Fred Reed on Evolution

[ns2]

Fred's a curmudgeon, but maybe the most brilliant one on the planet. I second his own nomination for the Nobel prize.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/12/fred ... evolution/

He's written a lot on the subject and though I don't share his scientific understanding of it, as one who dropped acid back in the 60's after Vietnam I'm in tune with the feeling he has that there just has to be something more to it than the scientific explanations.

Edit1: I didn't know this but the article asserts that the original title of Darwin's Origin of Species book was "the Preservation of Favoured Races in the  Struggle for Life".  If true, I wonder why he changed it and why I never heard that before?

[Benko]

Pournelle has some very worthwhile things to say on this topic e.g.

Asking questions about evolution
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?p=16304 

"I don’t agree with Fred on everything, but he raises a number of really interesting questions, he’s right a lot of the time, and he doesn’t swallow fads.

His latest essay on evolution reads like something I might have written a few years ago, or yesterday for that matter if I had as much energy as he has. The latest essay is The Bugs In Darwin, (http://fredoneverything.net/BotFly.shtml) and he does a great job of summing them up. Doubting the sufficiency of Evolution as an explanation of everything will get you in more trouble than being a Climate Change Denier, but there are a number of “bugs in Darwin”? – things that it is very difficult to see any possible explanation for in Darwinian evolution. We know that there is “evolution”?; we can see it, and we can breed animals to our specifications; but the problem is that cellular biology is far more complicated than Darwin dreamed of, and indeed that anyone thought until fairly recently.

About thirty years ago I wrote an essay on evolution and origins using the analogy of a watch: you can take all the components of a watch, but them in a bag, and shake them forever and the probability that they will fall into place still remains vanishingly small with relation to the age of the universe. You can make the probability a bit larger by adding multiple copies of some of the components, but a bit larger still leaves you a vanishing probability. You can shape the parts such that there’s only one way they will fit together, and the probability they they’ll become a watch rises again, but it’s still small; and now of course you have to explain how the parts got made. If you find a watch in the woods, that’s pretty overwhelming evidence for the existence of a watchmaker. Now what do you look for if you find a watchmaker?

Fred looks at a number of highly complex processes and asks how they might have ‘evolved”?; and his conclusion is the same as mine has been since I was in high school: We don’t know, but it sure isn’t Darwinian survival of the fittest, and it looks a lot more like design than chance. I came to that conclusion before I knew just how complex the universe it, and I have never been shown any reason to change it..."

More discussion on evolution theories
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/?s=evolution

[ns2]

Classic Fred quote....

"The Argument from Time - Even a Federal Bureaucrat Can Get A Job Done, Given Forever"

[Tortoise]

Edit1: I didn't know this but the article asserts that the original title of Darwin's Origin of Species book was "the Preservation of Favoured Races in the  Struggle for Life".  If true, I wonder why he changed it and why I never heard that before?

From Wikipedia:

Darwin had initially decided to call it An abstract of an Essay on the Origin of Species and Varieties Through natural selection, but with Murray's persuasion it was eventually changed to the snappier title: On the Origin of Species, with the title page adding by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.[1] Here the term "races" is used as an alternative for "varieties" and does not carry the modern connotation of human races—the first use in the book refers to "the several races, for instance, of the cabbage" and proceeds to a discussion of "the hereditary varieties or races of our domestic animals and plants".[57]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species

In college I was a biochemistry major for a few years before switching to electrical engineering. It was fascinating stuff, but the thing that really got under my skin about biochemistry was the whole abiogenesis thing. I had been under the mistaken impression that most scientists were impartial, objective truth-seekers.

If most scientists were truly impartial, my biochem textbooks would have had little to say regarding the origin of life. Because the truth is that nobody knows. In science, it's okay to say "I don't know." But instead, my textbooks told elaborate just-so stories about how RNA and DNA formed out of pools of sludge and lightning bolts. With colorful, dramatic illustrations to accompany the stories, too! Just like the ones you see in illustrated Bibles.

Is there really that big of a difference between a story about lightning bolts imparting life to pools of sludge, and the account of events in the Book of Genesis? Aren't they both just creative descriptions of the same mysterious event that nobody was there to witness?

And here's a random observation about the term "natural selection": Doesn't the word "selection" imply purposeful choice between various alternatives? If it's not purposeful, why call it "selection"? And if nature--the selector--is indeed purposeful, who or what gave it that purpose?

