BS: Intelpidity Design

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 12:09 PM

The giraffe example is largely bogus, and Lamarckian theories of the transmission of acquired traits has been pretty well thrown out of court.

Speaking of court, here is a wonderful blow-by-blow account of The Scopes Trial including profiles of the two oratorical giants, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, who spearheaded the opposing sides.

The trial was serious, the rhetoric was serious, but the results were not: it was overturned on a minor technicality and dismissed by the state's higher ground. It never noticed the constitutional issues. But it is of great historical interest.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Raedwulf
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 12:33 PM

Ummmm... In the article that Pied Piper pointed at Amos (or pointed Amos at, depending on your perspective), am I the only one that noticed...

1. The individual signals passing from neurone to neurone are not bound together, whether as elements of information or physically.
2. Within a single cell, binding in terms of bringing together of information is potentially feasible. A physical substrate may also be available.
3. It is therefore proposed that a bound conscious experience is a property of an individual cell, not a group of cells. Since it is unlikely that one specific neurone is conscious, it is suggested that every neurone has a version of our consciousness, or at least some form of sentience.
5. However absurd this may seem it is consistent with the available evidence; arguably the only explanation that is. It probably does not alter the way we should expect to experience the world, but may help to explain the ways we seem to differ from digital computers and some of the paradoxes seen in mental illness. It predicts non-digital features of intracellular computation, for which there is already evidence, and which should be open to further experimental exploration.

"One, Two, Three, FIVE??!!

Interesting thread, guys, but... ummmm... the mathematicians reckon that all science (& presumably religion too) comes down to numbers, don't they? 0/10 for observation & I don't want to be anywhere near you lot if someone hands you the Holy Hand Grenade to chuck (never mind the fact that rabbit will have time to eat the lot of you before you finish arguing out who's entitled to chuck the bloody thing...)!

;-)

R

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 01:41 PM

I think your talking Monty Python..must ber...cuz I can't follow it!! LOL What does "0/10 for observation" really mean, R?

:)


A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 07:37 PM

The Washington Post overs some thoughts on Bush's remarks in an article entitled "But Is It Intelligent?".

Good question.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: GUEST,Peyter Woodruff
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 07:42 PM

I was a Baptist untill I got science.

Peter

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 09:00 PM

The giraffe example is discredited because there is no demonstrated mechanism whereby the actions during life can be shown to affect the DNA in the germ cells. However, some things in life can affect the germ cells (the ones in the ovaries/sperm) - just ask Vietnam Vets about Agent Orange.

It is now believed that speciation did proceed in leaps and bounds rather than just by 'creep' - the periodic wide-scale extinctions allowed exploitation by different organisms due to opening up of opportunities for slightly differing organisms to proliferate.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 06 Aug 05 - 11:14 PM

Amos quite accurately told us:

The giraffe example is largely bogus, and Lamarckian theories of the transmission of acquired traits has been pretty well thrown out of court.

Yes, it's been thrown out of court, long since, but the point is that, while not taken seriously by almost anyone today, it was at one time. And that was the point I tried to make, that to say "the theory of evolution" is not meaningful. Lamarck is only one of the various theories that have been put forward. One should refer to "Darwinian theory of evolution".

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 06:47 AM

"It is now believed that speciation did proceed in leaps and bounds rather than just by 'creep'"

This is what I said further back in the thread. The "jumps" are sometimes referred to as "monsters".

"- the periodic wide-scale extinctions allowed exploitation by different organisms due to opening up of opportunities for slightly differing organisms to proliferate."

How does the extinction of one make any difference? The giraffe may have more opportunity to survive if one of its preditors goes extinct, or if one of its competitors for food goes extinct, but that goes absolutely nowhere in still explaining how he got his long neck.

If what you are saying is that the two events (the monster giraffe and the extinction of his competitor) happened by random chance simultaneously, well, that's yet another small example of what I was saying about the necessary complexity that must be in place for simple advancement to occur. In other words, it isn't correct to explain evolution, at any level, without acknowledging that the order/timing of the "jump" is as important as the "jump" itself.

How many times do folks laugh in derision at the Genesis creation account because, they contend, the events occur out of order for survival to have occurred?

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: DMcG
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 07:13 AM

How does the extinction of one make any difference? The giraffe may have more opportunity to survive if one of its preditors goes extinct, or if one of its competitors for food goes extinct, but that goes absolutely nowhere in still explaining how he got his long neck.

