Gould and Ruse Disprove Neo-Darwinism

JohnR7 · Sep 21, 2006

supersport said:
moths emerge different colors based on background colors and/or temperatures.

There are fish that can go though up to 20 color changes fairly fast.

Next thing you know you will hear something to the effect that a scientiest has used evolution to get a cameleon to change its color in the lab. They then went on to "evolve" a special lizzard that when you pull it's tail off it grows back again.

Of course it never occured to them that these traits were there all along and they did not "evolve" them in their lab, simply by their wonderful powers of observation.

supersport · Sep 21, 2006

rmwilliamsll said:
topic appears to be:
major: phenotypic plasticity
minor: hormonal control of development

the duke link at: http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2006/01/suzukinijhoutscience.html

anyone been down this path before with a saved links list to read?

from the same article

following up on genetic accommodation and hormonal pathways (bolded statement) looks promising.

from the OP

looks to be the key statement of this posting.
promising to be an interesting quick research topic, however tomorrow for me.

I don't disagree with much of what evo devo say....I just insist that it dismantles Toe. It has to because selection can no longer plays the role it once did. (Please review the quotes from Ruse and Gould.)

...Not to mention the concept of randomly mutationing individual nucleotides has finally been removed.

rambot · Sep 21, 2006

Note that plasticity in species doesn't BY EXTENSION have an (OR the possibility of an) affect on EVERY gene in an individual.
And that is an important difference:
Some moths + butterflies have the ability to "Change" color scheme and arrangements...does that mean they also have the ability to change the arrangement of their genes? That they are able to lengthen their legs? Beat their wingers FASTER? Slower? That their legs can change length or shape?

All plasticity does is control the amount of phenotypic expressions that could be used in the study of evolution in a particular species. THAT'S all

They do not admit that the organism is able to make itself change...they do not believe animals can respond to their environment because this would imply that randomness is not in control of evolution

This is JUST as loaded with assumptions: You are assuming that evolutionists don't think animals CAN respond to their environment (without providing names of people who are keen examples: In fact, you include Gould he seems to AGREE [at least out of context] with your argument); You are assuming changes are permanent and that evo studies only study ONE individual (which is LUDICROUS); You are assuming that evos think that randomness is the ONLY factor contributing to evolution and, when randomness is limited, the whole theory falls apart.

What is reproduced in each generation is an entitiy with a potential set of forms out of which emerges a specific morphology as a result of external and internal particulars, among which are included are genes.The molecular composition of something is not, in general, sufficient to determine its form. The morphology of organisms cannot be explained by the action of their genes.

THIS is purely theoretical. Please provide what kind of evidence he has to support his point.
To compare, nay, to say that THIS theory should supplant our present understanding of genetics and phylogeny when there is little to no evidence for it is silly!

Biologists now know that individual animals in a population are able to develop specific traits while still in the egg or womb. I believe this is when REAL evolution happens. Its when the living body builds and constructs itself according to cues from external environment.

Uhm, well...if you're talking about "external environment"...then you'd be talking about the inside of an egg right?

The most outstanding examples of heritable genetic states are the changes in the genetic program that occur during development of an embryo. During development, genes get turned On and Off as the cells divide. The On/Off state is passed from mother to daughter cell as the cells differentiate..

You're making a big jump here. There are only a specific number of genotypes for each gene. THESE genes may be turned on and off, but without mutation, there are no new genes.

But if a fish has the ability to change colors, shapes, sizes, hatching times, feeding habits, mating habits or other traits "on-the-fly", then there is no justification in an evolutionist saying that its just a chemical reaction, reaction of the norm, or anything else that would turn a blind eye to obvious fact that theres a hidden

BWAHAAH Explain and show your evidence where all of these are true?
This should go down in the "word manipulation thread. I hope I don't have to explain why, but I will if need be.

If that were the case, there would be at least one SUPERFISH.... and the fact is that there isn't.

BVZ · Sep 22, 2006

Supersport, this has been explained to you before. But for the lurkers, Ill do it again.

