DARWIN's DOUBT - The End of Darwinistic Materialism

[KillCarneyKlans]

It's been a while since I posted ... but this is certainly important enough to mention ... sorry I can't be more engaging in this debate ... but, hopefully I can drop by from time to time ... and say hello ... if time permits

http://www.darwinsdoubt.com/#
http://www.stephencmeyer.org/
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/04...r_r071001.html

There's already quite a bit of buzz around Stephen C. Meyer's forthcoming book, Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design. Darwin's Doubt is going to be another landmark for the ID movement ... [3 days after publication it's already 9th on the NYT bestseller list, I think] ... I see at least three (or four) major reasons why this book is important, and worth reading:

1). Darwin's Doubt will be by far the most in-depth and mature development of those arguments to date, addressing in detail many ideas and rebuttals and theories advanced by evolutionary scientists, and showing why the theory of intelligent design best explains the explosion of biodiversity in the Cambrian animals. [bioinfo]

2). When published, Darwin's Doubt will be the single most up-to-date rebuttal to neo-Darwinian theory from the ID-paradigm ... Meyer reviews much of the peer-reviewed research that's been published by the ID research community over the last few years, and highlights how ID proponents are doing relevant research answering key questions that show Darwinian evolution isn't up to the task of generating new functional information.

3). e now live in a "post-Darwinian" world, where more and more evolutionary biologists are realizing that neo-Darwinism is failing, so they scramble to propose new materialistic evolutionary models to replace the modern synthesis. (These models include, or have included, self-organization, evo-devo, punc eq, neo-Lamarckism, natural genetic engineering, neutral evolution, and others.) In this regard, Darwin's Doubt does something that's never been done before: it surveys the landscape of these "post-neo-Darwinian evolutionary models," and shows why they too fail as explanations for the origin of animal body plans and biological complexity.

The descriptor "game changer" has been used in reference to Darwin's Doubt -- and I think that's accurate. It will be a very important book ... evolutionary scientists who don't question that fully unguided evolutionary mechanisms ... while they attempt to explain the history of life in unguided material terms ... it nonetheless remains the case that "[a] literal reading of the fossil record" shows a suspiciously consistent non-Darwinian pattern of abrupt explosions of new types of organisms. Darwin's Doubt explains why this explosive pattern is not amenable to explanation by unguided evolutionary mechanisms, but is best explained by intelligent design.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/06...ien073431.html

The importance of the book is also not exhausted by the existential question that lies behind the evolution debate. If Darwin were ever shown to be right, then what psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl called (in his famous book) Man's Search for Meaning would automatically be rendered null and void. In a Darwinian universe, where life's origin and evolution reflect no design or intention, there can be no ultimate meaning to our existence, as candid Darwinists admit.

However, apart from the scientific, philosophical and spiritual meanings, the context of the book in the debate about academic freedom must also not be forgotten. The spark of the idea that Meyer elaborates in Darwin's Doubt was so controversial when it was unveiled in 2004 that it resulted in a spasm of persecution at our nation's leading public scientific institution, the Smithsonian ... Arguably, no ID theorist has aroused more persecutory rage than Stephen Meyer.

Here, you can listen to more than several hours of commentary on Meyers book in an interview with George Noory [Dennis Prager Am870 also did an interview with him also]
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2013/06/19

Darwin believed the appearance of purposeful design in living organisms was a kind of illusion, and explained it as a byproduct of an undirected process such as natural selection. However, Darwin recognized that the abrupt or sudden appearance of the first animals in the fossil record around 530 million years ago (in a period called the Cambrian Explosion) posed a challenge to his theory, which predicted a slow, gradual evolution of life. Darwin thought that future fossil discoveries would fill in the missing gaps, but what's happened is just the opposite-- a wider variety of Cambrian animals with intricate forms have been found, Meyer noted.

In unraveling the mystery of the Cambrian Explosion, Meyer viewed the period as a kind of "information revolution," the first since the origin of life itself. "But I realized there was a cause of which we know from our ordinary experience, our uniform and repeated experience (which Darwin taught was the basis of all scientific reasoning) that is capable of generating information. And that cause is intelligence, it's mind, it's conscious or rational activity," he declared. That led him to develop a rigorous, and scientific argument for intelligent design, using the same reasoning methods that Darwin employed.

