Introducing Gunter Bechly (Introduction)
by David Turell 
, Thursday, December 19, 2019, 00:34 (1800 days ago)
A paleontologist who started out with Darwin and now is an ID proponent. This is a short video with him introducing his background in the first two minutes and thereafter discusses transitional forms and many gaps. His discussion of micro and macro evolution fits exactly my approach to adaptation and innovation definitions. His final discussion is the issue of calculated 'waiting time', how long it would take for Darwin style mutations to create something quite new. His answer is longer than the universe is old. Please listen after 2 minutes until the end almost at 11 minutes:
Exerpts:
For one, he distinguishes between two meanings of “transitional” fossil forms and identifies the problem these forms pose for Darwinism.
Certainly, we find organisms that are “morphologically intermediate,” bearing resemblances to organisms that came before and others that came later. What we don’t find is the smooth curve of change expected by Darwinian theory, a “fossil lineage that shows a gradual transition from one form into the other.” The record of abrupt appearances, “explosions” (not just the famous Cambrian explosion), “revolutions,” etc., is not the exception but the rule. Given conventional evolutionary assumptions, this should not be the case!
Comment: A good taste as to why I know these folks are real scientists. I've followed him for awhile. An academic like Behe.
Introducing Gunter Bechly
DAVID: A paleontologist who started out with Darwin and now is an ID proponent. This is a short video with him introducing his background in the first two minutes and thereafter discusses transitional forms and many gaps. His discussion of micro and macro evolution fits exactly my approach to adaptation and innovation definitions. His final discussion is the issue of calculated 'waiting time', how long it would take for Darwin style mutations to create something quite new. His answer is longer than the universe is old. Please listen after 2 minutes until the end almost at 11 minutes:
Thank you. Well worth listening to, and well worth noting that he tries to dissociate ID from religion. He clearly hasn’t heard of Shapiro’s “natural genetic engineering”, and might perhaps revise his view of the accuracy of calculated “waiting time” if he realized that Darwin style mutations are not the only route to novelty, and ID could be accomplished by the intelligence of the cell communities of which all multicellular organisms consist. There is simply no way of calculating how long intelligent, cognitive, sentient beings might need to design an evolutionary novelty.
Introducing Gunter Bechly
by David Turell , Thursday, December 19, 2019, 15:47 (1799 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: A paleontologist who started out with Darwin and now is an ID proponent. This is a short video with him introducing his background in the first two minutes and thereafter discusses transitional forms and many gaps. His discussion of micro and macro evolution fits exactly my approach to adaptation and innovation definitions. His final discussion is the issue of calculated 'waiting time', how long it would take for Darwin style mutations to create something quite new. His answer is longer than the universe is old. Please listen after 2 minutes until the end almost at 11 minutes:
dhw: Thank you. Well worth listening to, and well worth noting that he tries to dissociate ID from religion. He clearly hasn’t heard of Shapiro’s “natural genetic engineering”, and might perhaps revise his view of the accuracy of calculated “waiting time” if he realized that Darwin style mutations are not the only route to novelty, and ID could be accomplished by the intelligence of the cell communities of which all multicellular organisms consist. There is simply no way of calculating how long intelligent, cognitive, sentient beings might need to design an evolutionary novelty.
All ID folks avoid using religion. He may well be aware of Shapiro's theory. Bechly is a paleontologist, not a geneticist, but exploring the mechanics of genetics. I've never seen any article mentioning Shapiro as a support for a presentation that builds on his theory. Bechly would bring his waiting time view to Shapiro's idea. "How long" means it must fit into the timing history gives us. We all admit something has to be a quick process to act within the known time gaps. A mind is the fastest designer we know. That is a real, not a theoretical view.
Introducing Gunter Bechly
dhw: Thank you. Well worth listening to, and well worth noting that he tries to dissociate ID from religion. He clearly hasn’t heard of Shapiro’s “natural genetic engineering”, and might perhaps revise his view of the accuracy of calculated “waiting time” if he realized that Darwin style mutations are not the only route to novelty, and ID could be accomplished by the intelligence of the cell communities of which all multicellular organisms consist. There is simply no way of calculating how long intelligent, cognitive, sentient beings might need to design an evolutionary novelty.
DAVID: All ID folks avoid using religion. He may well be aware of Shapiro's theory. Bechly is a paleontologist, not a geneticist, but exploring the mechanics of genetics. I've never seen any article mentioning Shapiro as a support for a presentation that builds on his theory. Bechly would bring his waiting time view to Shapiro's idea. "How long" means it must fit into the timing history gives us. We all admit something has to be a quick process to act within the known time gaps. A mind is the fastest designer we know. That is a real, not a theoretical view.