Plasticity is a trait that has EVOLVED. It has EVOLVED. Just like any other trait has evolved, plasticity has evolved. The ability for certain creatures to adapt thier phenotype according to physical conditions while still in the egg, is an ability that is coded into the gnetic material of that creature. The genetic material has EVOLVED.

Since plasticity provides benefits, it enhances the chance of reproduction, which allows them to EVOLVE!

Fur that help certain creatures to keep warm has EVOLVED.
Wings that allow birds to fly has EVOLVED.
Gills that allow fish to get oxygen from the water has EVOLVED.
The ability for certain creatures to adapt thier phenotype to thier environment has EVOLVED.

This HAS been explained to you before.

notto · Sep 22, 2006

supersport said:
I dare you to give me a link where animals were tested in different environments to see what different types of phenotypic changes took place and/or how the offspring emerged.

I dare you to finish the sentence of the Gould quote.

Quit calling me liar....put your money where your mouth is and prove me wrong.....

http://ourfcs.friendscentral.org/moths/polyphenism1.html

http://md1.csa.com/partners/viewrec...&recid=5302847&q=&uid=788756471&setcookie=yes

http://md1.csa.com/partners/viewrec...&recid=5418167&q=&uid=788756471&setcookie=yes

http://www.mdwfp.com/museum/html/research/invasive_species_tilapia.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12487361&dopt=Abstract

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/..._uids=16809835&query_hl=7&itool=pubmed_DocSum

rmwilliamsll · Sep 22, 2006

it was written above

(Please review the quotes from Ruse and Gould.)

in particular:

Check out this quote from Michael Ruse:

"The most dramatic discoveries in evo-devo have been quite unexpected DNA homologies. It turns out that organisms as different as fruit flies and humans share considerable amounts of practically unaltered DNA, especially those stretches that are involved in development itself--ordering the rates and ways in which the parts of the body are formed (heads before legs and so forth). The jury is still out on the precise significance of all of this. Some seem to think that selection will now have to take a back seat in evolution: "The homologies of process within morphogenetic fields provide some of the best evidence for evolution just as skeletal and organ homologies did earlier. Thus, the evidence for evolution is better than ever. The role of natural selection in evolution, however, is seen to play less an important role. It is merely a filter for unsuccessful morphologies generated by development. Population genetics is destined to change if it is not to become as irrelevant to evolution as Newtonian mechanics is to contemporary physics."[4]

Check out this quote from Gould who called this one many years ago:

In a sense, the specter of directed variability threatens Darwinism even more seriously than any putative failure of the other two postulates. Insufficient variation stalls natural selection; saltation deprives selection of a creative role but still calls upon Darwin’s mechanism as a negative force. With directed variation, however, natural selection can be bypassed entirely. If adaptive pressures automatically trigger heritable variation in favored directions, then trends can proceed under regimes of random mortality; natural selection, acting as a negative force, can, at most, accelerate the change.

another Gould quote:

"Selection becomes creative only if it can impart direction to evolution by superintending the slow and steady accumulation of favored subsets from an isotropic pool of variation. If gradualism does not accompany this process of change, selection must relinquish this creative role and Darwinism then fails as a creative source of evolutionary novelty. If important new features, or entire new taxa, arise as large and discontinuous variations, then creativity lies in the production of the variation itself. Natural selection no longer causes evolution"

since text without context is pretext.
and none of these quotes was given a source, neither the original cut and pasted from site nor the original material.

first find these.

for the first, M.Ruse, google:
Population genetics is destined to change if it is not to become as irrelevant to evolution as Newtonian mechanics is to contemporary physics."[4]
because it still have the embedded footnote number.

found:

In Development as an Evolutionary Process, Rudy Raff, a professor of biology at Indiana University and at least as important a figure as Carroll, has written: “The homologies of process within morphogenetic fields provide some of the best evidence for evolution — just as skeletal and organ homologies did earlier. Thus, the evidence for evolution is better than ever. The role of natural selection in evolution, however, is seen to play less an important role. It is merely a filter for unsuccessful morphologies generated by development. Population genetics is destined to change if it is not to become as irrelevant to evolution as Newtonian mechanics is to contemporary physics.” Undoubtedly there is much work — and probable fireworks — in the future of those who care about matters evolutionary.

