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

[Aeneas]

I point you to a free book online. I explain some of the contents as I understand it. I tell you what you can expect to read in the book. Am I somehow obligated to convince you of this? If you're really interested and open-minded about it, you'll go see for yourself. If you're not, no amount of typing by me will help you.

I understand why the book is free as no one would buy it otherwise. But joking aside. On this forum it is not enough just to make some claims and then when challenged to refer to a book. To the very simple suggestion that you provide examples of what you asserted to be so common, you point to the book as the answer. When I quote from the web site of McCarthy, you ignore it and says that I should read the whole book before saying anything.

McCarthy on his website is all over the place with lots of assumption, but little content. The noise to signal ratio is high, so it is not surprising that people who go to his site gets exasperated. And if you have read the book and is unable to answer to direct question other that pointing to gametes and meiosis and a fistful of assumptions, then that does not help us to understand why this is such a miraculous new way of seeing things. And to me it belongs to neo-Darwinian theories, but then I more a farmer than an intellectual so I could be wrong.

Besides, I don't get what's so great about ID. It only explains how it didn't happen. Nothing more.

Perhaps your point of defending McCarthy might be that you don't like the idea of intelligence being behind this, but neither do the neo-Darwinists.

McCarthy at least uses known and documented mechanisms to outline a more plausible way in which evolution might have happened.

No, he doesn't. His key thing is assumptions. He makes a case about how wild yaks can mate with domestic yaks as evidence of hybridization, but they belong to the same genus, Bos. The wild yak is the ancestor to the domesticated yak. This is hardly some astonishing revelation.

Anyway, I'm not married to this theory.

I think you are. If in doubt reread the last two pages of this thread. The mirror from other forumites might become clearer.

 

[Revolucionar]

I did not come here to defend the theory, just to put it out there and to provide a few details so that people might go and read it. I'm am in no way a materialist and before coming across this theory I never once believed the mainstream accidental evolution account. I find the possibility outlined by McCarthy fascinating, especially in the context of human origins. I was hoping for a civil discussion into the merits of the theory, but it seems no one is inclined to actually read it. In my opinion, the truth lies somewhere in between ID and stabilisation theory.

 

[Joe]

Why would you assume that a dog couldn't fertilise a cow?

Eh...

What mechanism exactly precludes this?

Eh...

 

[Revolucionar]

Eh...



Eh...

No, really. These are just knee jerk reactions and not how science is done. Hybridisation is prevalent in nature, but the true extent of it and possibility of highly disparate organisms to interbreed is not studied enough, exactly because when someone mentions a hybrid, people always think of deformities and sterility. I just think that whole issue warrants investigation. Hybrid zone - Wikipedia

 

[Joe]

No, really. These are just knee jerk reactions and not how science is done. Hybridisation is prevalent in nature, but the true extent of it and possibility of highly disparate organisms to interbreed is not studied enough, exactly because when someone mentions a hybrid, people always think of deformities and sterility. I just think that whole issue warrants investigation. Hybrid zone - Wikipedia

You asked, "Why would you assume that a dog couldn't fertilise a cow?", as if it's self-evident that such an assumption is wrong, when it's not. It's a very reasonable assumption because, generally speaking, a dog is much smaller than a cow, and therefore highly unlikely to be able to fertilize a cow.

Then, bizarrely, you ask "what mechanism exactly precludes this?" as if it's a bloody mystery. But I'll answer in kind: "because dog's have not yet been observed making or using ladders".

If this is the thinking you are using to deal with your problem in another topic, I'm not sure much success is likely.

 

[Revolucionar]

You asked, "Why would you assume that a dog couldn't fertilise a cow?", as if it's self-evident that such an assumption is wrong, when it's not. It's a very reasonable assumption because, generally speaking, a dog is much smaller than a cow, and therefore highly unlikely to be able to fertilize a cow.

Then, bizarrely, you ask "what mechanism exactly precludes this?" as if it's a bloody mystery. But I'll answer in kind: "because dog's have not yet been observed making or using ladders".

If this is the thinking you are using to deal with your problem in another topic, I'm not sure much success is likely.

There are quite large dogs out there, as large as teenage cows. On the other hand, a bull could impregnate a bitch. It could go both ways.

 

[Aeneas]

There are quite large dogs out there, as large as teenage cows. On the other hand, a bull could impregnate a bitch. It could go both ways.

You might look into the sexual organs of these animals to understand why such a suggestion is ridiculous. Or look at the sexual organs of a duck and a beaver since that was also suggested af if it was even a possibility in the creation of the platypus. Try and just contemplate how that in actuality would happen and in your own mind contemplate those steps. If you come out thinking that is even a possibility, then go on to try at the molecular level and how many things is needed for that to happen. It probably goes past the 10^10000.

Do you not think farmers would have tried these things if it was even a possibility? A cow-sheep-pig, that could give milk during the year, provide plenty of wool for winter and be slaughtered for Christmas for pork roast. Sound like just the thing that could win a nobel prize.

 

[Revolucionar]

You might look into the sexual organs of these animals to understand why such a suggestion is ridiculous. Or look at the sexual organs of a duck and a beaver since that was also suggested af if it was even a possibility in the creation of the platypus. Try and just contemplate how that in actuality would happen and in your own mind contemplate those steps. If you come out thinking that is even a possibility, then go on to try at the molecular level and how many things is needed for that to happen. It probably goes past the 10^10000.