And Bechly makes no mention of the possibility that even micro-organisms may have minds, and if they do, we can have no idea how long those minds would need to work out new ways of coping with or exploiting their environment.
Under “homo erectus”:
Quote: "These specimens confirm that the species likely went extinct due to climate change, study coauthor Russell Ciochon, a biological anthropologist at the University of Iowa, tells CNN. “The open woodland was replaced by a rainforest. No Homo erectus fossils are found after the environment changed, so Homo erectus likely was unable to adapt to this new rainforest environment,” he says."
DAVID: No time for adaptation is suggested, or the species was incapable of adapting and remained the same for two million years. dhw thinks environmental changes drives speciation. Hmmmmm.
Why hmmmmm? My suggestion is that when the environment changes, some organisms die out, some adapt, and some exploit the new conditions through innovations. How does the extinction of homo erectus through climate change create a hmmmmm?
Introducing Gunter Bechly
by David Turell , Friday, December 20, 2019, 12:56 (1798 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: Thank you. Well worth listening to, and well worth noting that he tries to dissociate ID from religion. He clearly hasn’t heard of Shapiro’s “natural genetic engineering”, and might perhaps revise his view of the accuracy of calculated “waiting time” if he realized that Darwin style mutations are not the only route to novelty, and ID could be accomplished by the intelligence of the cell communities of which all multicellular organisms consist. There is simply no way of calculating how long intelligent, cognitive, sentient beings might need to design an evolutionary novelty.
DAVID: All ID folks avoid using religion. He may well be aware of Shapiro's theory. Bechly is a paleontologist, not a geneticist, but exploring the mechanics of genetics. I've never seen any article mentioning Shapiro as a support for a presentation that builds on his theory. Bechly would bring his waiting time view to Shapiro's idea. "How long" means it must fit into the timing history gives us. We all admit something has to be a quick process to act within the known time gaps. A mind is the fastest designer we know. That is a real, not a theoretical view.
dhw: And Bechly makes no mention of the possibility that even micro-organisms may have minds, and if they do, we can have no idea how long those minds would need to work out new ways of coping with or exploiting their environment.
Only you want microorganisms to have minds. He is looking at the rate of mutations, which is generally known. Why should Bechly who has no idea of your theories?
Under “homo erectus”:
Quote: "These specimens confirm that the species likely went extinct due to climate change, study coauthor Russell Ciochon, a biological anthropologist at the University of Iowa, tells CNN. “The open woodland was replaced by a rainforest. No Homo erectus fossils are found after the environment changed, so Homo erectus likely was unable to adapt to this new rainforest environment,” he says."DAVID: No time for adaptation is suggested, or the species was incapable of adapting and remained the same for two million years. dhw thinks environmental changes drives speciation. Hmmmmm.
dhw: Why hmmmmm? My suggestion is that when the environment changes, some organisms die out, some adapt, and some exploit the new conditions through innovations. How does the extinction of homo erectus through climate change create a hmmmmm?
Over two million years of many changes, they survived, and didn't adapt. Survival and adaptation are not automatic and may vary with other forces at work, is the hmmm. Note your ideas are fixed as re Bechly..
Introducing Gunter Bechly
dhw: And Bechly makes no mention of the possibility that even micro-organisms may have minds, and if they do, we can have no idea how long those minds would need to work out new ways of coping with or exploiting their environment.
DAVID: Only you want microorganisms to have minds. He is looking at the rate of mutations, which is generally known. Why should Bechly who has no idea of your theories?
Bacterial intelligence is not “my” theory. All these years I have been quoting scientists such as McClintock, Margulis, Buehler and now Shapiro, and I have asked you to consult the many websites on the subject of bacterial intelligence, but suddenly you think I am all alone! If you want more names, look under references and further reading:
Microbial intelligence - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_intelligence
You are getting confused. It’s your theory of evolution that leaves you out on your own.
DAVID: No time for adaptation is suggested, or the species was incapable of adapting and remained the same for two million years. dhw thinks environmental changes drives speciation. Hmmmmm.
dhw: Why hmmmmm? My suggestion is that when the environment changes, some organisms die out, some adapt, and some exploit the new conditions through innovations. How does the extinction of homo erectus through climate change create a hmmmmm?
DAVID: Over two million years of many changes, they survived, and didn't adapt. Survival and adaptation are not automatic and may vary with other forces at work, is the hmmm. Note your ideas are fixed as re Bechly..