One biologist said that 'natural selection does a good job of explaining the survival of the fittest, but not the arrival of the fittest,' Meyer commented. He differentiated his theory from Creationism, noting that the method of reasoning is different. "The theory of intelligent design is not attempting to interpret scripture, it's rather an inference from biological evidence," he said. Meyer further theorized that no agent from within the cosmos was responsible for the fine tuning of life, and the design of the very fabric of the universe.

Here are a few past references I have made to Meyer's and "Signature in the Cell" [Biological Abacus]
http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=68852
http://www.online-literature.com/for...t=68852&page=5
http://www.online-literature.com/for...t=68852&page=6
http://www.online-literature.com/for...=68852&page=11
http://www.christianityboard.com/blo...g-bible-proof/
http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...elligence.html
http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...d-origins.html

Metamorphosis [Monarch butterflies and etc]- should also be mentioned here ... but I don't have the time ... google it

[WyattGwyon]

Intelligent design is pseudo-science written for the willfully ignorant by fools and charlatans.

[virtuoso]

Wyatt Gwyon intelligence goes beyond science. The unswerving belief in science allows the biologists and paleontologists to construct a faulty fossil record. Also, to explain the incongruent gaps in biological evolution. Not to mention, the sudden extinction of the evolutionary transition forms in animal and human species. Are we to believe that evolution conceived itself, then organized a structured time table for its implementation. Your vain, antagonistic dismissal of Kill Carney Klans, valid questions are intellectually disingenuous. Thanks for the book review, recommendation, Kill Carney.

[cafolini]

Intelligent design is pseudo-science written for the willfully ignorant by fools and charlatans.

Every scientufic design must use intelligence. What you mean has to do with people's stupidity in thinking that the world is an intelligent design which they have discovered. In this latter case, I fully agree with you.

[Calidore]

It's interesting that Meyer's title is "Philosopher of Science," and his degrees are in earth science and physics, not biology.

What also gives me pause is stuff like this, from the OP: "'I realized there was a cause of which we know from our ordinary experience, our uniform and repeated experience (which Darwin taught was the basis of all scientific reasoning) that is capable of generating information. And that cause is intelligence, it's mind, it's conscious or rational activity,' he declared. That led him to develop a rigorous, and scientific argument for intelligent design, using the same reasoning methods that Darwin employed."

In other words, it sounds like he decided intelligent design must be a thing first, then set about writing questions leading to that answer.

All the arguments I've heard for intelligent design boil down to "I don't understand how natural selection could be, therefore it couldn't be." Or, "If everything is random, then life has no meaning, and I don't like that idea, therefore it can't be true." That's human arrogance, not logic or science.

[WyattGwyon]

Are we to believe that evolution conceived itself, then organized a structured time table for its implementation.

That you could ask this question proves that you understand little about evolution or natural selection. No one needs to conceive evolution. It is the inevitable result of natural selection and it has no structured time table.

[OrphanPip]

The Discovery Institute has a well oiled PR team that loves to bypass dealing with experts to sell their bunk directly to people without the education in math and science required to realize what total BS most of it is.

[virtuoso]

So the evolutionary tract which includes complex exchanges of DNA information and a lengthy, structural metamorphosis, does not need to be programmed by an interior designer (create, encode, synthesize a complex set of genetic markers) or exterior designer (environmental conditions that allow the species to adapt and survive). The complexity of the DNA code, alone, is so complex that it took man millenia to understand and map it. How can nature set its own laws? What about the gaps in the fossil record, and the self extinction of the transitional forms.

[cafolini]

So the evolutionary tract which includes complex exchanges of DNA information and a lengthy, structural metamorphosis, does not need to be programmed by an interior designer (create, encode, synthesize a complex set of genetic markers) or exterior designer (environmental conditions that allow the species to adapt and survive). The complexity of the DNA code, alone, is so complex that it took man millenia to understand and map it. How can nature set its own laws? What about the gaps in the fossil record, and the self extinction of the transitional forms.

Only solution is to put Cacian to design it. It'd be ready instantly.

[Charles Darnay]

virtuoso, you talk about nature like a Romantic. nature is not Nature (if you can follow my designation). Nature did not design evolution. Evolution is not governed by laws. There are observed patterns that help humans understand it (such as Darwin wrote about) - but our attempts to organize and categorize data (which we have been doing since the Pre-Socratics) has no bearing on evolution itself.

The problem with the grand creationist/evolution debate - or the intelligent design debate is that people argue based on human constructs. Both the Bible, and any theories (including Darwin's) on evolution are human constructs: flawed and incomplete at best.

