Debating Darwin's Doubt

[lee_merrill]

I just finished reading "Debating Darwin's Doubt" (abbreviated here as DDD), where Stephen Meyer and others answer critics of his original book, "Darwin's Doubt." It is thorough, and much of the book is addressing misunderstandings. Perhaps most telling, though, are the admissions of Meyer's critics:

Source: Darrel Falk, "Thoughts on Darwin's Doubt"

The big mystery associated with the Cambrian explosion is the rapid generation of body plans de novo. There was never a time like it before, nor has there ever been a time like it again since. Stephen is right about that. Also, as he points out, the big question in exploring the generation of new body plans in that era is how this squares with the resistance of today’s gene regulatory networks to mutational perturbation (i.e. they seem to be almost impossible to change through genetic mutation because virtually all such alterations are lethal). We really have little idea at this point how things would have worked to generate body plans de novo back then given the sensitivity of the networks to perturbation today.

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Source: DDD

Stearley also found value in the book’s scientific analysis, saying that it “makes an argument that folks should think hard about” and indeed that he “resonate[s] with some of Meyer’s arguments.” He is unhappy with aspects of my book and thinks I should have talked more about the small shelly fossils in the early Cambrian, something my colleagues and I have addressed in Chapters 13 and 14. But Stearley agreed with my critique of the adequacy of current evolutionary mechanisms for the origin of animal form. Thus, Stearley notes that I “developed a case for the inadequacy” of standard approaches.

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Source: DDD, quoting from the book "The Cambrian Explosion"

First, as the title suggests, The Cambrian Explosion acknowledges that the Cambrian explosion was a real event, and is not merely an artifact of an imperfect fossil record. ...

I am not questioning whether Erwin and Valentine believe that animal body plans arose via unguided evolutionary processes. Obviously they do. What is important here is that they recognize that explaining the Cambrian explosion requires explaining how the vast complexity and diversity of animal forms arose.

Third, and most importantly, Erwin and Valentine observe that standard neo-Darwinian mechanisms of repeated rounds of microevolution are not sufficient to explain the explosion of life in the Cambrian. They note that “a third theme of this book is the tension between the nature of explanations for major evolutionary transitions."

That statement provides a good hint as to where they stand: The word “tension” is an artful way of saying that standard evolutionary mechanisms have a hard time accounting for the Cambrian explosion.

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Blessings,
Lee

[HMS_Beagle]

Darwin's Doubt has been as thoroughly discredited as any ID-Creationist book can be. It's been completely rejected as the work of a clueless bumbling amateur by actual professional paleontologists. Meyer ignored most all the evidence of the life in the 3 billion years before the Cambrian and got wrong the parts he didn't ignore. The pages of Meyer's religiously motivated comic book is now only valuable for lining the bottom of the bird cage. This is especially true with the recent early Ediacaran microfossil embryos which were recently discovered.

This latest attempt by Meyer to defend his original tripe is just more whining and hand waving. Seriously Lee, are you on the DI's payroll to push this ridiculous old and stinky anti-science garbage?

[lee_merrill]

Darwin's Doubt has been as thoroughly discredited as any ID-Creationist book can be.

Did you read my post? Several of Meyer's critics acknowledged the force of several of his main arguments.

"The big mystery associated with the Cambrian explosion is the rapid generation of body plans de novo. There was never a time like it before, nor has there ever been a time like it again since. Stephen is right about that." (Darrel Falk)

This is especially true with the recent early Ediacaran microfossil embryos which were recently discovered.

Do you mean as here?

Source: Phys.org

In rocks that are 570–560 mya, scientists from Uppsala University, the University of Copenhagen and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland have found microfossils of what might be eggs and animal embryos. These are so well preserved that individual cells, and even intracellular structures, can be studied. The organisms concerned lived in the shallow coastal seas around Greenland during the Ediacaran period, 635–541 mya. The immense variability of microfossils has convinced the researchers that the complexity of life in that period must have been greater than has hitherto been known.

Source

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Well, such claims have been made before, so we need to be careful:

Source: Nature

Bailey et al. propose that the Ediacaran microfossils Megasphaera and Parapandorina, previously interpreted as animal resting eggs and blastula embryos, represent Thiomargarita-like sulphide-oxidizing bacteria, claiming that this interpretation better explains their abundance and taphonomy. Here we highlight important observations that significantly weaken the authors' conclusions.

Source

© Copyright Original Source

But let's say they are correct! What Ediacaran animals do these embryos represent, and why do we not seem to find such in Ediacaran deposits?

And finally, one or a few Ediacaran animals would still not explain the diversification that occurred in the Cambrian explosion.

