Darwin's Black Box - Michael J. Behe and Intelligent Design

[Laura]

So in this scenario it's botanists who have trouble understanding why trees have evolved the traits they have? What makes you think that, and what are you basing that on?

Have you read "Darwinian Fairytales" yet?

 

[Anthony]

A short video that I think relates to this topic (hopefully for obvious reasons "scientists wondering why trees act in such an altruistic way").

Altrusim can hardly be understood unless these scientiest are willing to question the assumptions of the prevailing materialistic theory, which we know is rarely the case, especially since it comes with a price of being ostracized from the scientific community, among other things, as shown by Leisola. What usually happens is that things like altrusim get twisted and turned into a caricature to support their theory, claiming that altrusim is really nothing more than poorly disguisde selfishness.

 

[Cousteau]

It's interesting to consider that free will is not only the most basic, direct, common-sense experience, but that it is also a fundamental aspect of reality itself, i.e. of consciousness. In other words, the universe is structured so that free will is always and everywhere a reality. It can't be otherwise. No being can be truly coerced; they can only be influenced in ways to give up their own free will, some of which will be more 'coercive' in nature than others, but nothing reaching the level of complete and total overriding of the nature of consciousness. Even that can be intense (e.g., hyperdimensional influences and psychopathic manipulations and "Sophie's choices"), but at the most basic level, everything always chooses.

As for the materialists rejecting it because it implies supernaturalism, here they're only victims of their own semantics. They define nature as being materalistic and atheistic, and perception as being limited ONLY to sensory experience. So yes, free will MUST be supernatural by that definition, and so they have to reject it, because naturalism is true. But naturalism doesn't have to be materialistic, atheistic, or sensationist. In fact, the expression of free will (and the existence of consciousness, a higher/divine reality, and nonsensory perception) is part of the fabric of reality, part of the laws of nature and causation (i.e. final causation).

Long time lurker here.

You nailed this down pretty good.

Thanks.

 

[whitecoast]

Whitecoast, I recommend reading Stove's book

I have, thanks for asking. I found Stove to be underwhelming, and at points I did end up scrawling Dunning-Kruger or Straw Man in the margins. I know that's a harsh criticism, but he has admitted that he is a philosopher trying to wrangle with a discipline that's scientific/historical in nature, and it shows strongly in his methodology of pouring over quotes from very old thinkers that well over 90% of today's biologists haven't read, and taking that as some gospel representation of neodarwin theory. This might have credence when tracing the origins of a philosophical argument, but it as Darwin's work stands now it bears little resemblance to the types of problems and discoveries today's biologists preoccupy themselves with. I'll give some examples.

In the first third of the book he takes Malthus and Darwin to task on the idea that species always increase until they're so many that food is scarce enough to cause a certain number of them to die off each generation. It is a bad idea, obviously, but biologists know this and have corrected the misunderstandings and refined their understanding of that. R versus K selection are two types of lifestyle and reproductive strategies, and Malthus and Darwin based on their lack of understanding mis-characterized all organisms as having an R type strategy (i.e. of just reproducing like crazy in the bountiful season). So Neodarwinism as it is practiced today accounts for that, making Stove's specific complaint about Darwin kind of irrelevant. What's especially painful for me to read is that he DOES mention that modern biology has dispensed with a lot of that in favor of more sophisticated and empirically validated understandings (mentioning R versus K by name), but all he can say in response to this is something to the effect of:

But it almost certainly has been noticed before, by authors whom I have not read. For there is nowadays a branch of neo-Darwinism which is concerned with "r/K" theory: that is, with the spectrum of reproductive strategies between that of pines (say) with their many offspring but no parental care, and that of man, with few offspring but maximum parental care. It is reasonable to suppose that some of the more historically minded of these scientists have at some time read The Origin of Species. If they have, their hair must have stood on end, when they found Darwin implying that the difference in child mortality between pines and man, or between any two species, is either non-existent or too small to be worth mentioning. For this reason I believe that at least some of these people must have noticed the horse before I did.