in a review of _endless forms most beautiful_ at:
http://www.stnews.org/Books-1289.htm
but it is not attributed to M.Ruse

found another copy supersport used here at CF.
another copy of the review at:
http://darwiniana.com/2006/02/27/rusedembski/

looks like the same quote was used at:
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/pda/thread.php?topic_id=2739
including the [4] footnote marker.

about a 1/3 of the way through this discussion,
title is:
Natural Selection: Sive or Creative Force for Novelty?

he attributes it to:
-- Ruse, Michael. The Evolution-Creation Struggle. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; 2005; p. 193.

and gives a few paragraphs of context.
nicely, and really responsibly this author "Rob" gives the original footnotes and references.
[4] points to:
-- Gilbert, S. F., J. M. Opitz, and R. A. Raff. 1996. Resynthesizing evolutionary and developmental biology. Developmental Biology 173: 357-372.

so:
this is a quote mine from Ruse's _The Evolution-Creation Struggle._ quoting a review paper in Developmental Biology. I wonder if supersport even realizes this as he posted it? plus it really shows the extreme asymmetry of cut and paste quote mining versus actually trying to understand the material. Just tracking down what the context of the quote is has taken me more time than the original OP. the big point is context is important and the context of this first quote is that they are not Ruse's words at all but him quoting someone else. Thanks to Rob for actually having the good sense to post references cited. something i truely wish others would think worth their time.

i would also point out that the later half of the quote was correctly requoted as R.Raff in several places i found earlier.

let's look for the context and original cut and paste site for:
SJG's

In a sense, the specter of directed variability threatens Darwinism even more seriously than any putative failure of the other two postulates. Insufficient variation stalls natural selection; saltation deprives selection of a creative role but still calls upon Darwin’s mechanism as a negative force.

looks like another cut and paste from:
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/pda/thread.php?topic_id=2798

again "Rob" writes the reference: (Gould 2002: 145)
-- Gould, Stephen J. (2002) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 137-150.
good, i have that book at my elbow now.
unlike the original source for the first quote which will require a ride to the university to read.

so the third exercise in proper footnote and reference citing:

"Selection becomes creative only if it can impart direction to evolution by superintending the slow and steady accumulation of favored subsets from an isotropic pool of variation.

cut and paste from the same site, just a different page in SJG's magnus opus. (Gould 2002: 149)

-------------
to summarize.
supersport is cut and pasting from:
http://debatingchristianity.com
apparently. i'll bet he hasn't even tried to read SJG's book. i'm only a few hundred pages into it myself.
that is just to establish provenance for the quotes, something that is not required of the readers in scientific papers, for they are very careful to cite and give sources for their readers so that they do not have to backtrack as i did here.

the take home message of this ought to be:
people who cut and paste MUST cite the source for their original cut and paste. this effort is ridiculous waste of time, just to show that supersport didn't even understand that the first quote was not actually Ruse's words after all.

i really think that people who argue primarily via cut and paste ought to put a footnote, i either read the original material or i did not.

and this is before we can even discuss the content of the quotes. their context and provenance comes first. especially if the OP doesn't offer sources for the cut and paste and is quoting secondary or even tertiary sources in another debate forum.

but thanks to "Rob" for actually arguing with the right rules. perhaps i ought to pop over to that site and read more of his work. it looks worthwhile reading.

Alarum · Sep 22, 2006

So let me get this straight in my mind.

The theory of evolution, which states that things selectively change over time due to environmental pressure is disproved because... organisms have evolved the ability to change in response to their environment?

TheGnome · Sep 22, 2006

Holy crap! You finally make a good point! I've been believing in lies all this time, I feel like such a fool. Praise be to God.

Oliver · Sep 22, 2006

supersport said:
Evolutionists believe that in order for an animal to change biologically they must go through the selection process.

Very first sentence and first mistake: populations evolve, not individuals. IOW "evolutionists" say that the selection process applies to a population: it doesn't make an individual change biologically, but it does change the allele frequency in a population.

supersport said:
...they do not believe animals can respond to their environment because this would imply that randomness is not in control of evolution.

