Darwinists self destruct when self defend

Let us do a few necessary/inevitable logical deductions from the typical claims of a Darwinist like Ken Weiss and others and see where they may lead us. Ken Weiss: “Any rule an evolutionary biologist can come up with, nature can break.”

The rules/hypotheses of Darwinists include a few like the following:

1. The very rule itself that ‘any rule an evolutionary biologist can come up with, nature can break.”

2. Variations are random/chance.

3. There is no God doing any selection. There is no artificial/mind selection and only natural selection, at least before the appearance of human mind.

The following are the exceptions to each of the above. They must be true if Darwinists are right that “any rule an evolutionary biologist can come up with, nature can break”:

1. There is such a rule that has no exceptions.

2. Some variations are due to intention or not random.

3. There is a God doing artificial selection during evolution.

These logical exercises are meant to illustrate the absurdity of the position of no absolute truth/certainty/rule in evolution. It is a self defeating position and a double edged sword. Darwinists cannot escape self-destruction when they use it for self-defence of their contradiction-laden theory.

A person caring only about the disinterested search for truth can only have one possible position. There must be a law of evolution that has no exceptions. Nothing can break it. Not accidents, not mother nature, and not God.

"Only a disinterested search can result in Truth, for every form of self-interest will lead only to a creation which will serve that self-interest." by N. Sri Ram

Either chance or intention (no other alternatives), in Darwin's own words

In Darwin's words:

"I cannot look at the universe as the result of blind chance, yet I can see no evidence of beneficent design, or indeed of design of any kind."

"This [conviction in the existence of God] follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity."

These statements by Darwin clearly shows that he sees only two possible choices for man, either chance or God, for explaining the universe. And his is a theory of chance, as is clear to every sensible human being including Darwin himself but oddly enough not to most of his most outspoken followers.

Today's Darwin followers, a very small fraction of scientists who studies evolution for a living and ranks among the most non-scientific among scientists (those who refuse to allow their theory to be falsified by a contradicting test result), outrageously claim that there is actually a third alternative, i.e., "not pure chance and not pure determination."

In Ernst Mayr's words:

"No one has stated this better than Sewall Wright: “The Darwinian process of continued interplay of a random and a selective process is not intermediate between pure chance and pure determination, but in its consequences qualitatively utterly different from either.”

"It is remarkable how generally it is overlooked that with natual selection Dawin has introduced an entirely new and revolutionary principle which is not at all vulnerable to the objection that his theory relies entirely on accident."

So, these so called evolution scientists obviously have revised Darwinism and made Darwin look stupid, not to mention most of us fellow human beings. Should not they be awarded a Noble for their great discovery of a third alternative besides chance and intention? Well, last time I checked, not a single person has won a Nobel for his contribution to evolution theory. For that to happen, a person would have to first create a shorter word for such a stupid concept of "not pure chance and not pure determination". But unfortunately, chance and intention has already every relevant concepts covered. There is nothing left besides those two for Darwin revisionists to create a name for.

A man was found dead tonight. It could only be either chance or intention, at least those would be the only two possible alternatives worth considering to a police. The creation of human beings in this universe can only be either chance or intention. The death or extinction of the human race in this universe can only be either chance or intention. Most Darwinists, like Steven Gould, say that human may not appear if evolution is repeated, thus viewing human as the result of chance.

Note that intention can allow chance a role in the universe. Like I intentionally use chance or tossing dice to select whether I should serve first. So, the existence of intention does not necessarily rules out any role for chance in this universe. And therefore, the existence of chance as we do seem to see in this universe does not rule out intention. In contrast, a chance theory necessarily rules out intention. When we say either chance or intention, the concept of intention includes any position anywhere from 100% intention to only 0.000...1% intention, and the concept of chance means 0% intention.