Exactly Gould’s point: there are long periods of stasis. New species occur when they are required or allowed by changes in the environment. Your hmmm fits in perfectly with my proposal: nothing is automatic. When the environment changes, some species die out, some adapt, and – the controversial bit – some use the new conditions to invent new methods of enhancing their chances of survival. And yes, the “other forces” at work are the capacity of the cell communities to adapt and/or innovate. This is not a fixed idea but a theory which I find considerably more convincing than your own theory of evolution. IF the theory is correct, then the time required for Darwinian evolution via random mutations etc. is irrelevant.
Introducing Gunter Bechly
by David Turell , Saturday, December 21, 2019, 21:45 (1797 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: And Bechly makes no mention of the possibility that even micro-organisms may have minds, and if they do, we can have no idea how long those minds would need to work out new ways of coping with or exploiting their environment.
DAVID: Only you want microorganisms to have minds. He is looking at the rate of mutations, which is generally known. Why should Bechly who has no idea of your theories?
dhw: Bacterial intelligence is not “my” theory. All these years I have been quoting scientists such as McClintock, Margulis, Buehler and now Shapiro, and I have asked you to consult the many websites on the subject of bacterial intelligence, but suddenly you think I am all alone! If you want more names, look under references and further reading:
Microbial intelligence - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_intelligenceYou are getting confused. It’s your theory of evolution that leaves you out on your own.
No it doesn't. The ID folks group is filled with many scientists. I've only introduced a few. Their belief, which I think you fully understand, is that a designer is required for all advances in evolution. Bechly is a prime example. You want intelligent cells which can make designs, when all we know they do is make reasonable responses to the requirements of living, which cqan be from designed instructions. Your little list of scientists are expressing hyperbole about cells abilities. Those cell abilities are the amazing complexity of the biology of life, without which thee would be no life. ID and I all believe it requires a designer constantly at work. The only difference is I identify God as the designer and they avoid the issue, but underneath that is what is understood. They constantly produce scientific results that strongly imply a designer is at work. The only difference is they do not theorize how God does his work and I do. They simply say there is a designer. I don't need Wiki to review. You should look at uncommon descent website.
DAVID: No time for adaptation is suggested, or the species was incapable of adapting and remained the same for two million years. dhw thinks environmental changes drives speciation. Hmmmmm.dhw: Why hmmmmm? My suggestion is that when the environment changes, some organisms die out, some adapt, and some exploit the new conditions through innovations. How does the extinction of homo erectus through climate change create a hmmmmm?
DAVID: Over two million years of many changes, they survived, and didn't adapt. Survival and adaptation are not automatic and may vary with other forces at work, is the hmmm. Note your ideas are fixed as re Bechly..
dhw: Exactly Gould’s point: there are long periods of stasis. New species occur when they are required or allowed by changes in the environment. Your hmmm fits in perfectly with my proposal: nothing is automatic. When the environment changes, some species die out, some adapt, and – the controversial bit – some use the new conditions to invent new methods of enhancing their chances of survival. And yes, the “other forces” at work are the capacity of the cell communities to adapt and/or innovate. This is not a fixed idea but a theory which I find considerably more convincing than your own theory of evolution. IF the theory is correct, then the time required for Darwinian evolution via random mutations etc. is irrelevant.
Gould also recognize the big gaps in the fossil branching record which he noted had tips and nodes and no explanation for the gaps or the stasis. His explanations were a guess as a staunch Darwinist, in which he saw the deficiencies.
Introducing Gunter Bechly
I have moved this discussion to the Shapiro thread in order to avoid repetition.
Gunter Bechly: Darwin's gap problem
by David Turell , Wednesday, January 01, 2020, 18:23 (1786 days ago) @ dhw
From Darwin in 1859: "The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, [must] be truly enormous, … Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. "
https://evolutionnews.org/2019/12/4-of-our-top-stories-of-2019-apeman-waves-goodbye-to-...
"Darwin hoped that over time new paleontological discoveries might resolve this problem for his theory. However, even 160 years later this has not happened, despite the greatly expanded knowledge we have today and a “completeness of the fossil record that is rather high for many animal groups”
***
"...in the fossil record, “stasis is data” (Gould 1991). This led two American paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould to propose their famous model of “punctuated equilibria” (Eldredge & Gould 1972). This model is often misunderstood as advocating saltational evolution, which it explicitly does not. It is just a special version of gradualism that confines the incremental evolution to an isolated small subpopulation and compresses it into a shorter period of time.