I'm sorry, John, but that is beginning to sound like wilful ignorance. Darwin's theory certainly provide an explanation for it. It may well be an explanation you disagree with, and there are alternative views on whether it was feeding pressure or sexual pressure that was the main selecting factor (for example), and there may be things that you believe Darwin's theory cannot explain, but claiming that the three requirements he identified - variation in individuals, differential rates of offspring and inherited traits (which we now identify as genetic inheritance) - are not able to explain how a giraffe got his a long neck just weakens your case. Indeed, since I understand ID draws heavily on the claim of 'irreducable complexity' I wonder what you see as irreducably complex in the case of the giraffe's neck?

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 07:42 AM

Perhaps you didn't read my next paragraph before you responded to the one you highlighted?

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: DMcG
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 08:38 AM

I can assure you, John, I try to read all of any post I respond to!

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 09:13 AM

There is a big difference between asserting that something did change and explaining how it "achieved" the change. Too often the lack of the latter is obfuscated by the apparent simplicity of the former.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 09:23 AM

I took a friend to a Pat Donohue concert one evening. I am a HUGE fan of Donohue and I enjoy taking friends to concerts to share the wonderful but somewhat obscure music that I love so much.

While driving home I was still basking in my amazement at Donohue's skills (as well as his musicality). In particular, I was expressing disbelief at the man's ability to keep a tremolo going with his middle finger on the B & E strings, while simultaneously playing a melody with his thumb.

"How does he DO that?!!" I exclaimed.

"Oh, he just keeps a tremolo going with his middle finger on the B & E strings, while simultaneously playing a melody with his thumb." answered my friend.

The explaination was so simple that my friend couldn't grasp my amazement at the skill. Didn't I get it?

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 10:01 AM

Genesis is patently absurd if taken literally. THAT much at least was made clear in the Scopes trial, in the infamous dialogue when Darrow put his opposing lawyer, WIlliam Jennings Bryan. on the stand and forced him to testify as a biblical expert.

I don't know about monsters -- the chances of that many genes changing all at once is pretty slim. The model that makes sense to me is gradual cumulative change which is continuously vectored toward workability by ordinary survival pressures. I'd like to see an explication of this notion of sudden large change speciation.

Re wide-scale extinctions, one difference it made, for example, when the dinosaur families collapsed was that several species were able to shift from nocturnal to diurnal operations. One result of this was the recovery of the third cone structure in the eye in some cases where it had been bred out through generations of nocturnal living. Dawkins discusses this in "The Ancestor's Tale".

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 05:38 PM

I don't know about monsters -- the chances of that many genes changing all at once is pretty slim. The model that makes sense to me is gradual cumulative change which is continuously vectored toward workability by ordinary survival pressures. I'd like to see an explication of this notion of sudden large change speciation.


Sudden is a relative term in this context. Based on the fossil record, which does not support continuous change, the prevailing opinion is that species change in relatively short periods of time and then remain stable for relatively long periods of time. Short means tens to hundreds of thousands of years while long means millions to tens of millions of years.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 06:41 PM

Thanks, B&J. I think it is possible that a lot of small changes can approach and finally hit a point where a new order of complexity emerges which shapes up as a different species.

I'll have to mull that over, but it is consistent with the general theory of complex systems and emergent complexityy as I understand it. Which is very partially!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 07:36 PM

I've little doubt that someone much more learned than myself will shoot me down in flames, but why should not evolution be the rational, practical, scientific method by which Intelligent Design is achieved?

DT

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 08:21 PM

It is - if you are omnscient about Physics & Chemistry.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 10:41 PM

The proponents of intelligent design do not deny that evolution exists. They claim that evolution cannot account for certain aspects of life as we know it such as the initial creation of life or the development of certain complicated attributes of life such as eyes, because gradual development of these attributes would not be advantageous to survival. They conclude, therefore, that only intelligent design can account for these attributes.

Instead of saying we don't know how these things happened, they assert that our collective ignorance is evidence of God's existance. Religion has always been used to explain that which we cannot account for by scienctific knowledge. In fact, that might be a good definition of religion.