I was honestly expecting more from Stove, considering that this one paragraph made me seriously question the point of the last five essays in the book, where he give such attention to these details that one could be forgiven for believing the outdated understanding is actually representative of the field of natural history in general. It would be like a paleontologist looking at a skeleton of an Australopithecus and saying, "Ridiculous to think a beast like this could design ships to fly it to the moon!" As someone who studied biology for four years I didn't read anything in his book that increased my understanding of particular features of organisms or biological systems the way I did in Behe or Perry Marshal.

As for the whole selfishness thing, I felt like it was a repeat of the above phenomenon, only ending with inclusive fitness with some (imo) failed attempts to debunk it. Some of his examples are just so bad and not-even-wrong and strawman-y I feel compelled to share them without comment, since I think anyone smart enough to be here could figure out the problems.

PART OF WHAT the inclusive fitness theory says is that people love their children because they have half their genes in common with each child. But children are not the only things which people have half their genes in common with. Each woman shares half her genes with each egg she produces, whether fertilized or not, and a man shares half his genes with each sperm he produces. The theory of inclusive fitness would therefore seem to predict that every woman loves each of her eggs as much as her children, and that each man loves every one of his sperm like a father his son. This certainly does not sound like anyone I know: not even remotely like. But I cannot deny that my experience of life is small. Does it sound like anyone you know, or have ever heard of?
...
THERE ARE YET other untoward consequences of the theory of inclusive fitness, which have neither been recognized as requiring a patch, nor been mistaken for beauty spots. They are simply never (at least as far as I know) mentioned at all. One of these concerns the advantages which can be gained from incest, both between siblings, and between parents and offspring, if the theory is true.
...
A male robin red breast then, at least when defending a territory, cannot even tell the difference between a bit of red wool and a trespassing rival, even though a trespassing rival could quite easily be his brother. Yet the theory of inclusive fitness requires quires us to believe that he can tell the difference between his brother and a cousin, and again, between a cousin and an unrelated lated conspecific. Well, it is not logically, or even biologically, impossible. possible. It is just incomparably more probable that he cannot.

No, these wild Darwinian stories about "cooperation having evolved because it was an advantage for the species" don't really cut it.

I take this to mean you think that cooperating isn't a good strategy for survival and thriving? Pretty much every multicellular organism, microbial biofilm, and social grouping of animals disagrees with you, and whatever axioms you (and Stove) used. Like I mentioned earlier on in the thread, competition is a costly state to be in, so adaptations that mitigate that by inducing diversification of resource use or mutualism are readily welcome (whether those adaptations are randomly acquired or engineered).

If you are a selfish liar, you always "win" against an altruist. If you are an altruistic tree committing suicide "for the benefit of your species", you simply disappear from the gene pool, including your altruism. There is no way altruism could have "evolved" in the Darwinian framework.

No, you don't "always win". You win against altruists that lack inbuilt defenses against bad actors, freeloaders, or exploiters. The ones who do are fine, and are in a better position to cooperate, whether those defense and proclivities toward mutual aid are culturally or genetically acquired through random processes or engineering. By the way, the video never said anything about trees committing suicide to feed its neighbors. Even from an engineering standpoint that would be ridiculous. It said ones that were sick or dying release their nutrients and essentially recycle themselves. An analogous process goes on in cellular apoptosis, when the immune system identifies and destroys cells that could become cancerous (i.e. selfish). Cooperation is mathematically more optimal than competition and betrayal in the long-term (which after all is the scale that evolution works on). That is the principle behind multicellularity and other symbiotic populations and communities.

If you wanted to find out what caused the trees to start being so symbiotic with eachother, you'd probably have to look at the DNA of all the plant and fungi species involved, examine the structures of the transmembrane proteins, compare those genes photogenically with others to see when approximately the mutation, gene duplication, and/or transposition occurred. Maybe even examine the pollen and spore data from soil cores and other fossils to see what else was going on at the time in the ecosystem, etc. If you did find some kind of point mutation, we would have no way of knowing if that was caused by some stray UV light or some ID without a time machine. So that kind of question is more philosophical than scientific in nature, and so (at least in my undergraduate studies) was only was dealt with in passing during first year.

