Monday, April 6, 2009

Natural selection is random/chance, period.

Darwin followers admit that random/chance cannot work, but calls natural selection nonrandom or the very opposite of chance. But they would never say natural selection is intentional or purposeful. So, is there such a thing that is nonrandom and non-intentional in nature? None what so ever in human experience. No one in history has a word for such a meaningless concept. How can anyone get away with such logical nonsense? The ID camps are equally poor in logic to allow this nonsense unchallenged (see Jonathan Wells debate with Massimo Pigliucci on youtube).

A thing is either chance or intentional. No third alternative. Laws are non-random and intentional products of law creators. If we don’t know either way the presence or absence of God, we simply cannot use natural laws as evidence of things that are nonrandom and nonintentional. A single random event is enough to make the outcome of a chain of events random. The selector in the natural selection processes is always random in a Darwinian God-less world. The natural selection process from the selector hot weather to death of heat sensitive variants is non-random. But the selector hot weather is random, which makes the end results of natural selection random. Calling the process non-random is not wrong but is meaningless. The end result is what matters, which can only be either random or intentional. The natural selection process is non-random but the end result could still be random if the selector is randomly caused.

Darwin followers mislead by changing the meaning of random for different terms in their theory without acknowledging it. The “random” as in variation does not mean the same thing as the “random” as in the phrase “non-random” that is used to label natural selection. The random in the former refers to the outcome of a complete chain of events from an initial mutation to the final expression of the variation phenotype. The random in the latter is only concerned with a part of a complete chain of events, i.e., the middle part linking the original event and the end result, which is the selection process linking the random selector and the end result of selection.

Mutation in DNA is followed by variation in phenotypes. Mutation is random but the biochemical process form mutation in DNA to the expression of the mutant phenotype is not random. It is correct here to call the mutant phenotype random, because there is a random event in the chain of events from beginning to end. If this definition of random used for mutation/variation is applied to selective death of mutants due to hot weather selection, we must call these death a random outcome of a chain of events that has one random event among them, the hot weather. In a chain of events, selector to selection-process and finally to end result, the end result is random so long the selector is random, regardless whether the process is random or not. If we do not care about the process in calling variation random, we must do the same in all other cases to be internally coherent with the concept random. This could only mean calling the result of natural selection random, if the selector is random. To call such result non-random is deceiving, fooling oneself, and incoherent. This is either logical lapse or deliberate cheating by Darwin followers. Neither is genuine science.

To be internally coherent with the word random, Darwinism can only mean this: random variations followed by random survival of fitter variants as a result of the natural selection process. (Emphasizing whether the process is random or not is meaningless here and only achieves the goal of confusing or misleading.) The two random words here in this sentence have the same meaning, and it is about the outcome of a complete chain of events. Contrast this truthful rendition of Darwinism with this popular but cheating version: random variations followed by non random survival of fitter variants as a result of the non random natural selection process. The first random means very different things from the other two random in this sentence. The lie here is that a non random process can only lead to a non random end result, when truth is that it can lead to both random and non-random results depending on the random nature of the selector.


Some quotes from Darwin followers:

Richard Dawkins:

Natural selection, the non-random survival of genes in gene pools (to put it in neo-Darwinian terms rather than Darwin's own).

Coyne is right to identify the most widespread misunderstanding about Darwinism as the idea that, in evolution, “everything happens by chance”. This common claim is flat wrong – obviously wrong, transparently wrong, even to the meanest intelligence (a phrase that has me actively restraining myself). If evolution worked by chance, it obviously couldn’t work at all.

Douglas Futuyma:
“Chance” does not mean lack of purpose or goal in science. If it did, we could say that absolutely everything in the natural world is by chance because we don’t see any purpose or goal in storms, in ocean currents, or anything else. Evolution certainly does involve randomness; it does involve unpredictable chance. For example, the origin of new genetic variation by mutation is a process that involves a great deal of chance. Genetic drift, the process I referred to earlier, is a matter of chance.

However, natural selection itself is the single process in evolution that is the antithesis of chance. It is predictable. It says that, within a specific environmental context, one genotype will be better than another genotype in survival or reproduction for certain reasons having to do with the way its particular features relate to the environment or relate to other organisms within the population. That provides predictability and consistency. So, if you have different populations with the same opportunity for evolution, you would get the same outcome.

