Co-evolution theory censored by Florida Citizens for Science!
Yes, folks, it's hard to believe but it's true. I'm not making this up -- the theory of co-evolution [1] [2] [3] is being censored on the blog of the so-called Florida Citizens for Science. A comment by FCS blogger Brandon Haught(y) says,
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Brandon Haughty is censoring my arguments about co-evolution precisely because he finds them to be too persuasive. He would not be bothered by my arguments if they were absurd, e.g., Second Law of Thermodynamics arguments.
Thought for the day: If design can be an illusion, then maybe evolution can also be an illusion.
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Larry Fafarman,
I’m tired of your unsupported claims that co-evolution somehow isn’t legitimate or somehow refutes evolution.
As such, I have a homework assignment for you. First, contact the following:
University of California Museum of Paleontology
The National Science Foundation
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Have them take down the page they did/funded on co-evolution:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evo_33
Also, contact Dr. John Thompson and tell him to pack his bags and find a “real” job. Because, co-evolution is a crock and his life’s work is a sham.
http://bio.research.ucsc.edu/people/thompson/
Once you have done the above, come on back with proof that you have done so and I will let you post about co-evolution again. In the meantime, every time you spout off about it, I am deleting your post.
I consider myself fairly tolerant and I have allowed “free speech” here on the blog to an extent many other blogs don’t. But there is a limit to my patience. This is not a government site, so I have no mandate to allow free speech. So, I will exercise my right to delete your unsupported assertions. You have your own site; post your nonsense there. If you decide to throw a hissy fit over my exercising my right, then I will ban you.
You have some work to do, Larry. You better get to it.
Brandon Haughty is censoring my arguments about co-evolution precisely because he finds them to be too persuasive. He would not be bothered by my arguments if they were absurd, e.g., Second Law of Thermodynamics arguments.
Thought for the day: If design can be an illusion, then maybe evolution can also be an illusion.
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Labels: Non-ID criticisms of evolution
posted by Larry Fafarman | 4/14/2008 08:01:00 AM
20 Comments:
"Thought for the day: If design can be an illusion, then maybe evolution can also be an illusion."
That's a thought?
Maybe you're an illusion.
How many hours left in the day until we can try again?
What's an illusion?
Wow... that's funny.
I have read many of the threads on their website, and I have yet to see a persuasive argument from you about your theory. I have seen it torn to pieces so often that Brandon must be bored with you spouting the same drivel over and over again.
Are any of us invited to your Nobel Prize ceremony?
I'm curious, what about the standard explanations of co-evolution are you disputing?
Anonymous said...
>>>>>> Are any of us invited to your Nobel Prize ceremony? <<<<<<
You can start by calling me Sir Lawrence Fafarman, Lord Humbug.
ellazimm said...
>>>>>> I'm curious, what about the standard explanations of co-evolution are you disputing? <<<<<
Explanations of co-evolution are often gross oversimplifications, e.g., "mutual evolutionary pressure" or "evolution in populations." Also, I dispute the examples that are often used as evidence of co-evolution, e.g., predator-prey and parasite-host relationships (these are sometimes not even considered to be examples of co-evolution) -- in those relationships, sometimes evolution would occur in only one of the species and even where the other species must change in order to survive, the need for that change in the other species might not be immediate.
Could you give a specific example of a bad explanation? I find this area of evolutionary theory very interesting.
ellazimm said...
>>>>> Could you give a specific example of a bad explanation? I find this area of evolutionary theory very interesting. <<<<<<
This reference says,
Coevolution is the the mutual evolutionary influence between two species (the evolution of two species totally dependent on each other). Each of the species involved exerts selective pressure on the other, so they evolve together. Coevolution is an extreme example of mutualism.
This reference says,
The term coevolution is used to describe cases where two (or more) species reciprocally affect each other's evolution. So for example, an evolutionary change in the morphology of a plant, might affect the morphology of an herbivore that eats the plant, which in turn might affect the evolution of the plant, which might affect the evolution of the herbivore...and so on.
Coevolution is likely to happen when different species have close ecological interactions with one another. These ecological relationships include:
Predator/prey and parasite/host
Competitive species
Mutualistic species
This reference says,
In biology, co-evolution is the mutual evolutionary influence between two species. Each party in a co-evolutionary relationship exerts selective pressures on the other, thereby affecting each others' evolution.
Here is another article that discusses coevolution.
These articles sometimes eleborate on the above explanations, but these articles have one or more of the following characteristics:
(1) They do not address the issues I have raised, e.g., how can co-evolution occur when required corresponding mutations in both organisms are fatal when the corresponding mutation in the other organism is locally absent?
(2) Descriptions of co-evolution are vague.