That's also why Darwinians so desperately try to paint altruism as hypocrisy: "no, it's not really unselfish, it's just selfish in a different way!" So I think hlat is right, there is a psychopathic spirit behind this sort of thinking, a complete inability to conceive of something that is a common experience for normal people: that living things, not only but especially humans, can and do act unselfishly - no strings attached, just because it's morally right, because it is part of an objective, natural law of the spiritual world that they can sense. As opposed to psychopaths of course, who cannot.

People who believe in evolution by natural selection of natural variations aren't intrinsically painting altruism as hypocrisy. That's a conceit of a few schizoidal opportunists like Dawkins and (I will point out ) various ID and young earth creationist proponents who try and use the implications of neodarwinism as evidence of its falseness, which is a logical fallacy. Stove does this a lot in fact, bringing up eugenics and, of course, selfishness in an insinuating fashion.

It's not representative of people who believe in evolution as it's taught, nor is it intrinsically part of the mechanism of evolution (i.e. natural variation acted upon by natural selection). The mechanism itself is merely descriptive, so whatever the reasons people use prescriptive language like "survival of the fittest, most selfish", it is quite wrong-headed in what it implies. This is one of the things Stove got right. His eighth, ninth, and tenth essays were my favorite. Not that that has, again, any real bearing on the validity of Neodarwinism as a theory.

Or think about it this way: if you really believe, as Darwinists do and promote, that your own altruistic impulses are just a residue of some thing that helped your species survive - why on earth should you follow that impulse? Living proof for the psychopathic flavor of this thinking is how today's people do behave; look around.

To wax Bibical, "Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou?"

It doesn't really count as something against it, since you run into that same conundrum even if you're a creation of ID - "okay great, why listen to it?" Well, your apparatus of reason and sense is itself a creation of that random variation or ID, so damned if you do and damned if you don't. Maybe through some loophole you connect with yourself in the future and become self-creating in some way in a higher reality to free yourself, but until then you're just kind of along for the ride, OSIT.

To take it down a notch less philosophical: cooperation between organisms exists. This cooperation also has causes, whether cultural or constitutional, and whether a product of chance or purpose. All our understanding of altruism is to be understood with respect to what those causes are. That's part and parcel to understanding how our machine works. People who say "altrusim don't real" are really just a strain of unreality, like a lot of postmodern thinkers.

If you bring up more of Stove's book, I'd be happy to go over it if it wasn't covered already.

 

[Laura]

I have, thanks for asking. I found Stove to be underwhelming, and at points I did end up scrawling Dunning-Kruger or Straw Man in the margins.

WC, sorry, but based on your reponses to other's comments where you have clearly missed the point (I'll let them correct your perception as they have time; I don't have much right now myself), as well as your missing the crux of the matter in Stove more than once, I'm afraid that my opinion is that you are suffering from Dunning Kruger.

 

[Pierre]

he is a philosopher trying to wrangle with a discipline that's scientific/historical in nature, and it shows strongly in his methodology of pouring over quotes from very old thinkers that well over 90% of today's biologists haven't read, and taking that as some gospel representation of neodarwin theory. This might have credence when tracing the origins of a philosophical argument, but it as Darwin's work stands now it bears little resemblance to the types of problems and discoveries today's biologists preoccupy themselves with.

What's especially painful for me to read is that he DOES mention that modern biology has dispensed with a lot of that in favor of more sophisticated and empirically validated understandings

So Neodarwinism as it is practiced today accounts for that

believing the outdated understanding is actually representative of the field of natural history in general

It's not representative of people who believe in evolution as it's taught,

Not that that has, again, any real bearing on the validity of Neodarwinism as a theory

From the quotes above it seems to me you are referring to an updated neodarwinist take on evolution, that has little resemblance with Darwin's work.

The problem is that neodarwinism is not a theory (see the underlined quote of yours above), it's rather a hodge podge of often mutually exclusive assumptions spread over 150 years (from Wallace or Romanes, to Dawkins) trying to catch up with observations that falsified the previous neodarwinian assumptions.

To me, neodarwinism looks like a desperate ideological attempt to make the square peg of materialism fit into the round hole of a Universe pervaded by non-materialism.

In any case, to clarify the matter, it would be useful that you describe the tenets of this modern neodarwinism you are alluding to.

