is a passive process; -Agreed. The title of his book is inaccurate.-DAVID: [...] fittest is not well-defined philosophically, but most Darwinists use reproductive success, and that may not be the right approch to fitness.-"Survival of the fittest" was not Darwin's coinage ... that was Herbert Spencer's. I don't know whether Darwin actually discussed the definition of "fitness", but that is not an argument against the theory of common descent or the process by which organisms change their structure (we don't know how) in order to cope with or exploit the environment.-DAVID: In summary, I look at all the critical reviews of Darwin and I find them reasonable. You should read them also. The Darwin explanation is too glib, very slick and tells us little except we evolved somehow, and it ain't simple.-You have posted a large number, and I also find them very reasonable. The main focus is on mutations and gradualism, plus the crucial one of complexity, which underpins all the ID attacks on Darwin, including your own. But these are not attacks on Darwin at all, who time and again reiterated that his theory was not incompatible with religion. These are attacks on certain "glib", "slick" atheist neo-Darwinists who interpret his theory to suit their own agenda. As for "tells us little except we evolved", that seems to me to be rather a glib, slick way of dismissing a theory that has revolutionized the way people think ... especially when the dismissal comes from someone who lives in a country full of Creationists.