Darwinists say that natural selection is not random. By this, they want common folks to think that human is not a result of pure chance. So, what is their prediction if evolution is repeated? would human evolve again? Darwin himself believes in either chance or intention. And it is easy prediction for either chance or intention: if chance, no human; if intention, yes again human. The third alternative of "not pure chance and not pure determination" predicts what? Not pure human and not pure no human? By the admission of most Darwinists, the answer is no human. So for all practical matters that are relevant and important to common folks, their theory is no different from a pure chance theory. Theirs is as far away from an intention theory as any pure chance theory can be.

Telling people that natural selection is not random is not wrong but is a complete nonsense carrying zero useful information. It is exactly like telling a father who has just lost his son to an earthquake that bleeding to death the process is not random and thus he should not view the death of his son random. To say "bleeding to death the process is not random" is not wrong but is such a trivial and irrelevant truth to say and would only confuse the father.

Natural selection the process is not random is such a trivial and irrelevant truth that even Darwin did not bother to say during his entire life. Because he knows that whether it is random or not has no bearing on the random nature of the result of selection, which can only be random in a world without intention.

Again, making a big deal of the non random nature of the selection process can fool no one other than those very few who kept repeating such trivial and irrelevant truth. They probably believe that a lie repeated enough can become truth. Well, they need to first convince the Nobel committee before the common folks. Genuine scientific truth always trickles down from top/elite to bottom/common folks. There are just too many genuine elite scientists, including most mathematicians, most physicists, and most real biologists like myself who would if they have a choice never go into a branch of biology like evolution that has a track record of zero Nobel laureates (a rough measure of its non-scientific nature as is currently practiced), who would simply laugh at any theory that do have and do allow contradictions, regardless whether it is Darwin's or God's theory.

All existing evolution theories have/allow contradictions and hence are non-testable

Darwin followers never said that their theory has no exceptions. Here are a few typical claims:

“Unlike the case in physics, the predictive power of a model in biology is quite low. It seems to us that if the prediction (e.g., a phylogenetic tree reconstructed) of a model is correct in 80% of the cases, it is a good model at least at the present time.”

Masatoshi Nei and Sudhir Kumar, 2000, Molecular Evolution and Phylogenetics, p85.

“any rule an evolutionary biologist can come up with, nature can break.”

From Professor Ken Weiss’s Blog page of July 13, 2009, http://ecodevoevo.blogspot.com/2009/07/rules-of-nature.html

A common sense and logical view of mine on why any theory must not allow a single contradiction in order to qualify as scientific or testable:

In mathematics or physics, one exception is sufficient to doom any theory. The science of biology or any scientific discipline for that matter should not be held to a lower standard. When one allows exceptions, one has effectively and automatically rendered the theory non-testable and non-scientific. Think about it: if a test turns out to be against the theory, would the theory still stand as correct? Yes, if one allows exceptions. Thus, such a theory can never be falsified by the scientific method. That theory would be no different from a false theory that happens to explain a fraction of nature while being contradicted by the rest. The only way to distinguish a true theory from a false or incomplete one is to see if it has not a single factual exception within its domain of application or relevance.

The worst theory possible would still be able to explain at least one factual observation, namely, the fact itself that directly provoked the theory or the tautology. For example, apple falls because it is the intrinsic nature of apple to fall. Thus, to be able to explain a small fraction of all relevant facts while being contradicted by the rest is not evidence of a true theory but is evidence of an incomplete or false theory.

I have no patience with such typical self-serving and self-deceiving claims that you don’t expect a theory of evolution to have no contradictions since most things are chance. The one thing that all genuine science like mathematics and physics have taught us is that it would take a miracle for an incomplete theory to have no contradictions and it would equally take a miracle for a complete theory to encounter a single contradiction in nature. The difference between truth and falsehood is not quantitative or measured by the difference in the number of contradictions but is qualitative.

There can be countless incomplete or false theories with each accounting for a few facts but there can only be one unique true theory that accounts for all facts within its domain of application. Until evolutionary biology has such a theory that has not a single contradiction, it is not real science. But I still view the daily work of biologists as scientific even if being misguided by an incomplete theory because the facts that they collect will be useful for looking for the true theory and fact collection rather than theory building is what they do for a living. In this sense, the taxpayers’ money is well spent indeed.