I've tried to find your answer to this point. Twice you mention "natural variation acted upon by natural selection". It seems quite vague to me, since depending on the definition given to the word "natural", the meaning of the whole statement can be drastically modified. So, can you clarify this point too?

 

[Gaby]

As someone who studied biology for four years I didn't read anything in his book that increased my understanding of particular features of organisms or biological systems the way I did in Behe or Perry Marshal.

You seem pretty identified, so consider that you are underestimating the impact to which you have absorbed Neodarwinism thinking and "logic". Perhaps Stove rubs you the wrong way because he is not a biologist and as a philosopher, he is quite good at getting to the crux of the matter and at pointing out selection and substitution of seemingly uncomfortable premises. Stove is particularly good at pointing out pathological thinking, so I would make an effort to understand his views. It is the most reasonable and open minded approach to take if you have been indoctrinated with pathological thinking since pretty much the day you are born.

 

[Cosmos]

A question or rather observation went through my head today not directly connected to the specifics of Darwin's theory but rather on the how and why anybody would come up with such a concept in the first place, as Darwin did? Or in other words, what kind of outlook/perception on reality and nature must one possess to even go into that direction and perceive and pursue things in that way? And not only as a scientist? And after thinking about it some more, I think Lobaczewski's descriptions might hold the key to that question/puzzle, similarly as the concept of the C's called "organic portals" does?

I was trying to remember for example how I looked at life from a very early age, including nature. No matter what I observed in my surroundings, in society, in nature, or the universe at large, I think it left a deep mark of mystery and some sense of awe in me, when observing it. In other words: everything was filled by mysteries and wonder, or a "spirit" if you like. And a lot of question marks on top of that and nothing like dogmatic simplistic ideas for solutions were on the horizon. I think about the last thing I would have come up with as an explanation, or route to study, or as an idea, to make sense of those wonders, would have been something like Darwin did; a simplistic, materialistic and linear idea/concept of how this might work that removes all higher questions and "spirit". And I was thinking that way even though I was keenly interested in all kind of science disciplines at the same time; from Paleontology, to Physics, to History, to Mathematics, to Geology etc.

Of course, it is hard for me or anyone to really know how we perceived things early on in life in hindsight, but I think a darwinistic approach likely wouldn't have been even slightly on my horizon or radar. In fact, that line of thinking would have been pretty much out of the question and foreign to me. I mean, about the last thing I would have though of when observing awe-inspiring complex behaviors and phenomena would have been something linear or simplistic that removes higher possibilities. And I mean I was thinking/perceiving things in that way at a very early age even before kindergarten started and well into the first indoctrination lessons in school.

So, what if Darwin and similar people who shaped our modern materialistic way of thinking and living, experienced and perceived life quite differently from how normal (or souled people if you will) perceive it? And what if humanity as a whole (and souled people specifically) are very prone to not recognize when spiritual abnormal people write and create such abnormal theories and ideas and thus are very much at risk to adopt those simplistic ideas over time themselves?

What if Lobaczewski was right all along, in that psychologically abnormal people tend to create (sometimes written) works that influence normal people for decades into the future, so that they and their offspring also become soulless, or gravitate towards more STS?

What if the ideas of people like Darwin are partly channeled through them (or directed) by 4D STS, because 4D STS, similarly to Darwin (aka. abnormal people like Lobaczewski describes) really see things that way and are thus on a similar "wavelength" that makes it easy for them to channeled stuff like this through? Not necessarily because they consciously are out for a conspiracy but intrinsically gravitate towards "the dark side" and "infect" ever more increasing numbers of normal people?

One might even argue, that in Darwin's times (where there was still a hell of a lot more "spirit" thinking around in all parts of society, compared to today!) it must have been even harder to even come up with such ideas, and more crucially, to be able to make those abnormal thinking patterns prevail, compared with today!

Which raises another possibility; could it be that in the times when Darwin and other famous materialistic "thinkers" (of all types and disciplines) were creating their works (that influence us so strongly today), they must have been, by necessity, rather pretty pathologically persistent/possessed to even be able to stand a chance against the then still widely held beliefs and structures governed and created by souled people and their ideas?