What I'm getting at is that the idea of a random, meaningless universe guided by natural selection strikes me as a contradiction in terms. A universe of random particles stays random, drifting randomly and... well, just remaining utterly boring. It doesn't sprout self-consistent laws of physics and coalesce into fractal structures with local pockets of exponentially increasing structure, information, and self-awareness.

[MediumTex]

I find a humble sense of wonder at all of the things about the universe that we don't understand sort of refreshing.

[WildAboutHarry]

About thirty years ago I wrote an essay on evolution and origins using the analogy of a watch: you can take all the components of a watch, but them in a bag, and shake them forever and the probability that they will fall into place still remains vanishingly small with relation to the age of the universe. You can make the probability a bit larger by adding multiple copies of some of the components, but a bit larger still leaves you a vanishing probability. You can shape the parts such that there’s only one way they will fit together, and the probability they they’ll become a watch rises again, but it’s still small; and now of course you have to explain how the parts got made. If you find a watch in the woods, that’s pretty overwhelming evidence for the existence of a watchmaker. Now what do you look for if you find a watchmaker?

You anticipated Dawkins! 


(The Blind Watchmaker)

I think it is in The Blind Watchmaker (it has been a while since I read it) that Dawkins makes the argument about vision - how could something as complex as an eye have evolved?  His argument - even 5% of the function of an eye confers an advantage to its owner - seems compelling to me.  Remember, it has been more than a decade since I read this, so I may be fuzzy on the details.  Maybe only 5% correct

Evolution through natural selection is the only reasonable way to explain the diversity of life on earth we see today.  And time is critical.  We puny humans have not been around very long, and we have difficulty in contemplating much over a century (it is almost unfathomable to me that The Beatles today are the popular music equivalent of what Scott Joplin was when I was born).  If you have a billion years to work with seemingly impossible things become possible.

But all science suffers from the problem that eventually you run into situations where one cannot experiment, test, or measure.  At that point all one can offer is untestable hypotheses and speculation.  But even there I do not think it requires invocation of metaphysical beings or supernatural processes.  We simply, for the present, do not know.  And maybe can never know.

My fear in some of the anti-intellectualism that underlies some of the intelligent design/creation debate is summarized nicely in the song Kansas City in the musical Oklahoma!:  It has a line "Everything's up to date in Kansas City, They've gone about as far as they can go".

[ns2]

In college I was a biochemistry major for a few years before switching to electrical engineering. It was fascinating stuff, but the thing that really got under my skin about biochemistry was the whole abiogenesis thing. I had been under the mistaken impression that most scientists were impartial, objective truth-seekers.

I took a course in Botany during my brief college days. I don't remember anything about botany but what I do remember is the way the instructor went to great lengths at the beginning to eradicate from us the concept that there is any such thing as purpose in the universe. Students were giving him blank stares, obviously disagreeing with his proposition and this ticked him off so bad he pulled a pop quiz that I think everybody probably flunked since we hadn't even covered the material. I think we all would have understood perfectly well if he had simply said that for the purpose of scientific investigation we must assume that there is no purpose in the universe but he was adamant  that he was speaking an absolute truth that we had to accept. I only attended a few more courses after that before I dropped out for good.

[Gumby]

The human body contains over 10 times more microbial cells than human cells. Justin Sonnenburg, a microbiologist at Stanford, believes we should regard the human body as “an elaborate vessel optimized for the growth and spread of our microbial inhabitants.”? Bacteria have a very complex communication system that we barely understand. So, I think if anyone "designed" us, it was probably bacteria — either they were somehow instructed to design and assemble us or they — as a collective — decided to design/assemble and evolve us and other complex organisms.

[MediumTex]

I took a course in Botany during my brief college days. I don't remember anything about botany but what I do remember is the way the instructor went to great lengths at the beginning to eradicate from us the concept that there is any such thing as purpose in the universe. Students were giving him blank stares, obviously disagreeing with his proposition and this ticked him off so bad he pulled a pop quiz that I think everybody probably flunked since we hadn't even covered the material.

Maybe the best answer on a quiz like that would be:

Since the concept that we live in a universe with no purpose was the theme of the lecture that preceded this quiz, the real purpose of this quiz must be to test our comprehension of this concept.  I found the lecture to be very stimulating (in a sort of purposeless way), and I am therefore turning this quiz in with no answers, since a universe with no purpose won't provide any answers either, and I see that this is what you were trying to convey to us.

