[BenV]

Cuvier, Owen, Agassiz and Lyell to name but 4, wanted nothing to do with it, and they were not religious men.

Cuvier disagreed with Lamarckian evolution, and died before Origin was published.

Owen believed in creation, and that man was special amongst animals - so obviously wouldn't accept evolution.

I don't know a lot about Agassiz, but wikipedia informs me that you are right - he didn't accept evolution.  He did think different races were created in separate events though.

Lyell was a good friend of Darwin's, and helped and encourage him to publish.  He was conservative about accepting natural selection, as he also held man as special in nature - quite understandable for the time, as we knew far less about genetics than we do now.

Science is essentially conservative - evolution was new to these people, and didn't have as much research and evidence behind it as it does now.  Science is dynamic, and hypothesis are re-evaluated in the light of new evidence. As such, it is wise to be conservative.

Sophiecentaur is quite right, you know - there are a few people reading these threads yet nobody has come out to support you.

I think I've said this before, but you choose to believe in god despite the fact that it is entirely non-falsifiable, and evidently nothing to do with science.  Why do you think you have the right to complain about what you perceive as non-science, while admitting that you do not require evidence for the beliefs you hold to be true?

Again, we can observe evolution in the wild and in the lab - we can make predictions based on our understanding of evolution that come true.  Evolution is a well evinced scientific theory, which supports and is supported by the facts.

This is at least the third time I've said this in this thread, but you seem to ignore it every time - it's the answer to the main question of this thread.  Instinct is reactive behaviour - behaviour is under genetic control (as can be seen by breeding knock out mice who do not show fear, for example).  We know that genes pass from one generation to the next, and that genes for an advantageous behaviour are more likely to be passed on, and so will be come more common in the population.  There's nothing to complain about there - mice who are not afraid of cats will not live long enough to breed - mice who are instinctively afraid of cats will live long enough to breed - therefore, there is a selective advantage, and we would expect to see instinctive fear becoming more common in a population of mice.  More complicated instincts will have more complicated pathways.

[lyner]

Asyncritus

You describe one of my posts as a "personal attack" yet you are more than happy to bandy around words like "nonsensical", "lousy" and "fanciful". Try to apply the same rules to yourself please.

I notice that you seem to shy away from  offering any details of what you believe is true.
Your statement -
"I believe that the world was created in great bursts of creative activity at unspecified times in the past, but in accordance with the Genesis 1 and 2 records. I am an Old Earth Creationist by persuasion."
- is very woolly. There is no information, no precision and no 'workings' in (any of) your statements - just rantings and non-specific quoting of a few named, eminent, past Scientists who, we can be sure, would have been more than prepared to get 'specific' in their arguments.

"Ya boo sucks"  or "my Dad can fight your Dad" are not arguments in favour of or against any idea yet that is virtually all you can come up with. If you can't address specific numerical arguments in your own terms then any argument you make is not valid. You clearly didn't understand the implications of the sums in 'that link' so you are not in a position to reject it on any basis other than your faith.
We could all stack up a list of big-named supporters of each view and weigh the results on some scales - what would that prove? On a Science Forum we are, surely, trying to examine the arguments in specific (although, on occasions, amateurish) detail because that is what interests Scientists at all levels. Your arguments all seem to be delivered through a magaphone; you offer assertions, not discussion.

Why do I get the feeling that you have not taken on board a single one of the arguments against your  ('anti')theory? Could it be a 'fingers in ears "la la la"' situation?

[Asyncritus (OP)]

Atavisms prove nothing. Here's a most unpleasant one - what do you think it proves?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7791321.stm

That's not an atavism, it's either "foetus in foetu" or a teratoma.

A structure can only be described as an atavism if there was an ancestor with the same feature...

Can you prove that there wasn't?

atavism (plural atavisms) The reappearance of an ancestral characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/atavism

Then the argument that says the whale with legs is an atavism is question-begging, as you are question dodging in the above example. Preconceptions prove nothing.

So unless you have evidence of numerous human fossils with feet growing out of their head, then the case you sited is not an atavism.

I've never heard a count, but I'm certain that there are many.

[Asyncritus (OP)]

 

Asyncritus

You describe one of my posts as a "personal attack" yet you are more than happy to bandy around words like "nonsensical", "lousy" and "fanciful". Try to apply the same rules to yourself please.

In case you missed it,

a. your supporters have been more than happy to be exceedingly offensive, and a bit of retaliation may not be amiss, but long overdue. But

b. I am describing your arguments as lousy, nonsensical and fanciful. I don't know you, and therefore I cannot possibly be insulting you personally.