Randomness is not in control of evolution anyways: natural selection is not a random process.

This firts paragraph of yours was a misrepresentation of what the ToE says. No need to read further to realize your whole point will be a strawman.

Grummpy · Sep 22, 2006

rmwilliamsll and notto

Thank you for proving once more the fact that supersport is lying, through his dishonest use of clipped quotes.

I too post in the ZDebating Christianity forum and at physorg, both of which ss has invaded with his lies. I asked him if he is a christian, because they are commanded not to lie, no answer yet.

Grumpy

nvxplorer · Sep 22, 2006

JohnR7 said:
The people who deny God need something to cling to.

I find the opposite to be true. Those who deny science have a desperate need to cling to superstition.

Since theists of all types accept evolution, what is it that they're denying? It certainly isn't God.

rmwilliamsll · Sep 22, 2006

Grummpy said:
rmwilliamsll and notto

Thank you for proving once more the fact that supersport is lying, through his dishonest use of clipped quotes.

I too post in the ZDebating Christianity forum and at physorg, both of which ss has invaded with his lies. I asked him if he is a christian, because they are commanded not to lie, no answer yet.

Grumpy

which brings up a good question.
can he be a sockpuppet?

i can imagine myself playing a game and taking their side.
i'd expect to do much better than they do themselves in defending the YECist ideas. It is almost as if it is a deliberate characture of the position. holding it up to derision and laughter as foolishness and ignorance.

i can almost expect anyday for a "surprise, i'm a sockpuppet and don't believe a word i've written for the last months. fooled you all, see how ridiculous you all are for taking me seriously" type of posting.

it says something for the whole debate when we are forced to take DAD's and AV1611VET's positions seriously as representative of lots of people who are not online.

Grummpy · Sep 22, 2006

rmwilliamsll

In the DC forum we have what we call Poe's law(for Nathan Poe, it's author), it goes something like this

"Without a smiley or simular indication of irony, it is impossible to tell a charicature of a creationist poster from the real thing."

It is not their belief system which is ridiculous, it is their insistence that everyone must accept their beliefs as scientific fact that is totally nuts. And the lies and deceit they practice is in direct contradiction of their professed ethics. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water!!!

Grumpy

AirPo · Sep 22, 2006

supersport said:
That is not what I asked for. I asked for the same animal t be taken to different locations and viewed.....also for their offspring to be viewed.

No you didn't. What you ask for was

I dare you to give me a link where animals were tested in different environments to see what different types of phenotypic changes took place and/or how the offspring emerged.

Nothing in there about a single being moved.

That's a logical fallacy known as moving the goalposts.

supersport · Sep 22, 2006

rmwilliamsll said:
it was written above

(Please review the quotes from Ruse and Gould.)

in particular:

Check out this quote from Michael Ruse:

Check out this quote from Gould who called this one many years ago:

another Gould quote:

since text without context is pretext.
and none of these quotes was given a source, neither the original cut and pasted from site nor the original material.

first find these.

for the first, M.Ruse, google:
Population genetics is destined to change if it is not to become as irrelevant to evolution as Newtonian mechanics is to contemporary physics."[4]
because it still have the embedded footnote number.

found:

in a review of _endless forms most beautiful_ at:
http://www.stnews.org/Books-1289.htm
but it is not attributed to M.Ruse

found another copy supersport used here at CF.
another copy of the review at:
http://darwiniana.com/2006/02/27/rusedembski/

looks like the same quote was used at:
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/pda/thread.php?topic_id=2739
including the [4] footnote marker.

about a 1/3 of the way through this discussion,
title is:
Natural Selection: Sive or Creative Force for Novelty?

he attributes it to:
-- Ruse, Michael. The Evolution-Creation Struggle. Cambridge: Harvard University Press; 2005; p. 193.

and gives a few paragraphs of context.
nicely, and really responsibly this author "Rob" gives the original footnotes and references.
[4] points to:
-- Gilbert, S. F., J. M. Opitz, and R. A. Raff. 1996. Resynthesizing evolutionary and developmental biology. Developmental Biology 173: 357-372.

