Over at his place, PZ Meyers seems in fine fettle as he both denies the obvious, and approves of the erroneous. I urge anyone who wants to try out rational thinking to venture over there and apply it to PZ’s “ejaculations”.
Here’s an example. PZ posts about someone who has simulated evolution on a computer by taking colored polygons on a black screen and comparing them to the Mona Lisa, then keeping the pixels that compare slightly better than the previous ones. The screen eventually “evolves” into a semblance of – guess what – The Mona Lisa! Although even PZ admits that the selection procedure is “far more stringent than in nature”, he concludes that “it's an interesting if oversimplified example of the power of chance and selection.”
Sorry PZ, that simulation, like the ones done by Dawkins, is nothing at all like what happens in nature, if one actually reads up on evolution. There is no final objective against which to judge and keep mutations. The selection mechanism is not an accurate model of the actual evolution hypothesis. Even worse is the idea of mutating each and every polygon at the same time. The simulation is false, evolution-wise, period. False.
Interestingly, over at the programmer’s site, none of his commentors seem bothered in the least by the false algorithm, but are more impressed by the missing code for step 3: compare existing screen to the desired image. In reality, step 3 shouldn’t exist at all, if it is to model evolution.
At another juncture, PZ claims that Pat Boone’s assertions of terrorist type death threats by Gays in tantrum mode just doesn’t exist: “rancid tripe” he calls it. PZ apparently didn’t keep up with the gay-tantrum news, there were death threats and physical attacks along with racial epithets. PZ is not too scrupulous about actual facts interfering with his ridicule and sarcasm.
So go on over to PZ’s place, and match up his claims to actual reality. It can be fun, but usually it’s just annoying.
6 comments:
"There is no final objective against which to judge and keep mutations."
Yes there is. The final objective in nature is the environment, and the "goal" is to adapt to that environment so you are best able to reproduce.
The Mona Lisa "goal" is analogous to, say, an ice age. The organisms with slightly more hair than their parents are slightly better able to survive the cold and pass on their "hairy" genes. And the children of THOSE organisms who have even slightly MORE hair are more likely to survive and pass on their genes compared to their naked siblings, and so on until you have an organism that's really really furry. The goal was not fur; the goal was simply to survive the environment.
The polygons "survive" (are kept) if they are "better suited to" (look more like) their "environment" (the Mona Lisa).
You have two arms not because there was an end goal in mind to give you two arms, but because the environment favored humans with arms and didn't favor those without. Perhaps little animals running around that were easier to catch and eat with arms? All the humans that didn't have arms starved to death, perhaps?
Your environment argument has merit only within an existing population genome, where the hairiest end of the distribution survives. This is the same as the Darwin's Finch population study done over a number of years by Grant and Grant, which found environmental oscillations within the genome, but zero viable transverses outside the genome. (most mutants die, the remaining are not viable breeders capable of changing the distribution curve of the population's overall genome).
Claiming a whole series of "more hair than the genome previously allowed" mutations which are then selected to match the environment is trivially unlikely - I say trivially because so many evolution true believers seem to think that 10e-400 is a real, achievable probability, whereas in reality it is trivial.
In fact, if the environment (Mona Lisa in this case) is that far from the original (black screen), it is more parsimonious to consider that a population of living creatures would die out completely before acheiving compatiblity.
As for the two arm argument, it is interesting that most reptiles and mammals have two front limbs and two rear limbs, with the front limbs having different characteristics than the rear limbs, yet similar to those of other species. I doubt that your argument for two arms is anything more than an example of creating a story to match the observation.
I do not argue for design. But the argument for design is no more hypothetical or inferrential than the argument for evolution. Nor is it less parsimonious. Neither argument is empirically based; neither argument is capable of being verified; neither argument (nor any empirical argument for that matter) is capable of becoming a valid "truth" statement worth incorporating into a worldview. This is the hazard of making up Just So Stories to cover for the lack of empirical information available to evolutionary claims.
For this reason, evolution, unlike almost any other "science" is a hazard to our society, where science fetishism is being promoted as a source of truth. This was the thrust of both Lenin and the Third Reich. It is false, logically and ethically. And it is dangerous.
I don't know enough about biology and genetics to argue over specifics, so I'm not going to try.
However, the point of these evolution programs is to respond to specific creationist arguments such as:
"Evolution doesn't happen because dogs don't give birth to cats."
That's all it's trying to do. Not argue the truth of evolution. Just show (some, extreme, young earth, etc) creationists how lifeforms slowly change over time, until they don't look anything like when they started, even though any two "transitional forms" next to each other look indistinguishable from each other.
Personally, I prefer the blind watchmaker applet for this purpose. It doesn't start with an end goal.
Many YEC's are PhD's, some with two or more; they are not stupid, nor ignorant. To put forth erroneous algorithms as indicative of the truth of evolution only makes the programmer look as though either deception or condescension was the goal.
The truth is that most mutations lead to the death of the bearer. And the remaining benign mutations are not generally useful unless fortuitously coupled with a great number of other mutations. (in fact most benign mutations are shed from the genome in a short time). The probabilities of the "fortuitous" couplings of multiple benign mutations can be and has been calculated, but since the genetic mechanisms are still not known (epi-genetics has just been born), only negative mutations are really able to evaluated. And negative mutations are not indicative of evolution, they are indicative of disease or loss of function.
(Some) creationists say: "Evolution is ridiculous because species don't give birth to completely different species." Call this Argument X.
Evolutionists say: "That's not what we're saying. What we're saying is that animals SLOWLY change, over long periods of time, until they look completely different than when they started. Here's a simple computer program to demonstrate this." Call this Answer to Argument X.
Stan says: "That's wrong because mutations lead to the death of the bearer. The population would die out at the black screen instead of the Mona Lisa. I don't argue for design. Neither answer is empirical " Call this Answer to Argument C and B.
Martin says: "Actually, the computer program was just trying to correct argument X, not C or B."
Stan says: "Answers to arguments C, B, 1, and 3. And here's a little about 7 and Y as well."
Martin says: ???
Martin,
I have come across only one person who used the dogs-don't-come-from-cats argument. That person was severely brain damaged by two aneurysms and subsequent brain surgeries. Yet she understood when I explained that evolution is very gradual, and from common ancestors, in its hypothesis.
I seriously doubt that the programs being touted are really intended to prove that things can change slowly. The algorithms are evolution "simulators" and they are based on incomplete and/or incorrect algorithms.
And I am skeptical of using incorrect examples as teaching tools, if that is what you are arguing for. Someone (Eugenie Scott?) argued that it is proper to use the false embryo sketches of Haegel, just to prove the point. Let's think about this. Embryos look vaguely similar. That is a fact. This visual similarity proves common ancestry. This is not a fact. Well of course, the point - proof of common ancestry - is incorrect, and cannot be proved by any real data, so it must be demonstrated with false examples.
That sort of reasoning is too soft and mushy to lend any confidence to their other reasoning without a severely high intensity scrutiny.
The use of incorrect algorithms by creationists would, rightly, be called out by PZ et al. But not an "evolution" algorithm. Evolution is not held to high standards. Anything will be publishable if it claims an evolution bias. This takes evolution out of the realm of science.
To PZ's credit, he did not claim the algorithm proved evolution. He did claim that it showed the power of chance and selection. But the real "chances" and "selections" in the algorithm are not valid.
Oh well, enough about this.
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