Newton physics does not work in the microworld and Newton followers have no trouble admitting it. Darwinism would not have a single exception if it is limited to microevolution such as drug resistance in bacteria. It only encounters exceptions when being applied to domains such as macroevolution where it is irrelevant and false. Darwinists could easily meet the no contradiction standard if they could just be honest and specific about where their theory works and where it does not.

Natural selection is random but artificial selection is not

Contrast between natural selection (NS) and artificial selection (AS). Artificial selection has human mind as the selector. It was used by Darwin as an analogy to natural selection. Darwin used the term once in his work On the Origin of Species:

Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do much by artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and complexity of the co adaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may have been effected in the long course of time through nature's power of selection, that is by the survival of the fittest.

NS AS

Intention.............................no yes

Purpose..............................no yes

Selector...............................random non random/mind

Selection process................non random non random

Selection outcome...............random non random

Overall.................................Random Non random

Next time you hear someone says that natural selection is the opposite of random, ask him what then is artificial selection? Mind and no mind are opposites, and if one is non random, its opposite can only be random.

The origin of the flawed notion that natural selection is not random/chance

I am very interested to find out who first said that natural selection is not random/chance but is the very opposite. I re-read Darwin's original book and did not find it there. The earliest source for this flawed notion that I could manage to find is the 1982 book by one of the founders of Neo-Darwinism, Ernst Mayr, "The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance". This notion has since been repeated many times in his later books, such as "What evolution is" and "What makes biology unique". But I have yet to find an evolution textbook by other authors that pay special attention to this notion. This notion is however often emphasized by books aimed at the lay public, such as those by Richard Dawkins and Jerry Conye. But these books never acknowledge the source of this notion, as if it is either the author's own or Darwin's.

Here is what Mayr wrote in his 1982 book.

"Darwin’s theory rejected uncompromisingly the existence of any finalistic factor in the causation of evolutionary change, and this strengthened the resistance of many to natural selection. Most of his contemporaries could see only a single alternative to teleological determination, this being accident. Indeed, until modern times many scientists and philosophers have rejected selection, saying that it was unthinkable that “the marvelous harmony of organisms” could all be due to accident. Those who raised that ojection overlooked the fact that natural selection is a two step process. At the first step, the production of genetic variability, accident, indeed, reigns supreme. However, the ordering of genetic variability by selection at the second step is anything but a chance process. Nor is selection, as has sometimes been claimed, something that is intermediate between chance and necessity, but something entirely new that escapes the dilemma of a choice between these two principles. No one has stated this better than Sewall Wright (1967: 117): “The Darwinian process of continued interplay of a random and a selective process is not intermediate between pure chance and pure determination, but in its consequences qualitatively utterly different from either.”

"It is remarkable how generally it is overlooked that with natual selection Dawin has introduced an entirely new and revolutionary principle which is not at all vulnerable to the objection that his theory relies entirely on accident. Darwin himself apparently forgot this occasionally, since he confessed at one time that he was greatly bothered by “the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe…as the result of blind chance or necessity” (1958: 92, as if these were the only two available options."

I wish to make two comments.

Darwinists such as Sewall Wright as quoted above can only say what natural selection is not (not pure chance and not pure determination) but can never really articulate what it actually is. The reason for this is simple: it is not sensible to human intuition and reason. No one in human history has a word for such a meaningless concept or something that is not chance and not determined.

Darwin probably never said that natural selection is not accident (no where can I find evidence to that effect). Thus, when he confessed that he was greatly bothered by “the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe…as the result of blind chance or necessity”, he was not experiencing a lapse in memory, as alleged by Mayr.

So, as far as I can find, the flawed notion that natural selection is not random is not from Darwin but is from one of the most famous Darwin followers Ernst Mayr. It is not an inherently inevitable logical deduction from Darwin's theory (if it is, Darwin would have deduced it) but is in fact a twisted defensive response to the valid criticism that Darwin's theory is basically a creation -by-accident theory.