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 07 Aug 05 - 11:19 PM

Not of my religion!! LOL Eyes are frequently used as a "too complex for Darwinism" examples, but I demur. Seems to me the basic mechanisms above could account for the transition from a single twitching light-sensitive cell, to the whole tri- or tera-color sensitive rod and cone arrangement used by mammals today. But as I say I am still chewing this whole thing over. I used to feel strongly that the random chance model was preposterous for the very reason you cite, but Dawkins has made it clear that I was misunderstanding the theory.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 06:57 AM

Consider a sloping board with many twisting intesecting groves. You drop a marble at a random place at the top of the board.


The Scientist says that you can predict, if you understand the system of tracks, and how friction and other things affect how the marble moves, where the exit point will be in relation to the entrypoint.


The Religious believer says "Only God Knows!"

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Paul Burke
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 07:19 AM

Eyes are the easy ones. Everything follows once you admit that being able to sense light at all is better than not being able to sense it. Just a cell that tells you if light is on or off would help to get an animal to where the plants are photosynthesising and making food.

And that better eyes are subject to selection.. my uncorrected vision would probably lead to my deselection quite rapidly 'in the wild'. I wouldn't have had the chance to pass on my myopia to my daughter (the Boy seems to have skipped it, good for him).

But an important thing to remember is that evolution doesn't have a definite or preferred outcome- it didn't HAVE to be us, it's just that, having evolved the way we have, we can talk about it- perhaps the first organisms on this planet to be able to do so.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 08:27 AM

Paul has the rights of it! There is no organ which cannot be conceived of as a series of tiny changes, each improving the chances. The only constraint on outcome is that if it doesn't work, it tends to get un-selected through reduced survival or less successful reproduction.

Onepoint that often gets overlooked is that many things are not binary variables but continuous -- a tiny bit of light sensitivity is a tiny bit better than none, and each tiny bit of increase also better. The real world is full of gradient values and continuous variables which our slower minds try to stuff into black or white judgments.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 09:13 AM

except that you can not demonstrate empirically, the mechanism by which something becomes more complex. Did the one photosensitive cell WANT to become an eye?

And when that question is asked, the answer offered is that the animal that HAD the eye was the one that continued to procreate -- ignoring the initial question of HOW did it get the complex eye in the first place.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 09:38 AM

It didn't likely get the complex eye in the first place; that's the point.

It got one cell that sensed light in the first place, but it gave some early multicell critter a bit more orientation to find food or more likely photons. Through a thousand million generations -- which is the right order of magnitude, according to Dawkins in Watchmaker a series of small changes -- many of which can still be found in organisms today -- produced a gradually improved compound of light-processing cells. The complexity is the results of a few simple constraints and a few elements vectored by only two factors: survival and procreative success.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 09:51 AM

I understand the impasse. I just don't think that "because it happened" is a very satisfactory answer. *BG*

survival means that either, 1. there was an organism of diverse genetic material, and survival dictated which direction the organism went from the options available within that diverse genetic material (a "subtractive" process), or 2. the organism had to achieve the change in anticipation of the need to survive an environmental change.

procreative success, of course, demands that the change (now without the impetus for change having been described) has already occurred so that future generations may inherit the change.

The "monster" is not, as you suggest, a large-scale change. It is merely a meaningful change. It doesn't necessarily demand multiple changes in genetic make-up. It only requires meaningful change in the genetic makeup.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 09:54 AM

...maybe "useful" would be better than "meaningful".

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Grab
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 10:21 AM

I've little doubt that someone much more learned than myself will shoot me down in flames, but why should not evolution be the rational, practical, scientific method by which Intelligent Design is achieved?

That's a thoroughly reasonable approach which is exactly the reasoning that the late Pope John Paul applied. IIRC he said something like, "The Bible teaches us how to live, not how life came to exist." An article in the NewScientist suggested that a God who could create a self-sustaining, infinitely-changing universe that ran by itself is far more worthy of worship than a God who's bodged a universe together so badly that it requires continuous modification in order to work! :-)

If you take the old argument of the eye as evidence for ID, you have to accept that the Intelligent Designer did a really stupendously shit job of designing stuff, given that the majority of humans need glasses to see correctly. In other words, the Intelligent Designer is *less* skilled at design than humans! Worthy of worship...? The ID club have abandoned the eye as an example of ID, bcos it's too easy to debunk it with even basic biology skills. They've not given up, they've just gone onto more obscure areas of biology to find their examples. Their arguments are not any better though (and are being debunked by experts in those areas), but it's easier for them to hoodwink the unsuspecting in high scientific flimflam than to use examples that we all have experience of.

