Friday, May 06, 2016

Is Naturql Selection Random or "Driven?"




Arguing that "chance" is involved in BOTH genetic change via DNA mutation, genetic recombination and in the environmental "selection agents" acting on these changes is fultile until all involved in the discussion have a common definition and understanding of who and what God is AND that "His" Laws happen to be PERFECT.  The PERFECT Laws of God are so constituted that the concept of "chance" in how those interact with both "living processes" and "non-living processes" is a non-sequitur.




The statement made in this article......




"let’s assume for a moment that the frequent assertion that biological evolution is based on chance is itself “entirely untrue.” Assume instead that the process is, in fact, “directional” and “self-steering,” truly an ordering mechanism."




.........  "Directional, self steering, and ordering mechanism" implies that "chance" is not the "driving force" of the evolution of life , however, it would also seem to imply that the the "force" is automatic and "mindless."  This is also "entirely untrue."  Ironically, Fundamental Creationist Christians are CORRECT in that God Created the first man Adam in His Image from thr "dust" of the Earth  by "Intelligent Design", however..their "mechanism" is "entirely untrue" because it would imply that God's Laws are "imperfect." Creationists claim God Created man by "supernatural" power, (whatever that is suppose ti be!) however, this would require the violation of God's PERFECT Laws which is also a non-sequitur because that which is PERFECT does not "need" to be "altered"....that would be imperfection.




Science actually "knows" How God Created Adam but because Science has rejected the wisdom and truth revealed in the Bible, "they" have no "clue" that "they" have discovered God's "secret" .....INTELLIGENT DESIGN.  




If "they" and "believers" understood the God revealed in the "flesh" 2000 years ago in the Incarnation of Yeshua ben Joseph (Jesus the Christ) ALL would KNOW that God Created Adam via Recombinant DNA hybridization of Simian stock and Eve by Modified Cloning of Adam's adult stem cells extracted from his "rib", reset to an embryonic state via Induced Pluripotency and induced to start cleavage, form a blastocyst and complete morphogeneis in a "surrogate" womb" (in vitro) and 9 months later baby Eve was born. ("deep sleep" of Adam was a supension because when she was presengted to Adam she was a sexual mature young women.......

"At last, this is flesh if my flesh and bone of my bone, I will call her women because she comes from man."  "GOD IS PERFECT...HIS LAWS ARE PERFECT."




It is my prayer that all who read the following Scriptures  will come to KNOW the True God revealed by Jesus Christ!   (Genesis 1:26, Psalm 82:3-6, John 14:8-23, Galatians 3:26-28, Colossians 1:27, 2:9-10, 1 Corinthians:3:16-17, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, 1 John 4:11-16)




In Christ...David Brown













Can You Separate Chance and Natural Selection?

ElysseBaumbachApril 7, 2016


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A common objection to neo-Darwinian evolution highlights the fact that the theory is based to a large extent on chance events, or chance in general. For decades now there has been an extraordinary volume of grim polemics against that objection. I wrote about this here last week in the context of a dispute between Richard Dawkins and Stephen Meyer. To my earlier comments, I would add the following.

Huxley stated in 1962, p. 44:

The frequent assertion that biological evolution is based on chance is entirely untrue. “Chance” events furnish its raw material but the process itself is directional, self-steering, but automatically steering itself in a definite direction. This is because…natural selection is not a random but an “ordering” mechanism.

Ridley 1985, p. 124, concurred:

How can I hope to succeed with three authors (Denton, Hayward, and Pitman) who, like the Victorian astronomer Sir John Herschel, think that evolution by natural selection is the “law of higgledy-piggledy” — a “random search mechanism” (Denton), of “pure chance” (Hayward and Pitman)?

And up to the present, authors including Lorenzen, Mayr, Krauss (2016), and Dawkins (2016) have made similar statements (see here for Stephen Meyer’s response to Dawkins).

Now, let’s assume for a moment that the frequent assertion that biological evolution is based on chance is itself “entirely untrue.” Assume instead that the process is, in fact, “directional” and “self-steering,” truly an ordering mechanism.

In that case, what is the biological basis for the “survival of the fittest”? The survival is very clearly dependent on the functionality of the anatomical, physiological, genetic (and more) structures, synorganized and cooperating in the organism (including its behavior or conduct), about whose origin we just asked. How did these structures and functions evolve?

A hare runs faster, a lion jumps farther, a zebra senses a carnivore better, an eagle spots prey at a greater distance, a chimp responds more effectively than his or her conspecifics. Why? Because — according to the neo-Darwinian doctrine — the chance events of mutation and recombination have equipped them as needed, with all structures originating until then as well as the newly gained improvements. All this occurs in a continuous process of evolution. Thus, chance events determine everything in evolution: form and function of all structures dominating natural selection in the struggle for life and hence the entire phylogeny of plants and animals.

There is, of course, even according to neo-Darwinian theory, no selection without form and function of already existing and subsequently improved structures. Let me emphasize: all must be generated by random micro-mutations with “only slight or even invisible effects on the phenotype.”





Hence, natural selection is in itself neither self-steering nor an ordering mechanism, etc. Instead it is the result of structures, features, forms, functions, and capabilities altogether produced by the chance events of accidental mutations alone, including the overproduction of descendants.

It is the habitual method of many supporters of the modern synthesis to disconnect or decouple natural selection from chance events, but this is totally unjustified. For me this disconnection or detachment appears to be part of a wily and widespread propaganda effort, seeking to manipulate public and scientific opinion to make neo-Darwinian evolution more acceptable and digestible. For evolution by an almost infinite series of fortunate strokes of small serendipities seems to be, prima facie, implausible to most thoughtful people.

And yet, consistent with evolution, the entire world of organisms has to be, in fact, traced back to pure chance events and random occurrences. Nobel laureate Jacques Monod seemed to belong to a minority of evolutionists who fully comprehend the consequences of the synthetic or neo-Darwinian theory. He wrote concerning mutations:

We call these events accidental; we say that they are random occurrences. And since they constitute the only possible source of modifications in the genetic text, itself the sole repository of the organism's hereditary structures, it necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among other possible or even conceivable hypotheses. It is today the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact. [Italics by Monod.]

Yet, Monod's assertions on the origin of the biosphere are essentially all wrong. See here, please, for the facts and inferences in my encyclopedia article about natural selection. For references, see here.

Image credit: Malene Thyssen (Own work) [GFDL or CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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