So following this line of possibility, it would follow that Darwin and Co. could have been in fact quite out of the ordinary pathological, considering their times and places? Or in other words; there could be a good likelihood that they were on the far end of the pathological spectrum?

If you would have a Darwin in today's world in contrast for example, with similar ideas, he would have a comparatively much easier time to establish and distribute his pathological outlook on reality than in the times back then, since the whole human world is by now infected in one way or the other by this materialistic thinking?

 

[luc]

Whitecoast, I'm actually puzzled at your reading of Stove. Perhaps the crux is this:

I have, thanks for asking. I found Stove to be underwhelming, and at points I did end up scrawling Dunning-Kruger or Straw Man in the margins. I know that's a harsh criticism, but he has admitted that he is a philosopher trying to wrangle with a discipline that's scientific/historical in nature, and it shows strongly in his methodology of pouring over quotes from very old thinkers that well over 90% of today's biologists haven't read, and taking that as some gospel representation of neodarwin theory.

Philosophy (if it is any good) is nothing but rigid thinking ("thinking with a hammer"), tracing lines of reasoning to their origins and showing errors should they exist, and making visible hidden assumptions. So of course he quotes "old thinkers" - and not not just any "old thinkers", but the very people whose thoughts and assumptions still dominate the thinking of people today, often without them knowing it. So of course many of today's Darwinian extremists haven't read any of the works that created their ideas in the first place, but that doesn't make it any better - on the contrary, that's why a work like Stove's is so desperately needed!

In the first third of the book he takes Malthus and Darwin to task on the idea that species always increase until they're so many that food is scarce enough to cause a certain number of them to die off each generation. It is a bad idea, obviously, but biologists know this and have corrected the misunderstandings and refined their understanding of that.

You make it sound as if this was some minor error because Darwin & gang didn't know better at that time, and as science progressed, this was corrected thanks to new discoveries. Wrong! Darwin & gang's assumptions were, and are, complete, utter, ridiculous nonsense. It speaks volumes that they even came up with this and generalized it. The schizoidal mind in action, it seems.

And if you think "well, okay, but that's still not important for the Darwinian theory", think again: there is a reason why Darwin came up with this nonsense. The reason is this: For "random mutations + natural selection" to work out at all, you need this insane pressure; otherwise there is no way any rare mutation could be selected. You need a very specific, huge pressure so that the mutation can make any difference. You see this principle in action in malaria vs. the human immune system, as Behe describes it in "edge of evolution": if one single mutation can save the day, because this makes a difference against an insane level of pressure, "adaptation" can work, although still in a very limited way. So Darwin must have seen this, or intuited that his theory would need this sort of thing to be convincing, and so he conveniently glossed over the OBVIOUS fact that such insane pressure against the food supply simply doesn't exist if you look around, except in the rarest of circumstances.

As for R/K and all that, this is just another of the various (ridiculous) attempts by Darwinians to save their precious theory with the stroke of a pen. But keep in mind that the whole point of Darwinism was to provide a materialist framework for the existence of complex life. So it all comes back to (non-guided) mutation and natural selection. So you can't just come along and say "okay, some species have large numbers of offspring, and some less but they care more for them, therefore no problem, sir!". It's just stating something very obvious that could be explained by tons of things. Also, Darwinism just doesn't "predict" few offspring; it predicts loads. And any human who doesn't have as many offspring as he possibly could produce, employing all kinds of tricks and schemes (like offloading) to have them survive, IS contradicting Darwinism. Plus, even if the whole R/K thing would fly, you still would need to explain how there could be any Darwinian evolution with species that don't multiply in huge numbers and that are not up against very specific, incredibly high pressures.

As for the whole selfishness thing, I felt like it was a repeat of the above phenomenon, only ending with inclusive fitness with some (imo) failed attempts to debunk it. Some of his examples are just so bad and not-even-wrong and strawman-y I feel compelled to share them without comment, since I think anyone smart enough to be here could figure out the problems.