so:
this is a quote mine from Ruse's _The Evolution-Creation Struggle._ quoting a review paper in Developmental Biology. I wonder if supersport even realizes this as he posted it? plus it really shows the extreme asymmetry of cut and paste quote mining versus actually trying to understand the material. Just tracking down what the context of the quote is has taken me more time than the original OP. the big point is context is important and the context of this first quote is that they are not Ruse's words at all but him quoting someone else. Thanks to Rob for actually having the good sense to post references cited. something i truely wish others would think worth their time.

i would also point out that the later half of the quote was correctly requoted as R.Raff in several places i found earlier.

let's look for the context and original cut and paste site for:
SJG's

looks like another cut and paste from:
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/pda/thread.php?topic_id=2798

again "Rob" writes the reference: (Gould 2002: 145)
-- Gould, Stephen J. (2002) The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 137-150.
good, i have that book at my elbow now.
unlike the original source for the first quote which will require a ride to the university to read.

so the third exercise in proper footnote and reference citing:

cut and paste from the same site, just a different page in SJG's magnus opus. (Gould 2002: 149)

-------------
to summarize.
supersport is cut and pasting from:
http://debatingchristianity.com
apparently. i'll bet he hasn't even tried to read SJG's book. i'm only a few hundred pages into it myself.
that is just to establish provenance for the quotes, something that is not required of the readers in scientific papers, for they are very careful to cite and give sources for their readers so that they do not have to backtrack as i did here.

the take home message of this ought to be:
people who cut and paste MUST cite the source for their original cut and paste. this effort is ridiculous waste of time, just to show that supersport didn't even understand that the first quote was not actually Ruse's words after all.

i really think that people who argue primarily via cut and paste ought to put a footnote, i either read the original material or i did not.

and this is before we can even discuss the content of the quotes. their context and provenance comes first. especially if the OP doesn't offer sources for the cut and paste and is quoting secondary or even tertiary sources in another debate forum.

but thanks to "Rob" for actually arguing with the right rules. perhaps i ought to pop over to that site and read more of his work. it looks worthwhile reading.

Hey williams....I appreciate your effort...but you wrote all those words with no content. If you are going to attempt to tell people that I quote-mined and misrepresented what Gould or Ruse said, (or what they meant) then you need to back up the assertion with how I did so....and what they really meant.

I still contend (as backed up by Gould and Ruse) that if organisms have the ability to change from within according to external cues then this undermines selection.

Try again.

rmwilliamsll · Sep 22, 2006

supersport said:
Hey williams....I appreciate your effort...but you wrote all those words with no content. If you are going to attempt to tell people that I quote-mined and misrepresented what Gould or Ruse said, (or what they meant) then you need to back up the assertion with how I did so....and what they really meant.

I still contend (as backed up by Gould and Ruse) that if organisms have the ability to change from within according to external cues then this undermines selection.

Try again.

i showed beyond reasonable doubt that the first quote is not from Ruse, it is Ruse quoting R.Raff. A fact which appears to have escaped supersport(SS) when writing the OP.

At this point the extraordinary asymmetry of the "debate" strikes me as more of a concern then the content of SS's posting. It took me more than an hour just to track down where the quotes were cut and pasted from.

Now if someone cuts and pastes, without understanding enough of what they did to leave a footnote marker [4] demonstrating that the quote was actually a quote within a quote. Furthermore if someone does not even have the common courtesy to link to where they originally found these treasures, what evidence do i have that they actually understand the material they cut and pasted? The evidence is that they are merely moving pieces from one debate board to another discussion group without the information actually having passed through their conscious mind, certainly not enough to have made any difference there.