***
"Eldredge and Gould suggested punctuated equilibria as a general phenomenon, but it was never accepted as such within mainstream evolutionary biology. Many Darwinists rejected it and others considered it as nothing but a “minor wrinkle on the surface of neo-Darwinian theory”
***
"After the Darwin Year in 2009, celebrating his 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, Hunt (2010) reviewed all the fossil evidence for species transitions assembled by paleontologists in 150 years of research since the time of Charles Darwin....Hunt’s conclusion, regarding all the available fossil evidence, was startling indeed:
“'The meandering and fluctuating trajectories captured in the fossil record are not inconsistent with the centrality of natural selection as an evolutionary mechanism, but they probably would not have been predicted without the benefit of an empirical fossil record."
"That is a formidable example of obfuscating language. It can be translated as: the empirical data from the fossil record totally contradict the gradualist predictions of Darwin’s theory. There just is hardly any fossil evidence for directional and gradual species-to-species transitions, and especially not for anagenesis. The demise of the three textbook examples described above leaves Darwinian paleontologists empty-handed.
"This may come as a surprise even for many critics of Darwinian evolution, because neither intelligent design proponents nor old earth or young earth creationists generally deny that neo-Darwinism may sufficiently explain low-level speciation, such as the diversification of a founding finch species into the various species of Darwin finches on the Galápagos Islands. That even such a minor phenomenon of gradualist evolution is not supported by fossil evidence gives reason for pause. Maybe we should not grant too much, too early to Darwin’s theory. Neo-Darwinian mechanisms certainly can well explain intraspecific changes of gene frequencies, like the rise of antibiotic resistance in germs, but it is unclear if the explanatory value of this process can be stretched much further. This does not imply that “God did it” as some critics of intelligent design theory often mockingly claim. But it does imply that the fossil support for neo-Darwinism is still very much exaggerated in our education system. And it suggests the need for a paradigm change in evolutionary biology, as is definitely becoming more and more evident. It is not intelligent design theorists who are the science deniers, but rather all those stubborn Darwinists. The latter still close their eyes to the ever-increasing number of anomalies that their pet theory fails to explain. (my bold)
"But there is a silver lining: At the conference “New Trends in Evolutionary Biology,” hosted by the prestigious Royal Society in London in November 2016, the renowned evolutionary theorist Professor Gerd Müller explicitly mentioned “non-gradual forms of transition” among his list of five explanatory deficits of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis (aka neo-Darwinism). The other points include phenotypic novelty and phenotypic complexity. You heard that right: Everything that is really interesting in the history of life and that should be explained by Darwin’s theory, this very theory actually fails to explain, by the admission of modern evolutionary biologists themselves. No wonder that high-ranking intellectuals like Yale professor David Gelernter are giving up on a beautiful but refuted theory (Gelernter 2019). "
Comment: Upon close examination only gaps are present. Gradualism in the fossil record does not exist. The Cambrian explosion is the most famous gap, which Darwin, himself, despaired of. Gould desperately tried to solve the problem with an invention that is not correct, and as Bechly carefully notes in this very long article, which is worth fully reading, the inventive attempts are desperate and numerous. Note my bold. ID is not unreasonable about minor speciation events as Darwinists view them. Which means ID is worth reading and following, although it should be carefully noted they never name God as designer.
Gunter Bechly: Darwin's gap problem
by David Turell , Wednesday, July 08, 2020, 22:45 (1597 days ago) @ David Turell
New findings enforce the gap further. New Ediacaran fossils don't help Darwin's gap:
https://evolutionnews.org/2020/07/demise-of-the-artifact-hypothesis-aggravates-the-prob...
"The most popular attempt to resolve this discrepancy is the so-called “artifact hypothesis,” which proposes that the Cambrian animal phyla had ancestors, but that those ancestors either left no fossil record or have not yet been found, because of the incompleteness of the fossil record. This ad hoc hypothesis was originally proposed by Charles Walcott, the discoverer of the famous Burges Shale fossils. More recently it was for example championed by paleontologist Donald Prothero in his critical review of Stephen C. Meyer’s book Darwin’s Doubt.
***
"As a paleontologist, I can hardly agree more with this conclusion. My only point of difference would be that I would no longer consider the phosphatized “embryo-like” fossils of the Wen’an Biota from the Doushantuo Formation in China as best argument, because of their highly controversial and very dubious attribution. Nevertheless, the fact that most specialists reject any affinity of these fossils with crown-group animals strongly suggests that there is no convincing evidence for any animals from this 560-million-year-old locality.
