Richard Dawkin's big blunder

[Tonus]

I kinda got the impression that we were heading towards another "you can't prove it isn't" scenario.

[Ryantology]

I said evolution is not inconsistent with a theistic world view. I never said it did not contradict any religious tenets.

Sounds to me like you're trying to hide behind the mask of a general theist, rather than exposing your actual beliefs to any scrutiny.

Is evolution consistent with your specific beliefs? The creator entity you repeatedly reference seems an awful lot like Yahweh hiding behind a curtain. Evolution is consistent with an Abrahamic belief system only if one takes advantage of vague phrasing to make it seem as if those Bronze Age desert goatherders actually knew about how evolution took billions of years rather than a single week, and they decided to represent that with a metaphor.

I can't really say I respect a fundie, but they do, at least, have the decency to not resort to weasel wording. They know their beliefs are retrograde, but it doesn't bother them. Gotta value the honesty, if nothing else.

[Heywood]

What would "evolution without a target," even look like, to you?

Unguided evolution would be descent with change. There would be no cumulative selection. It would look like the random sentence generator in Dawkins' example.

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I will have one more go at this to see how honest you are being in your inability to see how ridiculous you are being.



This pig-like creature lived in India about 55 million years ago. It was about the size of a domestic cat.

What did it become?

If you know that's fine - but are you really claiming its off-spring were potentially predictable? A potential target? Guided design?

What designer - if aiming for the target state of today's creatures (its offspring) would start from here?

The creature probably became a few different species. But if I had to guess which species is the answer you are looking for, I would say homo sapiens. I remember watching a documentary about human evolution and it featured a creature like this living near water. My second guess would be elephant.

If human beings lived in micro gravity for a long enough time, I predict we would effectively loose our legs. If we didn't loose our legs/feet they would become more arm/hand like.

If a designer is in the picture so to speak. He wouldn't start from your creature. He would have started at abiogenesis.

[Chas]

What would "evolution without a target," even look like, to you?

Unguided evolution would be descent with change. There would be no cumulative selection. It would look like the random sentence generator in Dawkins' example.

What is 'cumulative selection'? Do you mean cumulative change?

What happens to the changes from on generation to another? Do they just disappear?

[Heywood]

If it is "good enough", it is contained in the set of targets evolution homes in on.

Which would leave you with the concept that every species that exists, has existed, and will exist is a target. Kinda makes the whole concept of a target useless and practically infinite.

You are incorrect.

A target could consist of the complete set of all possibilities....like the random sentence in Dawkins' example. Or it could be a very small subset of all possibilities....like the specific sentence from Dawkins' example. Or it could contain any number of possibilities. Convergent evolution suggests that in natural evolution the size of the targets is relatively small.

[Esquilax]

Unguided evolution would be descent with change. There would be no cumulative selection. It would look like the random sentence generator in Dawkins' example.

At this point I have to ask: do you understand evolution at all?

Do you understand that there are selection pressures weighing down the definitely random mutations organisms go through? Do you understand that entirely random changes like you're describing would probably not be healthy for the animal, causing it to die off? Do you comprehend that only those organisms with alterations that allow them to survive in their environment will be able to propagate, thereby creating a system where certain traits repeat because of their favorable effects? Do you get natural selection, in other words?

See, this is the problem with your line of argument: you keep going on about targets as a way of slipping your god in under the door, while steadfastly refusing to so much as talk about the actual, natural process that we've already shown you performs the function you're thinking about.

By positing a god in this, you're saying that these "targets" are being aimed for from the outset, but in reality they are simply the result of an organism evolving to fill an ecological niche, like how water filling a naturally eroded basin will take its shape. The fact that two natural processes happen together and result in a similar shape two times does not mean that there was some designing force pushing them into it.

[Alex K]

He really doesn't it seeems.

Heywood, could you describe in your own words how "darwinian" evolution is supposed to work, and then place your objection?

[rsb]

Dawkins biggest blunder is the 747 from a dump.

We ARE the dump of evolutionary history.

Far from KAHN!!!!!!! in star treck, we are ... less than that.

However I have hope and hope past dumps and many others are excavated by well, genealogists, or scientists. or faithful seekers of truth.

[max-greece]

What would "evolution without a target," even look like, to you?

Unguided evolution would be descent with change. There would be no cumulative selection. It would look like the random sentence generator in Dawkins' example.

---

I will have one more go at this to see how honest you are being in your inability to see how ridiculous you are being.



This pig-like creature lived in India about 55 million years ago. It was about the size of a domestic cat.

What did it become?

If you know that's fine - but are you really claiming its off-spring were potentially predictable? A potential target? Guided design?

What designer - if aiming for the target state of today's creatures (its offspring) would start from here?

The creature probably became a few different species. But if I had to guess which species is the answer you are looking for, I would say homo sapiens. I remember watching a documentary about human evolution and it featured a creature like this living near water. My second guess would be elephant.

If human beings lived in micro gravity for a long enough time, I predict we would effectively loose our legs. If we didn't loose our legs/feet they would become more arm/hand like.

If a designer is in the picture so to speak. He wouldn't start from your creature. He would have started at abiogenesis.

Well I would like to thank you for not cheating and looking it up.

Its actually one of 2 fancied originators of cetaceans (the other being a species called Mesonychid).

So one of the above, in all probability led to:



The Blue Whale!

Now tell me how that particular line of evolution would have ever been a predictable target state, actually from either end of the spectrum.

You can almost the whole story at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_evolution

That's the great thing about Whales. They preserve particularly well so we have an entire lineage to look at.

[Mudhammam]

Warning! Let me preface by saying that as free thinkers, it is okay to question science and authorities in science

Correction: there are no authorities in science. There are experts