I notice that you seem to shy away from  offering any details of what you believe is true.

I am a critic of evolution. It is my mission to demonstrate its fallaciousness. By elimination therefore, we arrive at divine creation. If you wish to swallow a bad egg, that is your affair.

Your statement -
"I believe that the world was created in great bursts of creative activity at unspecified times in the past, but in accordance with the Genesis 1 and 2 records. I am an Old Earth Creationist by persuasion."
- is very woolly. There is no information, no precision and no 'workings' in (any of) your statements - just rantings and non-specific quoting of a few named, eminent, past Scientists who, we can be sure, would have been more than prepared to get 'specific' in their arguments.

So we're back to the personalities: 'rantings' is a good example. Kindly desist, or I shall have some more hard words to say.

"Ya boo sucks"  or "my Dad can fight your Dad" are not arguments in favour of or against any idea yet that is virtually all you can come up with. If you can't address specific numerical arguments in your own terms then any argument you make is not valid. You clearly didn't understand the implications of the sums in 'that link' so you are not in a position to reject it on any basis other than your faith.

You clearly didn't understand Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's extremely clear statements. You are in no position to argue with them, and neither am I. Perhaps you'd like to get your statistician to comment on their errors, as you think they must be wrong.

I would like to remind you that the topic under discussion is How does Instinct Evolve. Please confine your remarks to the issue at hand and refrain from the personalities.

We could all stack up a list of big-named supporters of each view and weigh the results on some scales - what would that prove? On a Science Forum we are, surely, trying to examine the arguments in specific (although, on occasions, amateurish) detail because that is what interests Scientists at all levels. Your arguments all seem to be delivered through a magaphone; you offer assertions, not discussion.

I note that you carefully refrain from specifics, especially when making such claims as 'we have refuted your arguments on many occasions'. Please furnish any such refutations with respect to the cliff swallows or the golden plovers.Or the yucca moth if you like.

Or stop talking for the sake of doing no credit to your case, such as it is.

You offer no arguments at all that are worthy of the name, so please produce some (with evidence, as Simpson demands) or concede the argument.

Why do I get the feeling that you have not taken on board a single one of the arguments against your  ('anti')theory? Could it be a 'fingers in ears "la la la"' situation?

You get that feeling because you have not produced a single evidenced argument worthy of discussion. If you have, where is it?

BenV has been honest enough to acknowledge that he has no explanation to offer of some of these phenomena. Where is your admission or your supporting evidence? 'Evidence', mark you, not 'speculation'.


.

[BenV]

I am a critic of evolution. It is my mission to demonstrate its fallaciousness. By elimination therefore, we arrive at divine creation. If you wish to swallow a bad egg, that is your affair.

Once more, divine creation is not a valid scientific explanation for life on Earth and isn't an alternative to evolution.  You consistently  ignore this fact.

Criticising evolution is fair enough - science should be critiqued.

My problem is this huge assumption that if evolution isn't the explanation, it must be your god.  How did you arrive at your religion's myth by elimination?  How did you eliminate the hindu, sikh or buddhist explanation? Or Norse, roman, scientologist, greek, Maasai, Discword, voodoo, aboriginal...

So although there is plenty of evidence for evolution along with some gaps, you chose to adhere to a particular idea for which there is no evidence, and creates more questions than it answers.  You then state vehemently the evolution is wrong.

Can you see why people get annoyed at you?

[Asyncritus (OP)]

Cuvier, Owen, Agassiz and Lyell to name but 4, wanted nothing to do with it, and they were not religious men.

Owen's arguments against evolution were not religious ones, but based on his knowledge of comparative anatomy. That data obviously made him a critic of evolution. 

I was intrigued to read Prof.John A Davison saying (http://john.a.davison.free.fr/?p=13)

"Furthermore, there is not a scintilla of tangible evidence that natural selection, the cornerstone of the Darwinian model, ever had anything to do with organic evolution except to stabilize species for as long as possble. It has always been entirely anti-evolutionary as it still is today. How could natural selection conceivably have been involved in a structure which had not yet appeared? That is the question that St George Jackson Mivart asked 12 years after the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species and it has yet to be answered for obvious reasons. That unanswerable question alone is lethal to the Darwinian hypothesis."

So where is your natural selection now?

Cuvier disagreed with Lamarckian evolution, and died before Origin was published.

Cuvier's arguments are irrefutable to my mind. He pointed out in this connection that any alteration in the structure of say, a claw, would require that the talons became larger, the wrist bones become bigger and stronger, the forearm more powerful, the humerus bigger, the shoulder joint stronger and so he went on.