"Of course, the argument from the Doushantou fossils is somewhat weak, because it is a very specific type of fossilization that implies taphonomic filters to what can be preserved and what not. But we meanwhile have much better evidence against the artifact hypothesis. According to Gaines et al., “Burgess Shale−type biotas occur globally in the Cambrian record and offer unparalleled insight into the Cambrian explosion, the initial Phanerozoic radiation of the Metazoa. Deposits bearing exceptionally preserved soft-bodied fossils are unusually common in Cambrian strata; more than 40 are now known.” Thus, we definitely should expect to find the postulated ancestors of the Cambrian animal phyla in Burgess Shale-type localities of the preceding Ediacaran era. The artifact hypothesis suggested that there are no such localities.
***
"None of these Ediacaran biotas yielded any uncontroversial fossil record of animals! Especially important are the vast deposits of the Miaohe and Lantian biotas in China and the Zuun-arts biota in Mongolia, which both lack any bilaterian animals and only yielded fossil algae and problematic organisms...Daley et al. discussed all the above-mentioned Burgess Shale-type localities from the Ediacaran and concluded that the “modes of fossil preservation are comparable in the Cambrian and Precambrian.” In their abstract they affirmed that: “BSTs [Burgess Shale types] from the latest Ediacaran Period are abundantly fossiliferous with algae but completely lack animals, which are also missing from other Ediacaran windows, such as phosphate deposits.”
***
"So, demonstrably no animal biota existed 1 billion, 800 million, 560 million, and even 550 million years ago (the only remotely plausible candidates are the late Ediacaran jellyfish Haootia, the mollusk-like Kimberella, the worm-like Yilingia, and the possible lophophorate Namacalathus, which I will discuss in future articles). But in the lowermost Cambrian, 537 million years ago, there were already complex arthropod body plans with exoskeleton, articulated legs, and compound eyes (Daley et al. 2018), as well as many other bilaterian animal phyla. To deny that this is a major problem for Darwinian evolution is absurd.
***
"The absence of Ediacaran fossils of putative precursors of the Cambrian animal phyla is not an artifact of undersampling or an artifact of taphonomy, but simply reflecting the fact that there were no such organisms living in this period. With increasing paleontological research and better knowledge of the Proterozoic fossil record, the Cambrian explosion has turned out to be even more abrupt than was previously thought."
Comment: Try as hard as Darwinist scientists try the gap is stronger than ever. Many new layers have been explored with no new transitional forms found. I should note Darwin did not try to hide the 'plant bloom', again with no precursors, was just as troubled about it. It occurred a couple of hundred millions years after the Cambrian Explosion. In truth, as Gould and Eldridge noted, evolution is all gaps. Only design can explain the lack of gradual transitional forms.
Gunter Bechly: Darwin's gap problem
by David Turell , Thursday, March 10, 2022, 15:01 (987 days ago) @ David Turell
Recent comment:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/at-id-the-future-debunked-transitional-f...
"Bechly’s essay in the recent Harvest House anthology, The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos (2021).
"Darwinian evolution predicts a gradually branching tree of living forms, with one form shading into another over long periods of evolution, with each transitional step almost too modest to notice. Does the fossil record suggest such a pattern? Quite the opposite, Bechly says. Instead the pattern of the fossil record is consistently one of sudden appearance, and evolutionists have yet to successfully construct a single robustly populated series of gradually transitioning fossils that move chronologically from one form to a distinctly different morphology. Darwinism would lead us to expect such transitional sequences all over the fossil record, and yet evolutionists, searching assiduously for more than 160 years, have yet to construct a single one of these. Bechly debunks the hype around some fossil sequences, such as that said to have been assembled from ape-like to human. He explains the difference between “transitional forms” as paleontologists generally use the term and the meaning of the term for evolutionists attempting to defend modern Darwinism." (my bold)
Comment: as with Gould, just gaps. I can't reproduce the essay.
Gunter Bechly: Darwin's gap problem
by David Turell , Friday, September 15, 2023, 16:52 (433 days ago) @ David Turell
Flying dinosaurs have no predecessors:
https://evolutionnews.org/2023/09/fossil-friday-venetoraptor-is-not-the-archaeopteryx-o...
"In a recent Fossil Friday article for Evolution News (Bechly 2023), I discussed the abrupt origin of gliding and flying reptiles in the Triassic period. This includes the origin of pterosaurs, of which we find the earliest fossil record mainly from the Triassic of the Alps in central Europe (Barrett et al. 2008) such as the famous Eudimorphodon.
"Out of Thin Air?