(3) The examples given are often predator-prey or parasite-host relationships, and as I said, my arguments don't apply to those examples.
(4) Co-evolution is just perfunctorily given credit as an explanation.
This blog has several articles about co-evolution -- they may be found by clicking on the post label "Non-ID criticisms of evolution" in the sidebar.
Non-ID criticisms of evolution are now generally ignored because of all the attention that is being paid to ID. ID is now very popular because of discoveries in the last few decades showing that cells are not just amorphous blobs of protoplasm but have incredibly complex nano-machines, chemical factories, and information storage. In fact, a lot of people think that ID is the only scientific (or pseudoscientific) criticism of evolution.
> You stupid dunghill, if my arguments about co-evolution were not very persuasive, Brandon Haughty would not be censoring them. <
Perhaps you are being censored because of your pathalogical inability to stop using terms like "stupid dunghill"?
Are you saying that the gradualism required for co-evolution doesn't happen?
>>>>>> Are you saying that the gradualism required for co-evolution doesn't happen? <<<<<<
That's a question from incredulity.
LOL. Only kidding.
Even where the changes in both organisms can be gradual, the gradual changes must exist at the same place in both organisms in order to produce a benefit in natural selection, and such existence in the same place is unlikely because random mutations are rare and initially exist in only small areas. In contrast, many physical features of the environment, e.g., land, water, and air -- and even subfeatures of the environment, e.g., mountains, deserts, forests, and plains -- constantly cover very large areas and hence offer far greater opportunities for evolutionary adaptation; for example, a pig born with wings anywhere in the world can fly immediately. Also, where gradual changes in both organisms are needed in order to provide a benefit, a local change in only one of the organisms would provide no benefit and would be unlikely to spread even if that change were not harmful and would be very unlikely to spread if that change were harmful in the absence of the corresponding change in the other organism. These difficulties would greatly slow down co-evolution even where they did not make co-evolution virtually impossible. A need for gradual change would by itself greatly slow down co-evolution. These difficulties of co-evolution can compound other difficulties of evolution, e.g., irreducible complexity of mutations in individual organisms (and co-evolution can be a problem even where irreducible complexity is not). The "exaptation" argument (the idea that features used for one purpose in an organism can be instantly adapted for another purpose to help form an irreducibly complex system) that is used against the irreducible complexity argument cannot be applied to co-evolution. Darwinists just pooh-pooh improbabilities piled upon improbabilities and sneer at the "incredulity" of those who question those improbabilities. As I noted, I am no longer allowed to discuss co-evolution on the blog of Florida Citizens for Science. FCS is not asking me to make better arguments about co-evolution -- they are telling me to not make any arguments about co-evolution at all. FCS is a good example of why the Florida academic freedom bills are needed.
Also, the changes cannot always be gradual. For example:
Some orchids are pollinated by male insects that try to mate with the flowers. This bizarre behaviour occurs because the flowers produce chemicals that are the same as chemicals emitted by female insects. Usually a mixture of common chemicals is involved. An Australian orchid named Chiloglottis trapeziformis is only pollinated by a wasp named Neozeleboria cryptoides. Scientist who studied the wasp and orchid were surprised to find that the chemical signal involved was “one unique compound, requiring a rigid biosynthetic process and a highly specific receptor a system with seemingly limited evolutionary flexibility.” (Science, vol. 302, p437, 17 Oct 2003.)
“Limited evolutionary flexibility” means that if either the orchid or the wasp got any of the steps wrong in making this compound, emitting it at the right time and making the receptors that detect the chemical in the air, then the orchid would die out for lack of pollinators. The highly specific relationship between some plants and their pollinators is the classic evolutionary problem – both orchid and wasp had to evolve their part of the system at the same time or it wouldn’t work at all.
Adaptation by the wasp might not be necessary here -- still, though, the orchid has to get it exactly right and that is very difficult.
Still another problem is that often the two species can interact only in large numbers, and so a change in just one organism or just a few organisms might not be sufficient. For example, a correct mutation in just one orchid plant or just a few orchid plants might not be sufficient because there would not be other orchid plants that could be pollinated because other orchid plants would not attract the wasp.
In your orchid example wouldn't the case be that the ancestors of that orchid were pollinated by lots of different insects. A fortuitous mutation was attractive to the wasps and then the see-sawing mutations towards mutual dependency took over? That orchid was preferred and therefore pollinated first thereby having more offspring all of whom had that mutation. Some other proto-orchids without the mutation got missed, etc?
No one is saying that that kind of relationship happened all at once are they?
You stupid dunghill, if my arguments about co-evolution were not very persuasive, Brandon Haughty would not be censoring them.
Oh... that's rich. You truly are demented, Larry.