I don't have a problem with ID being taught - so long as it's *only* taught in religious studies class. It can share a lesson with the Hindu belief in a flat world riding on the backs of four giant elephants and supported on a turtle, the Genesis view that the world is a giant bubble with water above and water below (the water above is naturally the source of rain), the murderous Greek and Viking creation myths, and so on.

Re the Lamarkian evolution theory, that was diametrically opposite to Darwin's view. Lamark said that you could "want" to achieve certain characteristics and thereby obtain them. That's clearly bollocks - if I jump off a cliff then I splat on the bottom, no matter how strongly I "want" to grow wings! Darwinian evolution says that if you don't get those characteristics then you're more likely to die (or to fail to reproduce, which is the same thing in the long run), so there doesn't need to be any formal strategy. So a long-necked giraffe gets more food than a dozen short-necked ones, and so it'll be the long-necked one who has the extra energy and strength when it comes to competing for females or surviving in a famine/drought. It's not the only solution though - elephants have evolved a different strategy for getting at high leaves (long nose instead of long neck).

science has never been able to create a new species

Define "species". Lions and tigers have been quoted, as have dogs and wolves. Lions and tigers clearly were not created by humans, but there are few people who would disagree that dogs have been bred from domesticated wolves. The range of dogs runs clean from tiny terriers and lapdogs at one end, up to huskies and mountain dogs at the other end which are physically almost indistinguishable from wolves. So mankind *has* created a new species in the domestic dog. This wasn't achieved by recent science, but by the application of science over a long period of time.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 01:49 PM

Note also, as a small addendum to what Graham said so well, that the number of generations from wolf to toy-poodle by effort of directed breeding is only perhaps a few hundred at the outside. Ot seems easy enough, multiplying the number of generations by thousands of millions, to expect ANY gene pattern that could survive to come about.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 01:57 PM

Bev & Jerry commented, in part:

Religion has always been used to explain that which we cannot account for by scienctific knowledge. In fact, that might be a good definition of religion.

That's what's been called "The god of the gaps"--and I tend to think it does happen just that way. But of course the inevitable result is that, as science gradually fills the gaps, the space available for a god to fill is less, and (in principle at least) you could get to the point where there's no gaps to fill.

Of course many of us, seeing that tendency, feel it reasonable to jump ahead and adopt that end state.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MMario
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:00 PM

The other thing is that very MINOR changes in development can lead to LARGE changes in appearance.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:07 PM

That's Darwin's argument precisely. But, it doesn't leave much room for God except maybe to kick off the whole process. That's why Darwin has been attacked for 150 years.


On the other hand, if the process is entirely random, why is it that our arm, a horse's front leg, a bird's wing and a whale's fin, which have evolved to perform entirely different functions, all have the same bone structure?

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:07 PM

Grab said:

The range of dogs runs clean from tiny terriers and lapdogs at one end, up to huskies and mountain dogs at the other end which are physically almost indistinguishable from wolves. So mankind *has* created a new species in the domestic dog.

Seems to me your own first sentence above is in direct conflict with the second. Breeding has introduced great variations, but that whole range of "caninitude" from wolf to Pekingese are interbreedable (if there's such a word), so no new species.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Charlie Baum
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:14 PM

A cartoon by Sidney Harris

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:22 PM

"..wolf to toy-poodle by effort of directed breeding is only perhaps a few hundred at the outside. Ot seems easy enough, multiplying the number of generations by thousands of millions, to expect ANY gene pattern that could survive to come about"

I hate to keep beating a dead horse (or dog as the case may be), but no evolution has occurred from wolf to toy poodle.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MMario
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:25 PM

excellent!

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MMario
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:31 PM

well - there could be argument that speciation has occurred as among the canids there is a lot of possible crossbreeding in the naturally occuring species - most of which are also fertile. wolf/coyote; wolf/dog; coyote/dog; jackel/dog;

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:47 PM

Toy Poodle's and Huskies are just expressions of the different attributes available to "all" Wolves. If you had a breeding programe with every dog breed in it you could end up with a "truebreed Wolf"!
If you are looking for an Intelegent Designer then you need to look at the rules of Phisics (Plank leingth, Speed of light, Atomic force of attraction) to see her (his) work.Personally I think TERRY PRAGIT got it right in his book "strata". God is alive and well and is displaying his sense of humour in making fossils for us to puzzle over!