These are not straw men, because ridiculous as Stove's examples are, they are what these inclusive fitness theories DO imply! As he says - how many of these ridiculous and obviously wrong predictions do you allow for a theory before you simply say: this theory is completely wrong!? You know, if you really believe we are all about multiplying genes, and therefore are more altruistic towards everything that contains our genes, you really do need to solve problems like "why aren't sperms more altruistic towards each other" or why certain micro-organisms who share large amounts of genes battle each other and so on. Ridiculous, yes? But not because of Stove's examples, but because of the ridiculous theory producing them! Once you get rid of that theory, you stop trying to defend it against all evidence and logical fallacies.

I take this to mean you think that cooperating isn't a good strategy for survival and thriving? Pretty much every multicellular organism, microbial biofilm, and social grouping of animals disagrees with you, and whatever axioms you (and Stove) used.

Jesus, I don't deny at all that this is a good strategy! (Notice that you said "thriving", which is one of the typical sleight of hands Darwinians do all the time: sneak in a rich word that makes the whole thing sound plausible; but Darwinism isn't about "thriving", it's about surviving and maximizing offspring!) What I (and Stove) deny is the Darwinian explanation! Altruism cannot have evolved, because in the Darwinian world, the first altruists would be instantly outgunned and dead!

People who believe in evolution by natural selection of natural variations aren't intrinsically painting altruism as hypocrisy. That's a conceit of a few schizoidal opportunists like Dawkins and (I will point out ) various ID and young earth creationist proponents who try and use the implications of neodarwinism as evidence of its falseness, which is a logical fallacy. Stove does this a lot in fact, bringing up eugenics and, of course, selfishness in an insinuating fashion.

You contradict yourself here: first you say it's just a few guys like Dawkins who say these things, then you go on and blame IDers for using the (ethical, I think you mean) implications of neodarwinism as evidence for its falseness. So what is it? Guys like Dawkins or implications of the theory? This is the typical confusion you find in Darwinian thinking: sometimes they say we are ruled by selfish genes; when people are appalled by this, they say "oh, but of course altruism is good, and we can get over our selfish genes", the obvious contradiction notwithstanding. When you point out the contradiction, they say "our altruism is just an illusion"; if you reply that you think this is nonsense, they reply "no no, our altruism is caused by selfish genes, because it's a good survival strategy" and on and on, everything completely self-contradictory.

It doesn't really count as something against it, since you run into that same conundrum even if you're a creation of ID - "okay great, why listen to it?" Well, your apparatus of reason and sense is itself a creation of that random variation or ID, so damned if you do and damned if you don't. Maybe through some loophole you connect with yourself in the future and become self-creating in some way in a higher reality to free yourself, but until then you're just kind of along for the ride, OSIT.

You really don't see the difference between recognizing something higher, a deeper purpose of life and the universe, and some ridiculous argument that "altruistic behavior was a good thing for the tribe and therefore we have it"? In the latter view: why would you not cheat and act selfish and lie and scheme whenever you can get away with it? It will pay off, after all! But if you believe there are natural laws, there is a purpose, and there is an intelligent universe/God/whatever, you have something to strive for, something to set against your selfish impulses. It's beyond me how you could doubt that here on this forum, of all places!

I think Gaby is right:

Perhaps Stove rubs you the wrong way because he is not a biologist and as a philosopher, he is quite good at getting to the crux of the matter and at pointing out selection and substitution of seemingly uncomfortable premises.

Selection and substitution to shield your neodarwinian thinking patterns seems to be what's going on here, IMO. This would fit with what you said yourself:

So that kind of question is more philosophical than scientific in nature, and so (at least in my undergraduate studies) was only was dealt with in passing during first year.

And no wonder! Indoctrinated scientists hate sound philosophy. Because it makes their unconscious assumptions conscious, shows how ridiculous they are, and to what ridiculous conclusions they lead. It also brings to light all the contradictions in their beliefs. But they would rather prefer ignoring all that, and/or jumping through endless hoops to save their sacred cows.

 

[Windmill knight]

A question or rather observation went through my head today not directly connected to the specifics of Darwin's theory but rather on the how and why anybody would come up with such a concept in the first place, as Darwin did? Or in other words, what kind of outlook/perception on reality and nature must one possess to even go into that direction and perceive and pursue things in that way? And not only as a scientist? And after thinking about it some more, I think Lobaczewski's descriptions might hold the key to that question/puzzle, similarly as the concept of the C's called "organic portals" does?