You people seem to think that hey presto, mutation occurs, a wing forms on a reptile somehow, and that's it! It can fly! Cuvier would have destroyed you root and branch, as he did Darwin and Lamarck's ideas.

Owen believed in creation, and that man was special amongst animals - so obviously wouldn't accept evolution.

I don't know a lot about Agassiz, but wikipedia informs me that you are right - he didn't accept evolution.  He did think different races were created in separate events though.

Lyell was a good friend of Darwin's, and helped and encourage him to publish.  He was conservative about accepting natural selection, as he also held man as special in nature - quite understandable for the time, as we knew far less about genetics than we do now.

Had they known what we know about genetics now, Darwin would never have made it off the ground. Mendel's work would have seen to that. Unfortunately...

Science is essentially conservative - evolution was new to these people, and didn't have as much research and evidence behind it as it does now.  Science is dynamic, and hypothesis are re-evaluated in the light of new evidence. As such, it is wise to be conservative.

Sophiecentaur is quite right, you know - there are a few people reading these threads yet nobody has come out to support you.

I'm not surprised given the amount of flak your side has generated! Keeping the head well below the parapet is a good idea in these debates!

I think I've said this before, but you choose to believe in god despite the fact that it is entirely non-falsifiable, and evidently nothing to do with science.  Why do you think you have the right to complain about what you perceive as non-science, while admitting that you do not require evidence for the beliefs you hold to be true?

I have the right to criticise a scientific theory on scientific grounds, which is what I'm doing, in pointing out the inadequacy of evolution to explain well-observed and measured facts of natural History. Unfortunately, rocking the boat doesn't go down too well!

Again, we can observe evolution in the wild and in the lab - we can make predictions based on our understanding of evolution that come true.  Evolution is a well evinced scientific theory, which supports and is supported by the facts.

Which evidence are you referring to?

This is at least the third time I've said this in this thread, but you seem to ignore it every time - it's the answer to the main question of this thread.  Instinct is reactive behaviour

Instinct is not reactive behaviour, Ben. Yes, some instincts protect the species, but how can you possibly say that flying to Capistrano from Goya in Argentina is 'reactive behaviour'? Reactive to what? It is totally unnecessary, and is not a response to environmental factors. Winter temperatures in Southern California aren't sufficiently low to bother other swallows, so why do these leave, and why go so far?

- behaviour is under genetic control- behaviour is under genetic control (as can be seen by breeding knock out mice who do not show fear, for example).  We know that genes pass from one generation to the next, and that genes for an advantageous behaviour are more likely to be passed on, and so will be come more common in the population.  There's nothing to complain about there - mice who are not afraid of cats will not live long enough to breed - mice who are instinctively afraid of cats will live long enough to breed - therefore, there is a selective advantage, and we would expect to see instinctive fear becoming more common in a population of mice.  More complicated instincts will have more complicated pathways.

But you have run into the age-old question: HOW DID THE BEHAVIOUR GET INTO THE GENES? Natural selection is no help at all, especially in the vastly complicated behaviours of the swallows and plovers, the red knots and arctic terns too. It cannot be involved in with characteristics which have not appeared as yet, such as the non-existent ability to navigate to Capistrano when it wasn't there.

Natural selection stabilises populations: it does not introduce new elements, merely destroys or retains ALREADY EXISTING features. So where did those features come from?

.

[BenV]

We pointed out solid evidence for new features appearing in genes over time - Lenski's long term e-coli evolution experiment, where e coli developed the ability to digest citrate.  We do keep presenting evidence to you, but you ignore it.

Avatisms, vestigial limbs, drug resistant bacteria, peppered moths (the recent re-working), genetic clocks, comparative biology (the fact that most insect mouthparts are an adaptation of the same basic set, for example)... there are many facts which evince evolution.

As I've said before, even if there was new evidence that evolution could not be the process by which life on earth diversified, you would still be wrong.  creationism will never be a valid alternative.  Why don't you try to find one?

[BenV]

In fact, please do a google search for evidence of evolution - there's loads of it out there that I don't see why I should collate for you.

[lyner]

Asyncritus

How can you be so short sighted?
You only seem to discuss the successful outcomes of genetic change. The failures were the ones which didn't have a survival advantage. They didn't live to reproduce as successfully. I don't think you have appreciated what evolution by 'natural selection' really involves.
I think you are really kidding yourself when you say that you wouldn't believe in evolution even if you had no belief in a God. You have admitted, yourself, that you have no alternative which doesn't involve a  creator. So what would you have gone for?