[WyattGwyon]

So the evolutionary tract which includes complex exchanges of DNA information and a lengthy, structural metamorphosis, does not need to be programmed by an interior designer (create, encode, synthesize a complex set of genetic markers)

I have no idea what you mean by interior designer.

or exterior designer (environmental conditions that allow the species to adapt and survive).

Designer implies intelligence. The pressures driving natural selection don't require a designer.

The complexity of the DNA code, alone, is so complex that it took man millenia to understand and map it. How can nature set its own laws?

See Charles Darney's answer to this question. You need to read about evolutionary theory using sources not written by idiots.

What about the gaps in the fossil record

This requires no explanation. Obviously, not every critter or plant that ever lived is going to be preserved in fossilized form, and even the fossils of those that are preserved will not necessarily be found. Gaps are not evidence of anything.

and the self extinction of the transitional forms.

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.

[Calidore]

So the evolutionary tract which includes complex exchanges of DNA information and a lengthy, structural metamorphosis, does not need to be programmed by an interior designer (create, encode, synthesize a complex set of genetic markers) or exterior designer (environmental conditions that allow the species to adapt and survive). The complexity of the DNA code, alone, is so complex that it took man millenia to understand and map it. How can nature set its own laws? What about the gaps in the fossil record, and the self extinction of the transitional forms.

For your first and last question, I'll have to get hold of my microbiology professor friend for specific answers (though your first statement isn't really a question and is correct as written). I asked her something similar about cell nuclei once: whether we knew exactly how they came about, because they seemed too complex a structure to simply mutate into being as is. The gist of her answer as I remember it was that we do in fact know exactly how cell nuclei evolved into being. She went into more detail at the time, but this conversation was more than four years ago, so I'll need my memory refreshed. Your last statement about "extinction of the transitional forms" applies to this also, as there were numerous transitional forms between prokaryotes (no nucleus) and eukaryotes (nucleus), but IIRC they were essentially obsoleted by nature, and now those two bookend forms cover pretty much everything.

It's misleading to say that it took man "millennia" to understand and map DNA, as we didn't know about it and didn't care for most of the millennia of our existence as a species. The existence of DNA was discovered less than 150 years ago. As with everything else, initial findings came slowly, but as technology has developed, so has our learning, and both have grown by orders of magnitude as time went on and will continue to do so.

As Charles said, nature doesn't follow laws, as such--it just is what it is. Humans invent laws and rules to explain as much as possible; these follow events, they aren't followed themselves, like laws of society. Just as weekends and months don't actually exist, just day/night cycles and seasons.

As far as gaps in the fossil record, my understanding is that fossilization needs specific and rare conditions to occur, as well as a creature capable of being fossilized. That's why fossils are so special: Compared to all the creatures that have lived, they are very few and far between. Most of what's left of the dinosaurs are powering our vehicles and lawnmowers now.

[OrphanPip]

Most organelles in eukaryotic cells (those that have nuclei) are thought to be the result of endosymbiosis to some extent or the other. The mitochondria and chlorosomes are definitely the result of a smaller single celled organism evolving a symbiotic relationship with a larger one, since they have their own genetic code. It is thought that the nucleus was the result of a symbiotic relationship with an archaea because its membrane has some analogous structures to Archaean membranes. It is also possible that the nucleus simply evolved gradually because some bacteria have basic proto-nucleic envelopes.

[KillCarneyKlans]

This is a Double Post ... these are my rebuttals ... sorry time constraints
http://historum.com/58371-darwin-s-d...ic-materialism

More Cambrian species have been discovered now than are known in the mid-19th century,
it's also the case that we've discovered a wide variety of macroscopic pre-Cambrian organisms,
completely unknown in Darwin's day. There's an open-access article here about the biota of
the Lantian formation, which includes 'possible animal fossils with tentacles and intestinal
-like structures reminiscent of modern coelenterates and bilaterians". Note that this is from
a formation about 70 million years older than the Cambrian explosion.

Well, if you had reviewed my review of Darwin's Doubt you would know that in the 4th segment
of open lines, in questions to Meyer's about his theory, you would know that one of the 1st
callers [a biologist of some form, I believe] possed this very question. I don't remember the
exact words, but it went something like this ... Good question, I understand your concerns,
yes, I [Meyer's] know of these forms and talk extensively on them in more than a few chapters
dedicated to this era in my book, Darwin's Doubt, but most of these forms die in the pre-Cambrian,
Cambrian era, whereas the vast majority are new forms [new phylla, not directly related] being
created ...