So, where did these pterosaurs come from? It looks like they appear out of thin air. Paleobiologists searched for potential terrestrial precursors and often suspected the enigmatic small bipedal reptile Scleromochlus from the early Triassic of Scotland as a likely candidate.
***
"...but how did flying pterosaurs with large winged forelegs originate from such bipedal terrestrial reptiles with smaller forelegs?
***
"Dalla Vecchia (2013) had reviewed the early fossil record of pterosaurs and found that “a ‘Big Bang’ model for their early history fits better with the fossil record: the earliest unequivocal pterosaurs show a sudden and geographically limited appearance in the fossil record, as well as a relatively high burst of diversity and considerable morphologic disparity.” Such an abrupt origin of pterosaurs, with the correlated very fast re-engineering of the body plan in terms of adaptation towards powered flight, or course also implies a significant waiting time problem (Bechly 2022), because the origin and fixation of the required genetic changes cannot be accommodated within the available window of time with an unguided evolutionary process. Thus, the fossil record of pterosaurs rather supports the predictions of intelligent design theorists.
***
"Consequently, we still lack any fossil intermediate form (missing link) documenting an evolutionary transition of walking terrestrial ancestors to actively flying pterosaurs with wings, in spite of highly misleading claims that “enigmatic dinosaur precursors bridge the gap to the origin of Pterosauria” (Ezcurra et al. 2020).
***
"...but honestly I don’t hold my breath given the total failure to find any transitional pterosaur ancestor in centuries of fervent search by vertebrate paleontologists around the globe.
***
"This means that there is a large morphological gap and a very short window of time to close it. Not exactly what would have been predicted by Darwin, who quite likely would have been more willing than his modern successors to acknowledge that such conflicting evidence presents a formidable problem for his theory. In fact that’s exactly what he said in his Origin of Species about the fossil record. He still hoped that the gaps are just artefacts of our incomplete knowledge of the fossil record and therefore would be closed with future research. Even almost 165 years after Darwin with an exponential growth of knowledge about the fossil record this did not happen and the persisting gaps still bug Darwin’s successors until this day.
***
"Long story short: Forget all the pop science ballyhoo, and if you should not trust my word, just check the provided primary sources to see that there is much ado about nothing concerning the alleged recent breakthrough in our knowledge on the evolutionary origin of pterosaurs. It’s still a complete mystery and defies Darwinian expectations."
Comment: a very long technical article, quoting many sources in the literature, but clearly showing a persistent gap between terrestrial and flying dinosaurs, equal to the Cambrian gap.
Just as Gould warned.
Introducing Gunter Bechly: his change to belief
by David Turell , Friday, September 16, 2022, 18:27 (797 days ago) @ dhw
He was a profound atheist who bumped into ID:
https://salvomag.com/article/salvo62/a-long-surrender
"I returned to Germany to study biology and paleontology at the universities of Hohenheim and Tübingen, where I graduated with the equivalent of a master’s degree in biology and a Ph.D., summa cum laude, in paleontology in 1999.
***
"While I had started from a materialist, clockwork-universe perspective, I soon discovered certain implications of modern physics that did not fit well with such an obsolete, 19th-century worldview. I stumbled upon further problems, such as the questions of causality, the ontology of time and space, the status of mathematics, and the laws of nature. This brought me even deeper into metaphysics with issues like the problem of universals, the one and the many, the persistence of diachronic (personal) identity, free will, and the hard problem of consciousness.
"I soon realized that materialism is untenable, and I searched for a new worldview that could explain these problems and make sense of the world we experience.
***
"I also studied “process thought”—the idea that reality consists of dynamic processes, rather than enduring entities. I became a genuine process philosophy nerd and even named a new fossil dragonfly species after process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead in 2010.
***
"I was still into process philosophy when I embraced intelligent design theory, so my support for ID had nothing to do with religion, but only with scientific arguments. I had come to see that Neo-Darwinism simply fails to explain the diversity and complexity of life and that these are better explained by an infusion of information from outside the system. The information does not have to come from a divine, miraculous intervention, but of course that would be compatible with such a view.
"As I further thought about process philosophy, I stumbled upon two fatal problems: (1) it does not allow for a real, enduring person as a free agent, because it views the individual mind as a kind of succession of occasions, like a string of pearls; and (2) it implies an infinite past, which is inconsistent with big bang cosmology as well as arguments against an infinite causal series.
***
"I definitely did not find what I had expected when I started looking into sophisticated apologetics. I read a lot and watched the debates of William Lane Craig and others. These introduced me to philosophical arguments for theism. What most impressed me were the argument from the fine-tuning of the universe, the argument from reason, the argument from contingency (to answer the question, “why is there anything rather than nothing?”), the argument from the uncanny effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences, and the argument for God as the very source of the laws of nature.
