Current science; fallacious thinking (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, December 15, 2017, 12:38 (2534 days ago) @ David Turell

David’s three posts yesterday all launched attacks on Darwinism, and so I am combining them here, though I object very strongly to the use of “fraudulent” in the heading. “Fallacious” if you like, since the word fallacy is used in the article, but you should not assume that everyone who disagrees with you is a liar and a cheat. With your permission, I’d like to change the wording.

DAVID’s comment (under “magic embryology”): […] Darwin does not explain any of this by his chance process theory.

I’m sure this was only one of many things that Darwin did not know about, which is why he was so reluctant to speculate even on such matters as how a nerve came to be sensitive to light. His “origins” concerned speciation, not the details of mouse embryology. Having said that, though, I am not defending his theory that speciation was caused by random mutations, let alone by natural selection (see later).

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DAVID (under "junk DNA"): Using viruses to explore the possible function of long non-coding RNA, 200 or more bases long, a study shows functions, a further dagger in the heart of Darwinist claims about junk DNA:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07692-w
QUOTES: The other control layers are being uncovered and in doing so completely destroying the Darwinists claims that 'junk DNA' proves the Darwin theory of a purposeless chance mechanism etc.
"[…] If we permit the ENCODE consortium to claim 80% of non-coding DNA is useful, then Darwinists have lost' a game to ID?"

I hate this point-scoring by both sides. There is no dagger in the heart, complete destruction or losing a game. Whether “junk” DNA is or isn't junk proves nothing about the existence or non-existence of a designer. If it IS, a theistic evolutionist can say his God did not design every organism individually but simply created the mechanisms by which organisms have evolved; harmful elements were jettisoned by natural selection, and harmless elements were not. Or he can say science has not yet discovered the uses of so-called junk. If it is NOT junk, but you do not believe in a designer, you can say natural selection jettisoned anything that was not useful.

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DAVID’s comment: As is obvious, like Fodor I'm not convinced natural selection is of any importance in the process of evolution. It does not explain our brain, as one paramount example.

A dead horse undergoing one more flogging. We have long ago agreed that natural selection does not create anything, and so it can't be called the origin of species. However, it does explain the continued existence of features that are useful in the quest for survival and/or improvement. ALL brains are examples of the latter, since bacteria have survived without brains since the year dot. If Darwin were alive today, I suspect that he would rewrite whole sections of his book, including the title (“The origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life”). So here’s a challenge for you. Think up a new title. How about: “The origin of species by means of genetic variation in response to environmental conditions”?