I have a friend who is a geneticist and he once told me with admiration in his voice that Darwin got his idea from economics. That is, in the same way that some companies grow and prosper in a free market and others go under, living organisms engaged in a similar competition, with similar results. It's a clever idea, but you're right in that it totally misses the awe and wonder of life - and furthermore, the clever idea just happens to be wrong - for several reasons.

I've only just started reading Darwinian Fairytales and I'll have to agree that from the quotes from Darwin so far he totally sounds like a schizoid. Something I was thinking about these grand schizoidal type of theories is their lack of humbleness in face of reality. The 'bearded guys' just think they got it all figured out and they'll be so kind to explain it to us the lesser intellects. There's no room for 'this part of the theory may be wrong', or 'it has its limits, cause there's so much yet to be explained', and so on. Like Marxism. Now, I've read here and there about how Darwin was puzzled about certain things, like the Cambrian explosion, but any self-doubts he may have had didn't survive the test of time, and now all the Dawkinses out there are just so sure of his doctrine, aren't they?

Maybe these kind of grand theories often carry a schizoidal taste because most normal people wouldn't dare to pretend they got it all figured out - because they can sense and understand that there is still a whole lot of mystery out there, the very thing that will inspire them to be religious, by the way. But schizoidal types think they got the whole banana, as if they were somehow more 'evolved', when in fact their blindness means they 'devolved' (but perhaps by devolving became better adapted to our historical time ;) ).

 

[Windmill knight]

So the consciousness of the squirrel needs to already have its eyes open before it can open the physical brain's eyes, and even then, it may need to wait for the right opportunity environmentally. I always wondered why we need the Wave to "evolve", why it wouldn't happen individually and at any "time" the individual is ready. It seems like there were a few exceptions that may have done just that, according to the C's. But generally - it seems like evolution happens in spurts - like a few hundred thousand years ago all of a sudden humans show up, and according to that recent article, possibly most of the species of plants and animals in general.

Interesting. I've wonder the same myself. If evolution does happen in spurts - like the famous Cambrian explosion - does that mean that the cause of some of those spurts is no other than a (or the) Wave doing the rounds? Will the Wave hitting Earth be like a new Cambrian explosion? Hmm...

 

[aragorn]

I think it's kind of idiotic to characterized people who study evolution under the neodarwin model as psychopaths. I mean, you have these scientists who are studying the altruistic behavior of trees. Does the fact that many of them think that those tree variations are caused by random mutations really mean that the scientists doing the studying lack a conscience?

I'm a bit surprised, that as a long time member, you refer to another forum member's input as idiotic. I think what hlat is getting at, is that there's some ponerization going on (and has been going on for a long time) – some of the 'fathers' of these ideas might have had serious character disturbances, some might even have been 'full blown' psychopaths, and these few individuals have helped in spreading these ideas. This spreading of 'conversive thinking' and ponerization is described in detail in Łobaczewski's book (PP), so a reread of that might be helpful. As with global warming, not all of the scientists are crazy and/or 'evil', they've just been brainwashed (by ponerization=spreading of pathological ideas) to believe it. Or, they might have been coerced (the book Heretic describes the process very well) or they are just 'plain' greedy and narcissistic, wanting to profit from these ideas.

Reading you're later posts about Stove's book, I can say that it took me a while to adjust to the style of writing he has. After reading Behe and other scientists, I was perhaps expecting the same kind of evidence based arguing. But now 60% in the book I'm just loving the way he thinks! He's using common sense logical thinking and arguing, and to drive home his points, he uses the clearest and strongest vignettes of real life situations. Do not read it as a biology book, read it as a logical 'layman's' deep thinking.

 

[luc]

I'm a bit surprised, that as a long time member, you refer to another forum member's input as idiotic.

Indeed. Whitecoast, I think your recent posts here had a strange emotional undercurrent, like a stubborn, rebelling and condescending flavor. Besides calling someone's comment "idiotic", telling me that "every organism disagrees with you" etc., there's also this:

If you bring up more of Stove's book, I'd be happy to go over it if it wasn't covered already.