P.S.
No intent to defame any deity is accepted by the author

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:50 PM

John:

Hundreds of dog breeds are gentically stable, transmit faithful copies and are dramatically different from their lupine ancestors in shape, ability, and behaviour.

Wherefore "no evolution", then?


A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 02:52 PM

"...wolf to Pekingese are interbreedable"

Just make VERY sure that the wolf is the female. I pity the poor pekinese that has to give birth to a pup as big as she is. yikes. *BG*

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 03:02 PM

They are all still dogs, Amos. They are all still dogs.

The slippery slope on which you are treading (I can't believe that you haven't thought of this -- you're too smart not to) is that you are usinig the very same thinking that racists have used to justify their sickness for a very long time -- that somehow the physical differences (that can be extreme), signify a meaningful difference in the species. They don't. The Caucasian and the Black and the Oriental, etc., are all the same thing. Exactly. there is no evidence that one of us is evolving away from the other...

...except potters. We are the master race.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Amos
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 03:09 PM

LOL!!

Well, the DNA breeds true, but that makes no remark on the fallacy of human races. It simply says that THE human race is not a goal, or an end.

The changes I see happening have nothing to with human divisions, but I see differing tendencies in the ability to trace huge volumes of logic in those raised under the sign of the CRT.

I would submit anyone who argues that mankind are different species is failing to "get" the model. But that is not the same as saying "no evolution"...a lot of evolution occurs, I suppose, before you can draw a species line. With no implication of superiority; survival is relative to the conditions in which it occurs.

A

A

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MMario
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 03:09 PM

actually dogs and wolves are classed as seperate species - and dogs contain many gene alleles not present in the wolf.

Both the following statements are provably false.

Toy Poodle's and Huskies are just expressions of the different attributes available to "all" Wolves

and

If you had a breeding programe with every dog breed in it you could end up with a "truebreed Wolf"!

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 03:15 PM

Both the following statements are provably false.

[...]

If you had a breeding programe with every dog breed in it you could end up with a "truebreed Wolf"!

In fact, it's my understanding that you would end up with the perfect "feral dog" (referred to, I'm sure, in other literature by other names). And it's been described -- and it wouldn't be a wolf.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MMario
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 03:24 PM

no - you wouldn't end up with a perfect feral dog - because by deliberate breeding man had kept and defined within various breeds of dogs mutated alleles not present in wolves or feral dogs. Domestic dogs also exhibit behavior patterns and tendencies NOT present in the wild that are have a strong genetic basis as well as one of training.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: MMario
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 03:32 PM

another point that is rerely raised by the "they are all dogs" people - there are known and provable problems when certain breeds of dogs are crossbred that can seriously effect internal organs, fertility, etc of the offspring. Oddly enough - the same sort of problems that occur when crossbreeding divergent species of other animals and very similar to problems seen with crossbreeding some species of plant.

In fact - these days the "cannot breed" is more applicable to GENUS lines rather then SPECIES, and doesn't hold true even there. less so in animals then in plants.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 04:04 PM

"alleles"

Wasn't that Superman's father (before the planet Krypton blew up)?

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 04:40 PM

btw
In the US there is a $1 million fine for geneticly creating human chimera.

although there are plenty of donkey people and elephant people already.

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 05:04 PM

John Hardly commented:

I hate to keep beating a dead horse (or dog as the case may be), but no evolution has occurred from wolf to toy poodle.

There's two ways I could read your comment, John. Do you mean that there's no evolution in that there's not a new species, or are you saying that from wolf to poodle is a step (or many steps) backward?

If the first, I agree with you.

If the second, I think you have a wrong handle on evolution. Evolution is not necessarily "forward" or for the better in some cosmic sense. It's change. Under Darwinian thought, it's change which makes the involved stream of life more able to survive and multiply in the conditions it faces.   The move to toy poodle doesn't make those dogs more able to survive in the wild or in some abstract sense, true, but it makes it possible for the involved dogs to survive in a particular environmental niche, namely some dog fanciers' homes.

A newly changed or mutated life form (maybe new species, maybe not) may indeed have painted itself into a corner, so to speak, so that subsequent changes are now fatal to what had been a viable life form under previous conditions. But that's part of the evolutionary process too.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Intelpidity Design
From: John Hardly
Date: 08 Aug 05 - 05:32 PM

It's the first.