Introducing Gunter Bechly (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, December 19, 2019, 15:47 (1584 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:

https://youtu.be/NmZd4SzVD7M

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.