[Benko]

1.

You anticipated Dawkins! 

To be clear, that is not me talking, that is a quote from Jerry Pournelle who I am sure knows Dawkins and if Dawkins (who is not exactly unknown) answered the question, neither Fred nor Pournelle would be posting their skepticism (of certain parts) .  And your description is not at all compelling.  In fact going from nothing to 5% of an eye is still a huge deal. 

[moda0306]

I find intelligent design... or at least the most articulate, scientific proponents of it, to actually be quite interesting and valid.

I can see how things evolve through natural selection as being pretty accurate, but 1) how was life initiated (I heard what I thought was a pretty reasonable explanation of this), and 2) how did single-cell dividing organisms ever make certain leaps to an animal with organs, a brain, etc.  It seems to me that this is the most mysterious area of "natural selection."  Our bodily systems seem complex enough that they might not be a result of little changes over time.

I'd love to see a good debate on this.

[MediumTex]

1.

You anticipated Dawkins! 

To be clear, that is not me talking, that is a quote from Jerry Pournelle who I am sure knows Dawkins and if Dawkins (who is not exactly unknown) answered the question, neither Fred nor Pournelle would be posting their skepticism (of certain parts) .  And your description is not at all compelling.  In fact going from nothing to 5% of an eye is still a huge deal.

Any time I hear Dawkins speak I think to myself how little service he does to his ideas by allowing his caustic personality to get in front of whatever insight he may be trying to convey.  My takeaways from any interview I hear with Dawkins are usually the following (and in this order): (1) what a jerk, and (2) those were some really interesting ideas.

[dualstow]

...
Dawkins! 


(The Blind Watchmaker)

I think it is in The Blind Watchmaker (it has been a while since I read it) that Dawkins makes the argument about vision - how could something as complex as an eye have evolved?  His argument - even 5% of the function of an eye confers an advantage to its owner - seems compelling to me.  Remember, it has been more than a decade since I read this, so I may be fuzzy on the details.  Maybe only 5% correct

I think you have that right. I searched google books and only found references to it, not the text. As I remember, it was in response to Steven Jay Gould asking, "What good is 5% of an eye?" And Dawkins began by suggesting that even a light-sensitive spot of skin on a creature might help it move toward the sun, and could eventually become an eye as well.

[Tyler]

I find a humble sense of wonder at all of the things about the universe that we don't understand sort of refreshing.

+1

Many people who reject religion as superstition simultaneously fail to realize that belief in untestable scientific theories such as the Big Bang and natural selection also requires significant leaps of secular faith.  One mind can never comprehend the totality of human existence, so we fill the gaps by selecting which equally limited minds (aka "experts") we believe or ignore based on our own personal biases. 

Personally, I'm perfectly comfortable admitting we will never fully know how the universe works.  Like you, I find that humbling.  And I tend to mock people overly confident in processes and systems they can't possibly comprehend.

[Tyler]

In conversations like this, I often ask myself "What would Phoebe do?"

http://www.smart-words.org/humor-jokes/ ... iends.html

[ZedThou]

Many people who reject religion as superstition simultaneously fail to realize that belief in untestable scientific theories such as the Big Bang and natural selection also requires significant leaps of secular faith.

These are not equivalent "beliefs."

The first is faith - the acceptance of a supernatural being, or beings, for which there is absolutely no evidence. None whatsoever.

The other is simply following where the evidence leads. The universe is expanding, ample observational evidence shows this. Species also evolve, another observation backed by an extraordinary amount of evidence.

Humans never cease to amaze me. Why do we continue to invoke supernatural forces each and every time something confounds us? History is full of phenomena which were attributed to various deities before they were understood to be simple laws which could be expressed with our own invented mathematical constructs (and the effectiveness of these mathematics is what truly strikes me with awe).

[kka]

Many people who reject religion as superstition simultaneously fail to realize that belief in untestable scientific theories such as the Big Bang and natural selection also requires significant leaps of secular faith.

These are not equivalent "beliefs."

The first is faith - the acceptance of a supernatural being, or beings, for which there is absolutely no evidence. None whatsoever.

The other is simply following where the evidence leads. The universe is expanding, ample observational evidence shows this. Species also evolve, another observation backed by an extraordinary amount of evidence.

Humans never cease to amaze me. Why do we continue to invoke supernatural forces each and every time something confounds us? History is full of phenomena which were attributed to various deities before they were understood to be simple laws which could be expressed with our own invented mathematical constructs (and the effectiveness of these mathematics is what truly strikes me with awe).