All I've read on that blog from you is the same nonsense. The people who respond poke the same holes in your "theory" over and over again, yet you keep coming back from more.
You remind me of what Saddam Hussein said after the first gulf war, after the US soundly beat him. Once the objectives of the war were met, and the US left, he said something along the lines of "Well, we showed them! Look at them retreating. We won."
You are doing the exact same thing. You got your ass handed to you on the FCS blog, yet you run back to your own blog and declare victory. How touching, how very childish.
Ellazimm,
Here is a picture of one these orchids (though it might not be the exact same kind of orchid described above). Does it look like this orchid ever attracted other kinds of insects? For example, there are no large surfaces for attracting insects by color (bees are actually attracted to the ultraviolet light from flowers). Also, if the orchids once attracted other kinds of insects, why did the orchids lose that ability? Also, the relationship between the orchids and the wasps is very specific -- in the above example, the orchid must mimic the female's pheromone perfectly. The female wasp may even emerge later than the male wasp, with the result that the orchids do not have to compete with female wasps in attracting male wasps. This is good for the orchid but is not good for the wasp and is even a little bad for the wasp. Also, as I pointed out, often co-dependent organisms can interact only in large numbers and a mutation in just one or a few organisms might not create a viable population. As I said, physical environments are always there and cover large areas but biological environments may be extremely small and might not exist at all. Many Darwinists refuse to even consider the idea that there may be fundamental differences between co-evolution and evolutionary adaptation to widespread fixed physical features of the environment -- e.g., land, water, and air. Anyway, different ways of looking at co-evolution can lead to new research. Brandon Haughty on the Florida Citizens for Science blog won't even allow me to discuss co-evolution at all there -- that is anti-science and anti-intellectual.
Sure, almost anything is possible if given odds of, say, googolplex raised to the goolgolplex power. DNA testing companies say that there is one chance in several billion that two DNA samples that appear to come from the same person actually came from two unrelated people. All we know is that if the two samples appear to come from different people, then those samples did not come from the same person. But DNA test results showing that the two samples appear to be from the same person are accepted as evidence.
BTW, my statement about the appearance of the pictured orchid may be in error -- the orchid may later develop into a large flower. However, such a flower might not attract insects for the purpose of pollination -- the wasp might be the sole pollinator, as in the example above.
Sir Lawrence said:
< "for example, a pig born with wings anywhere in the world can fly immediately" >
Since I found this idea exciting, I tried strapping on some actual wings (with feathers, even!) taken from a large non-flightless bird. This also tests the concept of co-evolution, since as you said, the air covers a "very large area" and is thus easily adapted to.
Sorry to report, despite vigorous flapping, it did not work. Darn!
But the orchid would have looked different when it was attracting more than one kind of pollinator according to the theory of co-evolution right? I mean the whole point is that two things form a dependent bond and then evolve gradually so the relationship is exclusive.
When DNA evidence is used in court the probability of a match is always given as far as I can tell.
ellazimm said,
>>>>> But the orchid would have looked different when it was attracting more than one kind of pollinator <<<<<
Maybe -- maybe not. Let's just suppose that in the past the orchid attracted other pollinators.
>>>>> I mean the whole point is that two things form a dependent bond and then evolve gradually so the relationship is exclusive. <<<<<<
So I think that what you are saying is that the orchid attracted other kinds of pollinators in the past, then acquired the ability to attract the wasp, and then lost the ability to attract the other kinds of pollinators, and that the relationship with the wasp is exclusively one-on-one, i.e., the orchid attracts only the wasp and the wasp is not attracted to other species of plants. But what is the advantage of losing the ability to attract the other kinds of pollinators? Well, it seems that having an exclusive one-on-one plant-pollinator relationship is an advantage -- that assures that the pollen is going to be used for pollination if the pollinator visits another plant. But is that really an advantage? Maybe pollinators visit so many different kinds of plants that it is very likely that a given pollinator is going to visit different plants of the same species, anyway.
Also, this is a very complicated evolutionary scenario compared to, say, a pig sprouting wings and flying immediately. Yet many Darwinists have closed minds and refuse to even consider the possibility that co-evolution could be fundamentally different from or more complicated than evolutionary adaptation to widespread fixed physical features of the environment. What justification is there for the prohibition on discussion of co-evolution on the blog of the Florida Citizens for Science?
>>>>> When DNA evidence is used in court the probability of a match is always given as far as I can tell. <<<<<
I have no idea. I am only saying that the courts accept positive DNA test results even though those results are not absolutely infallible.
b.j., I rejected your last comment. I have a new comment policy: I will not accept comments that contain nothing but scoffing. I get enough of that crap on other websites. Comments must also address the issues, and scoffing must be related to a comment's arguments.
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