There is a parlour game of playing dozens of people at chess similtaneously. The trick is to actually play the games against each other, making one player's moves against you the same way against another player.

but it is a parlour trick, knowing how it is done makes me desire to actually sit across from the player i am playing and not be deceived into thinking that the opponent in front of me is actually playing the game, he is not, he is just cut and pasting from another game to fool me.

at this point, i do not believe that SS knows enough about TofE to actually discuss the topic intelligently and with value to all the discussion participants. His (presumably) MO is to merely echo another's words, without referencing them and apparently without really understanding them.

i prefer to discuss the topic with someone who does their own homework. I'm not here to waste my time scoring imaginary debate points or counting coup in some way, i'm here to learn. The topic of phenotypic plasticity is an interesting and by all appearances a difficult one, but i think i will investigate it with someone who cites their sources and thinks about the material somewhere between the time they read it and the time they put it into their computer's clipboards buffer.

i was more than willing to engage in a useful discussion, but this is my second day on topics begun by SS and i see no value in talking to what appears to be primarily a clipboard buffer, it is to my advantage to talk to the minds that actually wrote the material in the buffer.

I hope that other participants here agree and more cut and paste without reference to their sources is greeted by a chorus of "show your work" or "cite your sources", then we can talk.

Tomk80 · Sep 22, 2006

rmwilliamsll said:
I hope that other participants here agree and more cut and paste without reference to their sources is greeted by a chorus of "show your work" or "cite your sources", then we can talk.

It was. It was even followed by lots of 'look, those sources you gave do not support your case in the fist place.', which was then subsequently ignored after which SS started a new thread.

Rince, repeat.

After going through that motion a couple of times, most people have the same reaction. Ignore.

Grummpy · Sep 22, 2006

Some nuggets from ss, the bold are my statements.

All of your quote mining has been exposed

What's wrong with quote mining?

Well, now it has happened to him, he's been quote mined in support of creationism by someone who doesn't understand a thing about what he is attacking(that would be you, supersport).

Hey...if someone says something a good quote or a logical piece of information, I have no shame in quote-mining! What's wrong with that?

Rob wrote

Shiner (Supersport), the very fact that you use two alias is dishonest and deceptive. Why? The page linked by Grumpy shows gross negligence in the usage of quotations. The manner in which you abuse those quotations out of context answers implicitly the why question, it appears to me. In my view, one cannot be honestly searching for truth if one refuses to treat the words of those whom one might disagree with carelessly such that you make it appear they are saying something they never intended. One of the cardinal rules of honest and fair discussion is to treat your opponents words honestly and fairly. You can be as critical as you want; but you have to be critical of a fair characterization of what they are saying (implicitly or explicitly), otherwise you are being less than accurate, or even dishonest.

It's not a matter of being dishonest. I actually debate on a regular basis at only one site....and it's not the Forum that Grumpy linked. However I do float around and deposit my seed at various forums around the internet. I don't generally stick around for too long at these other sites, I just ususally drop in -- drop down my bomb -- and leave soon after. It's just a hobby I have.
We call people who have this hobby TROLLS. It isn't seeds you're depositing, though it might fertilize a few.

Grumpy

notto · Sep 22, 2006

supersport said:
Hey williams....I appreciate your effort...but you wrote all those words with no content. If you are going to attempt to tell people that I quote-mined and misrepresented what Gould or Ruse said, (or what they meant) then you need to back up the assertion with how I did so....and what they really meant.

Can you provide the full sentence of the Gould quote you provided? You do realize that the sentance doesn't end where your quote does, right?

That is classic quote mining and I think that when you look at the full quote, it is clear to see that the reason it is cut off mid sentence is to change the context and basically to be deceptive.

Why don't you provide the full quote and we'll take a look? You do know the full quote, don't you?

Grummpy · Sep 22, 2006

notto

Can you provide the full sentence of the Gould quote you provided? You do realize that the sentance doesn't end where your quote does, right?

That is classic quote mining and I think that when you look at the full quote, it is clear to see that the reason it is cut off mid sentence is to change the context and basically to be deceptive.

Why don't you provide the full quote and we'll take a look? You do know the full quote, don't you?

Yes, he is fully aware that he has been dishonest in the presentation of the Gould quote and almost every quote he has ever posted. His dishonesty and mendacity have been repeatedly pointed out to him, he cannot be unaware. It is his modus operendi.(and, unfortunately, that of other creationist posters on this and other forums). I, for one, refuse to believe that any human could be so stupid, they would forget to breath and thus elliminate their genes from the pool if they were. So the only possible explanation is that they are dishonest, that their lies are deliberate.

Grumpy

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