Meyers answer went on for several minutes at a blistering pace, in lengthy discussion ... I'm sure
the chapters are much more detailed ... In this regard, Darwin's Doubt does something that's never
been done before: it surveys [a] landscape of ["Darwinian and ID models"] and shows why [Darwinian
models] fail as explanations for the origin of animal body plans and biological complexity ... [and]
how ID proponents are doing relevant research answering key questions that show Darwinian evolution
isn't up to the task of generating new functional information ... The descriptor "game changer" has
been used in reference to Darwin's Doubt -- and I think that's accurate. It will be a very important
book.

Well, at least it's in the religion forum where it belongs

Well, where should it be? In the 2nd segment of my review which talks about the Dover case and other
aspects of public sentiment, publicly held institutions, as well as private agendas ... Meyer's drives a
wooden stake into the heart of the debate and puts into context by way of comparison what the scientific
realities really are, which is what ID has been saying all along ... and by way of educational and political
manipulation design the ID debate to fail ... to protect there own interests. To turn it into a religous debate
and ignore and maline the evidence ...

One biologist said that 'natural selection does a good job of explaining the survival of the fittest, but not
the arrival of the fittest,' Meyer commented. He differentiated his theory from Creationism, noting that the
method of reasoning is different. "The theory of intelligent design is not attempting to interpret scripture,
it's rather an inference from biological evidence"

I mean ... when have I ever not sourced my Info by more than several sources ... and not confident enough in its
reasoning to discuss it on a historical basis ... my whole Danites, Sea Peoples, Lost Tribes Wanderings thread
was originally in history ... but because if the context "Israel" comes into play it was moved to Alt History ...
"Bring on The Slingers" [thanks Okimado] ... anyways no matter ... I could never figure out why Historum doesn't
make the religious forum, etc ... public ... there are people missing out on great stuff there [good for advertising
too] ... We still have to abide by the same rules ... an even though my "Helping darwinists understand origins" only
lasted 18 pages, the MoDs said I nailed it ... like the Bible says you can't hid a city on a hill ... It won't be
long before scientific ID will have to be taught in schools parallel to Evolutionary theory ...

http://www.online-literature.com/for...ic-Materialism

It's interesting that Meyer's title is "Philosopher of Science," and his degrees are in earth science and physics, not biology

1st ... Well, Signature in the Cell was a landmark Book ... I assume you know Darwin was a geologist too, and made monumental fundamental errors and assumptions on geological formations; as well as evolution, here's just a few links ->

http://www.wnd.com/2009/11/116601/
http://www.reviewevolution.com/press...Scientists.php
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/scien...g-on-evolution

Geologist Steven A. Austin, Ph.D., has traveled to southern Argentina to document Darwin's geological mistakes. "Let nobody confuse you -- Darwin was a geologist, but he was wrong about geology,"

2nd of all ... If we were to compare Darwin's ability to Meyer's ability to address the issue, Darwin would fall short ... hands down ... having said that ... in the interview with Meyer's, Meyer's still holds admiration for Darwin ... I suggest you actually listen to the interview.

3rd of all ... With the state of science being what it is today, you can't engage in any cosmological argument without referencing philosophy in some context ... impossible

4thly ... this is a Philosophical forum ... I could say the 2 biggest gaps in Darwin's philosophy was that he didn't believe in abrupt environmental changes and evolutionary ones [let alone the transitional fossil records] ... don't forget about Metamorphesis too.

5th ... this is mentioned somewhere [or something to this effect] ... Without engaging in intelligent, conscious, deliberate communicative process these changes could not occur ... Welcome to Jurassic Park

! Here we go again !
http://www.online-literature.com/for...57#post1146357
http://www.historum.com/religion/347...d-origins.html
http://www.historum.com/religion/356...lution-25.html
http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...elligence.html

http://www.christianityboard.com/top...c-materialism/

Wow, thanx guys and dolls for raising my blood-pressure ... feels good, to do, what I love most, again ... Well, I hope I gotta a few laughs, as well as making you think of it ... I just gotta go, seeya ... Keep up the good work ... Dj [KillCarney]

[OrphanPip]

Signature in the Cell is trash sold to the lay masses ignorant of the science.

Here is a detailed review of Meyer's latest junk science by a paleontologist:

http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2013...opeless-2.html