There is plenty of direct observational evidence for an expanding universe, but that also is strong evidence for a beginner that transcends the universe, since the evidence demonstrates that the universe (time, space, and energy) had a beginning.  There is also evidence for micro evolution (for instance with bacteria), but there isn't a shred of evidence that purely naturalistic processes (chance and/or necessity) can explain the complexity of life as we know it, not to mention that science has no idea how life itself originated.  Explaining the origin of software (information) in the cell is something Darwin had no idea about and we still aren't even to step 0 in explaining it via naturalistic processes.  The evidence strongly suggests the best explanation is an intelligent cause.
https://www.discovery.org/csc/topQuesti ... gentDesign

[ns2]

Many people who reject religion as superstition simultaneously fail to realize that belief in untestable scientific theories such as the Big Bang and natural selection also requires significant leaps of secular faith.

These are not equivalent "beliefs."

The first is faith - the acceptance of a supernatural being, or beings, for which there is absolutely no evidence. None whatsoever.

The other is simply following where the evidence leads. The universe is expanding, ample observational evidence shows this. Species also evolve, another observation backed by an extraordinary amount of evidence.

Humans never cease to amaze me. Why do we continue to invoke supernatural forces each and every time something confounds us? History is full of phenomena which were attributed to various deities before they were understood to be simple laws which could be expressed with our own invented mathematical constructs (and the effectiveness of these mathematics is what truly strikes me with awe).

You are correct. They aren't equivalent beliefs.

One has a book that starts out with "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth" and asks you to believe.

The other has a book called "The Origin of Species" which never actually explains the Origin of Species but asks you to believe.

That was Fred's point in his essay, or at least as I saw it.

[MediumTex]

For a person who is comforted by reason, science often provides far more satisfactory explanations of the way the world works than religion or other faith-based belief systems.

When, however, it comes to the philosophical aspects of trying to understand how we got here, why we got here, where we are going, etc., I don't know that science offers any better answers than faith-based belief systems.

I think that any method for understanding how a system works can be optimized by understanding the limits of what that method is actually able to explain.  For example, even an outstanding automobile mechanic still probably wouldn't be able to tell you which cars will be selling best five years from now.

When I hear scientists talk about the nature of the world around us, I sometimes sense that there is a bit of "narrative shaping" based upon the equivalent of their own beliefs about which cars should be selling best five years from now.

Considering that humans are at times remarkably perceptive, and acknowledging that human archetypes are often the result of a subtle unconscious synthesis of the world around us, who is to say that some supernatural religious beliefs aren't just allegorical representations of actual truths that simply haven't been discovered yet, in the same way that today's science fiction often foreshadows future science reality.

[dualstow]

+ 1 What Zed said.

I love Fred's opinions, but all he has told me in this essay is that he hasn't grasped all the details of evolution, therefore there is Something Else.

Imagine that Fred lived in this universe but was somehow unaware of the history of dog breeding. He would probably write a colorful and convincing argument about how the shih-tzu and the sharpei could not have come from the wolf. Clearly, Something Else created them. Separately, he would say.

There is no doubt that there are arrogant scientists out there, and Richard Dawkins is one of them. Of course, we can no more begin to judge the theory of evolution based on the arrogance of some scientists than we can assess holy writ based on the indiscretions of some clergymen, although both, in their own way, succeed in turning off would-be adherents.

ns2 wrote:
One has a book that starts out with "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth" and asks you to believe.
The other has a book called "The Origin of Species" which never actually explains the Origin of Species but asks you to believe.

I think the beauty of the scientific method is that it is willing to revise. A true scientist doesn't claim to have all the answers. There is something more, all right, but it's not magic. It's just something we have not yet discovered or wrapped our mammalian minds around. Junk DNA is not junk after all, and perhaps those who said it was junk did not have much imagination. (Then again, they might have had their reasons for thinking it a kind of waste-DNA). But is this a reason to turn our backs on Darwinian evolution?
No. Not for me.

We readily accept the iPhones and air conditioners that applied science gives us, but if we could travel back in time a few centuries to Salem, Massachusetts and attempt to explain how an air conditioner works, well...  Like Carl Sagan's characters said in 'Contact', baby steps.