Latest gene knock out works confirm the MGD hypothesis

A recent news focus article in Science discusses knock out works that are inexplicable by the existing paradigm of evolution.   But, as I explain below, they are easy predictions of the MGD hypothesis. 

Genomic clues to DNA treasure sometimes lead nowhere

 

By Don Monroe, July 10, 2009, Science 325: 142-143

 

The first paragraph summarizes the basic findings that the existing paradigm has no clues about: “When a gene works, evolution holds on to it, keeping its sequence intact even as bases around it change over time. Genome researchers had come to depend on this conservation to steer them to critical regions in the genome: If a stretch of DNA remains unchanged across different species, that DNA is probably performing a vital function. But a growing number of examples show that not all conserved sequences are important and, worse, that not all important sequences are conserved. That second observation—which would have been considered heresy until about a decade ago—means that researchers who had typically relied on conservation to guide them could have missed critical genes or unknown regulatory regions. But even as they scramble to understand how the "conservation equals function" rule has failed them, they are uncovering profound new subtleties in how genes are controlled and how they adapt during evolution.”

 

The fact that non-conserved sequences can be just as lethal when knocked-out as conserved ones is precisely what would be predicted by the MGD hypothesis. 

 

Let us consider two genes A and B in mouse.  A is conserved or shows 90% identity between two strains of mice.  B  is less conserved or merely shows 40% identity between two strains of mice.  Based on the MGD hypothesis, the bare bone function of A (minimal function that shows activity in a test tube) may require merely 40% of the residues rather than 90%.  The high degree of conservation of A indicates a broader function associated with epigenetic complexity rather than with bare bone function.  In terms of percentage residues needed for bared bone function, A and B may in fact be quite similar.  However, B may not be needed for multiple cell types and encounter less epigenetic constraints, leading to less sequence conservation.  But the bare bone function of B may be just as essential as that of A and neither could be knocked out without a lethal effect. 

 

To distinguish the functional importance of conserved vs non-conserved sequences, knock out is not the way to do it but is unfortunately what has so far been done simply because it is easy to do.  Mutation is affecting single base pair while knock out is often deleting the whole gene.  The MGD makes the following testable prediction.  If one does random mutagenesis one by one by knock in method for each of the base pairs of a gene, it is far more likely for a point mutation in a conserved gene than in a less conserved one to lead to an abnormal phenotype.

 

The fact that conserved sequences are not lethal when knocked-out is also precisely what would be predicted by the MGD hypothesis.  Conservation may reflect epigenetic complexity rather than merely functional essentialness for viability. 

 

 

Pervasive Natural Selection in the Drosophila Genome?

There is new review paper openly attacking the neutral theory:

Sella G, Petrov DA, Przeworski M, Andolfatto P (2009) Pervasive Natural Selection in the Drosophila Genome? PLoS Genet 5(6): e1000495. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000495  

The authors essentially concludes that the neutral theory is largely false in the Drosophila system.  The implication is obvious, if it is false in one life form, it must be false for all life forms.  There is and can only be one theory for all life forms.  After all, we only got one DNA code universal for all life forms.   The paper is fully consistent with MGD hypothesis.

Some interesting quotes:

Analyses of genetic variation within and between species reveal that much of the Drosophila genome is under purifying selection, and thus of functional importance, and that a large fraction of coding and noncoding differences between species are adaptive.  (in other words, no such thing as neutral mutations)

The emerging evidence has implications for a wide variety of fields, from conservation genetics to bioinformatics, and presents challenges to modelers and experimentalists alike.  (Well, challenges no more.  The MGD neutralizes all challenges)

Recent evidence, however, is calling these assumptions (of the Neutral theory) into question. While the studies have been conducted in a range of taxa, the strongest case comes from Drosophila, where multiple lines of inquiry challenge the basic tenets of the Neutral Theory.

These findings cast doubt on the validity of the Neutral Theory in Drosophila, and possibly in other species, raising new and challenging questions for experimentalists and theoreticians alike.

Although the recent findings in Drosophila herald a shift in our view of genome evolution, they do not yet suggest a coherent alternative picture.  (The MGD is the alternative)