Do you not think farmers would have tried these things if it was even a possibility? A cow-sheep-pig, that could give milk during the year, provide plenty of wool for winter and be slaughtered for Christmas for pork roast. Sound like just the thing that could win a nobel prize.

I wouldn't know, really, about what would have to happen on the molecular level and I can tell you that no one does, because no one studied this. You might be right that it can't happen on its own, at least not very disparate pairings, but this does seem to be a part of evolutionary history, as these processes are well documented (the more crazy the pair, the lower the evidence, obviously). So maybe the designers used these principles to create and evolve life on earth.

 

[Aeneas]

So maybe the designers used these principles to create and evolve life on earth.

This could well be. As has been said, it was not life that evolved, but the designers who 'evolved by learning from their experiences and then created some new creatures, taking traits from different life forms that they had found to work. So there might have been creation events after which various species died off and then after a catastrophic event, another seeding of life forms which then over time lost some of the species during extinction events. This appears to have happened numerous times. At least that is where I am at, at the moment.

I looked at the hybrid site from wiki that you linked to and three things stood out. 1)The various sources appears to be evolutionists, which is not surprising due to evolutionistrueTM, 2)no species are mentioned apart from mussels(in the sources there are links to snails, grasshoppers and crickets as well, and 3)It appears to be mainly theoretical and based on various models.

Hybrids do happen, especially in the flora world, some happen in nature naturally, but most are done by researchers. I worked at one time at an agricultural research station (before genetic research) and they were looking for new hybrids of wheat, lupins, peas, rye, barley etc. but it was done within the various species. And there was a designer involved, namely the researcher and there was a goal in mind, to create better varieties, that yielded better, were more frost resistant, immune to rust, less prone to mildew etc.

 

[Joe]

There are quite large dogs out there, as large as teenage cows. On the other hand, a bull could impregnate a bitch. It could go both ways.

So a large dog, descended from a wolf, the natural predator of ruminants, runs into a field towards some cows and one of the cows.....ok, sure. What point, exactly, are you trying to make here because I have no idea.

 

[luc]

By the way,

If this organism is able to survive within it's environment, you've got yourself a new "species"(species is a completely imaginary concept)

Species an imaginary concept? That's another Darwinian trope in my book. Darwinians must logically see it that way, because if organisms evolve gradually and are always subject to "evolution", then there can only be arbitrary boundaries between the species. Darwinism implies a "species fluidity". It's funny, because for all the apparent conflict between SJWs and Darwinism, you could see Darwinism as an entry-door to biological relativism.

I think the old-style biologists who believed in essentialism are much closer to the truth, i.e. species remain constant over time because they have an "essence", presumably created by a designer. Yes, there will always be biological freak accidents where some weird things happen. But that's the very rare exception that proves the rule. And of course there is variation within species, and who knows how consciousness plays into all of this. But at the end of the day, a species is a species is a species. Because someone came up with it and created it. No rabbit-foxes and deer-horses in the woods, sir. And no "evolving" an ape into a man. Development and "evolution" exist, but they take place on the level of consciousness in a way materialist science cannot, by definition, grok.

 

[genero81]

Behe is correct about neo-Darwinian processes, but it would be interesting to see what he would say about this.

Maybe you could try and contact him and ask.

You put a theory out there for us to consider. Thank you for that. That's why we network. However, maybe a little less attachment to being right might be helpful. I don't think there's any shame in putting something forward that doesn't pan out. Life on Earth is about as complex as it gets. I watched the video presentation that someone posted. It didn't particularly impress me either. Like I said, see what Behe has to say about it.

 

[Revolucionar]

So a large dog, descended from a wolf, the natural predator of ruminants, runs into a field towards some cows and one of the cows.....ok, sure. What point, exactly, are you trying to make here because I have no idea.

This is just an example. I don't know if it really could work in that specific pairing. The point is that hybrids do happen.

 

[Revolucionar]

I'm not attached to it at all. Don't see why you'd think that. Can't I just play around with this notion without constantly emphasising that I'm not attached?

 

[Revolucionar]

By the way,



Species an imaginary concept? That's another Darwinian trope in my book. Darwinians must logically see it that way, because if organisms evolve gradually and are always subject to "evolution", then there can only be arbitrary boundaries between the species. Darwinism implies a "species fluidity". It's funny, because for all the apparent conflict between SJWs and Darwinism, you could see Darwinism as an entry-door to biological relativism.

I think the old-style biologists who believed in essentialism are much closer to the truth, i.e. species remain constant over time because they have an "essence", presumably created by a designer. Yes, there will always be biological freak accidents where some weird things happen. But that's the very rare exception that proves the rule. And of course there is variation within species, and who knows how consciousness plays into all of this. But at the end of the day, a species is a species is a species. Because someone came up with it and created it. No rabbit-foxes and deer-horses in the woods, sir. And no "evolving" an ape into a man. Development and "evolution" exist, but they take place on the level of consciousness in a way materialist science cannot, by definition, grok.

Well, the idea of species is actually central to Darwinism. Please read at least the first part of the book that deals exactly with this question. Species is an artificial concept which has no agreed upon definition. How ever you define, there will be many organisms that do not conform. There's so much great stuff in that book even if you ignore the issue of hybrids.