"I started with popular apologetics and then dove deep into the academic literature. I did not want to become a theist, but the overwhelming, cumulative power of the arguments, of which I have only mentioned a few, ultimately convinced me that theism must be true beyond reasonable doubt. There is a God!"
Comment: A profound atheist converted himself. I was a soft agnostic who followed Bechly's approach. Lots of reading. I'm now a firm theist. Any non-theist, to test his position, should do the same reading
Introducing Gunter Bechly: his change to belief
Günter Bechly
QUOTE: "I started with popular apologetics and then dove deep into the academic literature. I did not want to become a theist, but the overwhelming, cumulative power of the arguments, of which I have only mentioned a few, ultimately convinced me that theism must be true beyond reasonable doubt. There is a God!"
DAVID: A profound atheist converted himself. I was a soft agnostic who followed Bechly's approach. Lots of reading. I'm now a firm theist. Any non-theist, to test his position, should do the same reading.
You’ve mentioned him before, but what you have not mentioned is the fact that he is also now a devout Christian: “Ultimately, I reached a point where the evidence and arguments were so overwhelming, while most of my problems with Christianity could be resolved, that I had no choice but to surrender to the call of Christ.” Clearly you have not followed this approach to what he considers to be a logical conclusion – or have you now overcome your previous resistance to established religion and become a Christian? I mention this only to illustrate that “lots of reading” might lead different people to different conclusions, including yourself. And there are plenty of other folk who have moved in the opposite direction: from being theists to being atheists or agnostics. This is absolutely not to be taken as a rejection of all the evidence for design, or as any kind of attack on theism or on non-theism. The object of this forum is to consider all arguments for and against all kinds of beliefs, and in its way, it’s meant to be a short cut: nobody can be expected to have inside knowledge of every facet of our main subjects, or to read every book on every facet. For some time now, you and I have been virtually on our own, and so we are confined to our own spheres of knowledge (and I am most grateful for your huge input especially in the sphere of the sciences) – but that need not and does not stop us from analysing one another’s ideas. If our ideas are based on other people’s findings, it is up to us to defend them – not to issue a reading list.
For what it’s worth, I was brought up as a Jew, and was a devout theist until my early teens. The horrors of the OT sowed doubts in my mind, and these culminated not just in a rejection of the cruel and egocentric God of the OT, but a rejection of the whole concept. However, in my late teens, I looked to Darwin for confirmation of my scepticism, and was astonished to find that there was absolutely nothing in Origin to support atheism! On the contrary, in my (later) edition he even mentioned the Creator, and the fact that his theory did NOT deny the existence of God. I then discovered that he considered himself to be an agnostic. And the book itself brought home to me the astonishing complexities of life, raising the leading question of how it could actually have originated (Darwin expressly avoided dealing with that question). My thinking then was that if science couldn’t answer my questions, maybe philosophy would, and having just won a place at Cambridge to read Modern Languages, I decided to change subjects and study philosophy instead. But before granting permission, the very wise senior tutor asked me why, and when I told him, he gave me a reading list. Sadly I can no longer remember the titles. Then he told me to come back when I’d read the books, and if I still thought I would find the answers I was looking for, he would give me permission to study philosophy. I did not find the answers. And although I remain as fascinated as ever by all the questions we ask, I have never yet found any answers convincing enough to follow you or Bechly or Dawkins or Dennett.
Introducing Gunter Bechly: his change to belief
by David Turell , Saturday, September 17, 2022, 18:32 (796 days ago) @ dhw
Günter Bechly
QUOTE: "I started with popular apologetics and then dove deep into the academic literature. I did not want to become a theist, but the overwhelming, cumulative power of the arguments, of which I have only mentioned a few, ultimately convinced me that theism must be true beyond reasonable doubt. There is a God!"