Blessings,
Lee

[TheLurch]

Did you read my post? Several of Meyer's critics acknowledged the force of several of his main arguments.

Oddly, the two critics you mention happen to be faculty at small Christian teaching colleges. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, but i'm curious as to whether there are any prominent researchers i might recognize?

[shunyadragon]

Darwin's Doubt is an unscientific apologist ID book, and all you have to offer is Christina apologists at Christian colleges to prop up this bogus book.

[rogue06]

I'm still trying to see how this thread is in any way different than the ones that Lee has started on the same subject several times previously.

[shunyadragon]

I'm still trying to see how this thread is in any way different than the ones that Lee has started on the same subject several times previously.

Several? Ground Hog Day for years.

[lee_merrill]

Oddly, the two critics you mention happen to be faculty at small Christian teaching colleges. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, but i'm curious as to whether there are any prominent researchers i might recognize?

Erwin and Valentine you might be familiar with:

Source: Amazon.com

“The Cambrian Explosion tackles the most transformative interval in Earth and evolutionary history – the surprisingly sudden and belated expropriation of the planet by animals. Too often treated as a single trigger issue, Erwin and Valentine present a refreshingly nuanced view of the complex feedbacks between developmental biology, ecology and physical environment that gave rise to the modern biosphere.” —N. J. Butterfield is University Lecturer at the University of Cambridge.

Source

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Blessings,
Lee

[lee_merrill]

I'm still trying to see how this thread is in any way different than the ones that Lee has started on the same subject several times previously.

This has critics of "Darwin's Doubt" responding in positive ways.

Blessings,
Lee

[HMS_Beagle]

This has critics of "Darwin's Doubt" responding in positive ways.

Blessings,
Lee

Yep. They're all positive Darwin's Doubt was one of the most disingenuous pieces of science-free garbage the ID-Creationists have ever produced.

[rogue06]

This has critics of "Darwin's Doubt" responding in positive ways.

Blessings,
Lee

Much in the same ways film promoters snip a quote from a negative review making it look like they thought it was a good movie when they put it on a poster.

Moreover, that doesn't change the fact that this offers nothing new in the way of supporting evidence but is just another re-tread of the same old same old that keeps getting pounded into a fine pink mist over and over again and again.

Look, Lee I like you, even though you frustrate the living day lights out of me with your threads and refusal to try to understand even the basics about what you keep posting about. However, if you keep this up (the posting of the same thing every couple of months), I'm going to be forced into simply merging your threads into a single Lee doesn't understand the evidence for evolution from the Cambrian sort of thread. Don't make me do that (don't worry, I won't call it that either )

[lee_merrill]

Much in the same ways film promoters snip a quote from a negative review making it look like they thought it was a good movie when they put it on a poster.

These were critics of "Darwin's Doubt" indeed, which makes the confirmation of various points even more emphatic.

Moreover, that doesn't change the fact that this offers nothing new in the way of supporting evidence but is just another re-tread of the same old same old that keeps getting pounded into a fine pink mist over and over again and again.

This is indeed new supporting evidence, evidence from opponents of ID, and I notice no fine pink mist here.

Look, Lee I like you, even though you frustrate the living day lights out of me with your threads and refusal to try to understand even the basics about what you keep posting about. However, if you keep this up (the posting of the same thing every couple of months), I'm going to be forced into simply merging your threads into a single Lee doesn't understand the evidence for evolution from the Cambrian sort of thread. Don't make me do that (don't worry, I won't call it that either )

That would be abusing your moderator abilities.

Blessings,
Lee

[TheLurch]

This is indeed new supporting evidence, evidence from opponents of ID, and I notice no fine pink mist here.

Maybe there's something in the book that's not in the quotes you've shared, but the only thing you've shared is people saying "we agree that understanding the origin of evolutionary novelties is important." Saying someone wrote about an important topic is not the same as saying that what they wrote was right or even high quality.

It's certainly not "new supporting evidence'. So maybe you need to search the book for quotes that are actually supportive of Meyer's arguments, rather than Meyer's topic.

[rogue06]

That would be abusing your moderator abilities.

Blessings,
Lee

No. We do it all the time when we've had posters that keep starting threads about the same topic. Some have even ended up having all of their posts (and responses to them) combined into a single thread and put in the padded room. I don't think that you've done anything that warrants going that far.

[Cow Poke]

That would be abusing your moderator abilities.

Blessings,
Lee

I would expect Rogue wouldn't actually do that - he'd suggest to the mod squad that they (we) do it.
It's not terribly unusual for that to happen.