Oh how nice of you! Thank you for being ready to give up your precious time to show us how wrong we all are!

Look, nobody is saying that you must love Stove's book or agree with everything he says. I myself had similar thoughts as you had sometimes - like "no, that's really a ridiculous comparison". But then I thought about it and realized that it only seems ridiculous because I substitute elements of neo-Darwinian thinking with common sense; it really is as ridiculous as Stove shows it to be, IMO.

We can discuss these things of course, but you might want to look into why you suddenly switched to "enlightened preacher telling us dummies how it is" mode, recourse to authority and all ("I studied biology, you fools!"). You could have just brought up certain specific doubts, and asked what others think about it and if others also found these things unconvincing. I have no idea what's going on here

 

[John G]

I think it's kind of idiotic to characterized people who study evolution under the neodarwin model as psychopaths. I mean, you have these scientists who are studying the altruistic behavior of trees. Does the fact that many of them think that those tree variations are caused by random mutations really mean that the scientists doing the studying lack a conscience?

Too much STS might be a better more general characterization in that there is imprisoned knowledge aka an inability to look outside the box. STS can be too self absorbed in a science sense as well as a social sense.

 

[Scottie]

"I studied biology, you fools!"

What a person studies doesn't really matter much. Sure, it matters in the sense that it provides a foundational knowledge base about a certain topic, but that's about it.

For example, I've lost count of the number of people I have met who have degrees in psychology, but virtually no application of that knowledge to themselves - no real insight into the inner workings of their own minds. It's almost like clockwork.

And very often, that's the problem: formal education itself is simply a foundation, and that foundation can be used in one of two ways:
1. As a label that is used to justify or reinforce one's self-image, but not much more
2. As a launching point from which to expand ones understanding of life, the universe, and everything

Practical example: When I was at uni, I wondered about two things (um, among others) and asked a professor about them. The first was if microwave frequency radio waves are evil. The reply was no, because it's non-ionizing radiation. That's a standard response, and from quite a few studies, we now see that most likely, it's entirely wrong.

The second question I asked was about remote interception of signals from a computer. Puters emit radio waves. Theoretically, if one had a good enough antenna and amplifier, one could pick up and "decode" those emissions from afar, thereby seeing what a person was doing on their puter. No no, I was reassured, that's not possible because the signals would be so weak as to be below the noise floor (IOW, they would look like background noise). Fast forward about 10 years, and oh! Look at that! It became public knowledge that the alphabet soup agencies already had a gizmo that could pick up the emissions from a puter monitor cable or whatever and effectively see what you were doing on your puter - noise floor be damned!

This all happens because "knowing something" is comfortable. It's control. It's organizing the universe into something that I understand, so now it's less scary and I can sleep at night. On the other hand, knowledge is also something that, if true, can protect - as we have seen over and over again.

The alternative is to stubbornly cling to our knowledge even when we know it's wrong. It's tiring to have to re-evaluate everything we believe every five minutes. And yet, that's kind of the point of Life on Planet Earth. Yesterday, Right and Left meant this; today it's totally different. Or, "I'm a true patriot and will always support and love my country" even when that country starts running around and killing people for the benefit of psycho corporations.

Things change, and it is our job to keep up with those changes, to read what IS, and to expand our understanding and thereby grow along with the times.

That necessarily means that every now and then, we'll be chucking a book across the room, we'll feel angry, depressed, identified, etc. If that's not happening, probably we're not doing it right. Oh, and by the time we wake up tomorrow morning, many things that were true will be false, and vice versa!

But when those times come, that is precisely when we need to have enough faith and trust in our fellow travelers that maybe they are seeing something we are not.

It's all quite amusing when you think about it. We're souls in bodies in a "realm" that apparently doesn't really exist - at least not as we think it does. On top of that, you might have: "I'm a husband, a father, a car salesman, a business degree holder, a member of the local Rotary club, a head of a boy scout troop, an American, a Republican, etc." So, in other words, we're consciousness inside an illusion inside an illusion inside an illusion inside an illusion inside...

Wave-reading consciousness units, indeed! What a mess...