DAVID: A profound atheist converted himself. I was a soft agnostic who followed Bechly's approach. Lots of reading. I'm now a firm theist. Any non-theist, to test his position, should do the same reading.
dhw: You’ve mentioned him before, but what you have not mentioned is the fact that he is also now a devout Christian: “Ultimately, I reached a point where the evidence and arguments were so overwhelming, while most of my problems with Christianity could be resolved, that I had no choice but to surrender to the call of Christ.” Clearly you have not followed this approach to what he considers to be a logical conclusion – or have you now overcome your previous resistance to established religion and become a Christian? I mention this only to illustrate that “lots of reading” might lead different people to different conclusions, including yourself. And there are plenty of other folk who have moved in the opposite direction: from being theists to being atheists or agnostics. This is absolutely not to be taken as a rejection of all the evidence for design, or as any kind of attack on theism or on non-theism. The object of this forum is to consider all arguments for and against all kinds of beliefs, and in its way, it’s meant to be a short cut: nobody can be expected to have inside knowledge of every facet of our main subjects, or to read every book on every facet. For some time now, you and I have been virtually on our own, and so we are confined to our own spheres of knowledge (and I am most grateful for your huge input especially in the sphere of the sciences) – but that need not and does not stop us from analysing one another’s ideas. If our ideas are based on other people’s findings, it is up to us to defend them – not to issue a reading list.
For what it’s worth, I was brought up as a Jew, and was a devout theist until my early teens. The horrors of the OT sowed doubts in my mind, and these culminated not just in a rejection of the cruel and egocentric God of the OT, but a rejection of the whole concept. However, in my late teens, I looked to Darwin for confirmation of my scepticism, and was astonished to find that there was absolutely nothing in Origin to support atheism! On the contrary, in my (later) edition he even mentioned the Creator, and the fact that his theory did NOT deny the existence of God. I then discovered that he considered himself to be an agnostic. And the book itself brought home to me the astonishing complexities of life, raising the leading question of how it could actually have originated (Darwin expressly avoided dealing with that question). My thinking then was that if science couldn’t answer my questions, maybe philosophy would, and having just won a place at Cambridge to read Modern Languages, I decided to change subjects and study philosophy instead. But before granting permission, the very wise senior tutor asked me why, and when I told him, he gave me a reading list. Sadly I can no longer remember the titles. Then he told me to come back when I’d read the books, and if I still thought I would find the answers I was looking for, he would give me permission to study philosophy. I did not find the answers. And although I remain as fascinated as ever by all the questions we ask, I have never yet found any answers convincing enough to follow you or Bechly or Dawkins or Dennett.
Tnank you for this review of your past. I came from a Jewish family, went through an agnostic period and as I theist I still accept the one God concept. Bechly's acceptance of Trinitarian thought is something I cannot do.
Introducing Gunter Bechly: insect gap
by David Turell , Friday, August 09, 2024, 17:52 (104 days ago) @ David Turell
No precursors found as yet:
https://evolutionnews.org/2024/08/fossil-friday-the-carboniferous-explosion-of-winged-i...
"There have been three key innovations in the history of insects that contributed to the great success of this group. Those include the origin of wings and flight, the origin of foldable wings (Neoptera), and the origin of complete metamorphosis (Holometabola) (Nicholson et al. 2014). It is truly astonishing that all these three innovations appeared abruptly and very early among the oldest winged insects from the Carboniferous, which also exhibited a great diversity and disparity from the very beginning. I call this the Carboniferous Insect Explosion.
"In the Pennsylvanian (Upper Carboniferous) subperiod between 323-299 million years ago, when the world was forming a single supercontinent Pangaea dominated by vast tropical swamp forests, this large diversity of different winged insect groups appeared suddenly without any known transitional forms in the older Mississippian (Lower Carboniferous) or Devonian strata... According to leading experts, “an insect equivalent of an Archaeopteryx remains elusive”. (my bold)
***
"Last year a new study (Schachat et al. 2023), which reviewed the fossil and molecular evidence for the age of winged insects, fully vindicated the explosive origin of winged insects in the Carboniferous. In their abstract the authors confirmed the stark conflict between molecular clock datings and the fossil record, which requires extensive ghost lineages of unrecorded history.
***
"...the abrupt appearance of winged insects with great diversity and disparity in the Carboniferous period, which we have called the Carboniferous Insect Explosion, is a phenomenon that is highly unexpected under Darwinian assumptions, but well be accommodated within an intelligent design paradigm. It represents just one of the many discontinuities in the history of life that strongly contradict the predictions from a neo-Darwinian theory of evolution. The same pattern is found in almost all groups of organisms, in all geographical regions, and in all periods of Earth’s history. This is clearly a signal in the data and not just noise. It is a signal that tells about a saltational history of life, with a series of bursts of biological creativity that can only be explained with the goal-directed infusion of new information from outside the system. (my bold)
Comment: As Gould noted the biggest secret among paleontologists ae all the large gaps in the fossil record. This account suggests de novo developments in the insect record. Note my first bold: No stem organism. The last bold just above is more evidence of Bechly's acceptance of ID. It seems he is now in the same position as dhw.