Evolution is particularly tricky because we are one of the end products (just another version, actually, with countless versions before and after us), and we certainly don't understand how we ourselves work. We cannot replicate the process of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly in a lab the way we can replicate so many simple experiments. But, we learn something new about how the universe works every single day. I guess I'm one of the believers.

[moda0306]

MT,

What you say is pretty spot on, except we need to realize that for every ounce of narrative shaping a scientist uses, most people in the religious community are using a few pounds of it.

It's one thing to admit that science may have limits to what it can explain (though this is partly because science actually burdens itself with actually having to prove their assertions), but most people in religious spheres aren't simply stating this... They're making a whole host of assertions about what/who God is, how he interacts with our world, and what he wants us to do.

Also, certain aspects of partical physics and theories around it would be considered "supernatural" similarly to religion if explained centuries ago.  If there is a God, it's likely that he is a being that exists on a scientific plane that we simply haven't come close to understanding yet (beyond our understanding of astro/partical physics).  So to the question of whether or not there is a God, I would expect we use science to try to figure it out, similar to the science that figured out physics beyond neutonjan physics.  Reading what some people put in a book (as opposed to tons of other books telling us different stuff) is NOT the first step we should take into finding the existence of a God. However, that's most people's first step.

[Xan]

If there is a God, it's likely that he is a being that exists on a scientific plane that we simply haven't come close to understanding yet (beyond our understanding of astro/partical physics).  So to the question of whether or not there is a God, I would expect we use science to try to figure it out, similar to the science that figured out physics beyond neutonjan physics.  Reading what some people put in a book (as opposed to tons of other books telling us different stuff) is NOT the first step we should take into finding the existence of a God. However, that's most people's first step.

But if you think it's likely that God can't be found by philosophical examination (science, remember, is a philosophy), then you need to be looking for revelation.

[moda0306]

I guess I would assert that any existence, even one we don't understand, must exist on some plane of existence that science simply hasn't been able to understand.  It may appear supernatural (lots of things did before we finally started to understand them). 

And if there truly is no other way to understand god but through revelations through our souls, then we're left trying to interpret what God's message is vs the ramblings of crazy people or confused/opportunist types. If we are left to our feeeeeelings to decipher this truth in our hearts, well no wonder so many of us pick the religion of our parents. It just feels more comfortable.

But if we truly do have a glimpse into they mind of God through studies of evolution and evidence of intelligent design, then this seems to me that we should be MORE vigilant to unite science and God. Not less. Who knows what other clues he gave us as to his intentions, motivations, etc.

But most religions are to wrapped up in the boxes they've locked themselves in to truly be the place to go for an objective attempt to understand god, even if we're ignoring the fact that we might have windows into his mind via science that people would rather just keep hoping that they're gut (the same thing that has driven countless evil acts) is telling them the truth about God. 

To me, more likely, is that people want to be part of a community of other good people, especially if that community is one they don't make family/friends uncomfortable with.  And that's great. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. In fact sometimes I feel like kind of a dick because some of the best people I know are deeply religious.  However I just hadn't heard a good argument for it that other religions aren't also claiming... That their "faith" has led them to the "truth."

Hope I'm not offending anyone btw.

[RuralEngineer]

I like evolution as a theory.  But then I watch the discovery channel and get to hear them talk about how our eyes evolved.

"Here is the primordial worm, 600 million years ago with light sensitive cells that can only sense light or shadow.  And here is the invertebrate 10 million years later with fully formed eyes that can spot prey!"

All of the interesting and complicated aspects of our physiology are all soft and are preserved in the fossil record.  Changes in bones structure are easily explained, we do that with dog breeds.  The evolution of the eye, the brain, or the split between plants and animals, the evolution of the chloroplast.  I feel like evolution does a bit of hand waving when it comes to these kinds of features.  I mean, a chloroplast is either on or it's not.  How is that going to develop over successive generations?

[ns2]

I love Fred's opinions, but all he has told me in this essay is that he hasn't grasped all the details of evolution, therefore there is Something Else.

You mean if he really grasped the details of evolution he would have the answers to those questions he is asking? I didn't know science had uncovered those answers yet.

I think the beauty of the scientific method is that it is willing to revise. A true scientist doesn't claim to have all the answers. There is something more, all right, but it's not magic. It's just something we have not yet discovered or wrapped our mammalian minds around.

So, you know there is something more and you don't know what it is but you are certain enough that your will methodology will uncover it that you are able to exclude any other explanation outside your methodology? That sounds like blind faith to me.