Let us just pick Futuyma here and see how confused and incoherent he is.

If chance does not mean lack of purpose, it can only mean presence of purpose. So chance is purpose or presence of purpose in science. What kind of concept is that? Any real world examples of such stupid things? Then what is purpose and what is the opposite of purpose in science? There is unpredictable chance as in mutations. So chance here in science does mean lack of purpose since no one would say mutation has purpose, just qualified by unpredictable. Then is there such a thing as predictable chance?

Matter has no purpose, only mind has. In a world without mind, purpose is meaningless. Is there a thing that has purpose but no mind? Gravity laws have purpose and are nonrandom. But no one knows what/who created gravity laws. So, one cannot use gravity laws as an example of things that are both nonrandom and non-intentional.

If chance means lack of purpose, we cannot say absolutely everything in the natural world is by chance. Because if we say that, it would mean that we know there is no intention/God. And we don’t know that. There is nothing known in science that can exclude the coexistence of chance and intention in nature. Darwinism has not excluded God in the evolution process. The Darwinian story of evolution is incoherent for the simple fact that it has countless contradictions. It is contradicted by both the fossil record and the DNA record, the only types of evidence one could have for evolution.

So, in a Godless world demanded by Darwinian science, chance is given a meaning that has purpose. No human intuition could picture such a senseless thing. If Darwin followers must require us to accept senseless phrases like "chance means presence of purpose in science", it simple means that their theory is anti-intuitive. For all we know, genuine science like math and physics are based on intuitions. Anti-intuition is self-defeating. Nothing in science that is not ultimately intuitively sensible. Earth is flat is intuitive for ancient humans but is ultimately sensible too for modern humans.

The above proves that natural selection is as random as anything that is random. By Darwin followers' own criterion (if natural selection is random, it could not work), this in turn proves that Darwin's theory could not work. And it does not. Just take a look at the countless factual contradictions, as well as the numerous logical mistakes made by the Darwin followers.

5 comments:

Brian Barrish said...

"A thing is either chance or intentional. No third alternative. Laws are non-random and intentional products of law creators."

You make this statement as if it is fact, when it is actually nothing more than an opinion. If we say that something didn't happen by "chance", it does not necessarily mean that it is "intentional". Intent is a human concept. It implies that an intelligence has made a conscious action to produce a specific result. If we accept this argument, then we must assume that anything which has any degree of order is the result of conscious effort. Perhaps you are comfortable with taking this leap in logic, but it is not sound reasoning which stands up to critical analysis. You need to offer sound evidence to support this statement.

Your use of the word "Laws" is also misleading. I will concede that the laws of man are created by intelligence, but when talking about laws of nature we are dealing with an entirely different concept. You are attempting to use word games to prove a scientific point. You cannot make a direct analogy between man-made "laws" and natural "laws".

gnomon said...

if there is a God, it would explain all the laws of nature. No one knows if there is one or not. So, you cannot cite laws of nature as things that are both non random and non-intentional. Why is such simple idea so hard for Darwin followers to digest?

If I dont cite laws of nature as intentional, because I have no proof of God the law creator, then neither can you cite them as non-intentional because you dont have proof of no God.

You talk about laws of nature and man being different as if you know anything at all about laws of nature. Truth is you can only guess, which could be very wrong.

I can give you countless real world examples of things that are either random or intentional, but you can give none that we know for sure is both nonrandom and nonintentional.

Beside, worse for you, such concept is not intuitively sensible or self evident. In contrast, it can only be self-evidently wrong. Remember, intuition is the real foundation for your rational thoughts. If your theory depends on gross violation of intuition, then the theory is in trouble. If the intuition can be no good, what good is its deduction products, which include your theory?

Stripe said...

A very good read, professor. Thanks.

Mike Vandeman said...

As far as we know, there is no God. No one has yet found anything that requires a God, so Occam's Razor implies that the simplest argument (there is no God) should be accepted. Why expend the extra effort to promote God, if it isn't necessary??? It seems like a waste of energy.

gnomon said...

Simply not true. People has long found things that resist explanation by the prevailing framework. The most astonishing one is called genetic equidistance. If science is about cheery picking, any fool can do it. Unfortunately for the fools and fortunately for humanity, one can make a pathetic living by cheery pick for only so long but not forever (~50 years in the case of genetic equidistance).