You are still looking for some 'purpose' in evolution. That is your mistake because there doesn't need to be one. Looking for a purpose is no different from looking for a God. I see both as mis guided but the former is far less reasonable.

[lyner]

Had they known what we know about genetics now, Darwin would never have made it off the ground. Mendel's work would have seen to that. Unfortunately...

I've just spotted this.
Perhaps Asyncritus could explain that statement. How do the two views not support each other?

[Madidus_Scientia]

You people seem to think that hey presto, mutation occurs, a wing forms on a reptile somehow, and that's it! It can fly! Cuvier would have destroyed you root and branch, as he did Darwin and Lamarck's ideas.

One of the most common arguments of creationists, born of an incorrect interpretation of how evolution works. No evolutionist will say that a wing will spontaneously form in one generation.

Watch this video for some education on the subject.
Richard Dawkins on the Evolution of Wings -

[nolabel]

The meaning of life is - life is.

[Madidus_Scientia]

It's 42.

[Asyncritus (OP)]

Ben, after 31,500 generations E.coli was still E.coli. Yeah, it could metabolise citrate - but Behe has pointed out that the gene does exist in the wild strains, and had been deactivated. It merely regained its functionality, and wasn't anything new.

So I'm afraid you're still stuck with the old question. If 31,500 generations failed to produce a single new species, then where did all the thousands of Cambrian species come from?

[Asyncritus (OP)]

It's 42.

Nah, 43. That's a prime number!

[Asyncritus (OP)]

You people seem to think that hey presto, mutation occurs, a wing forms on a reptile somehow, and that's it! It can fly! Cuvier would have destroyed you root and branch, as he did Darwin and Lamarck's ideas.

One of the most common arguments of creationists, born of an incorrect interpretation of how evolution works. No evolutionist will say that a wing will spontaneously form in one generation.

Watch this video for some education on the subject.
Richard Dawkins on the Evolution of Wings -

Dawkins has nothing intelligent to say on the evolution of wings, apart from his usual question-begging counter-factualism. Why doesn't he debate the subject here, for instance, or with Yahya, instead of feeding gullible undergraduates the usual tripe?

Why not look here: http://www.harunyahya.com/evolution06.php Far more sense to be had.

[Asyncritus (OP)]

Had they known what we know about genetics now, Darwin would never have made it off the ground. Mendel's work would have seen to that. Unfortunately...

I've just spotted this.
Perhaps Asyncritus could explain that statement. How do the two views not support each other?

Easy. There is no mixing of characters possible. Dominance and recessiveness reduce that idea to rubble, and Mendel was the discoverer.

[BenV]

Had they known what we know about genetics now, Darwin would never have made it off the ground. Mendel's work would have seen to that. Unfortunately...

I've just spotted this.
Perhaps Asyncritus could explain that statement. How do the two views not support each other?

Easy. There is no mixing of characters possible. Dominance and recessiveness reduce that idea to rubble, and Mendel was the discoverer.

I'm not sure that's a correct interpretation, especially as only certain characteristcs have been shown to have true, full, dominant and recessive alleles.

Ben, after 31,500 generations E.coli was still E.coli. Yeah, it could metabolise citrate - but Behe has pointed out that the gene does exist in the wild strains, and had been deactivated. It merely regained its functionality, and wasn't anything new.

Is this a misinterpretation, an exaggeration or a lie?  Lenski hasn't yet sequenced and identified the particular gene, as Behe acknowledges, and although there have been prior mutations that allowed e-coli to digest citrate, I think you're missing the point - the genes to do this weren't there, just waiting to be switched on, they perform a different function.

I'm sorry to say that you have asked us a question, we have provided a summary of the current scientific explanation, and you do not accept it because of your preconception that god did it.  You fail to address our questions and totally ignore the fact that science and religion are different paradigms.  I find it very frustrating, because I know that you are not at all willing to take on board any of this, so anti-evolution is your mindset.  Why should we bother?

[lyner]

Had they known what we know about genetics now, Darwin would never have made it off the ground. Mendel's work would have seen to that. Unfortunately...

I've just spotted this.
Perhaps Asyncritus could explain that statement. How do the two views not support each other?

Easy. There is no mixing of characters possible. Dominance and recessiveness reduce that idea to rubble, and Mendel was the discoverer.

Could you explain why?

[_Stefan_]

Anyone who thinks Yahya has anything of value to say about science has lost all credibility as an intellectual.