Uncommon Knowledge: The Deniable Darwin

 

Is Charles Darwin’s theory fundamentally deficient? David Berlinski makes his case, noting that most species enter the evolutionary order fully formed and then depart unchanged. Where there should be evolution, there is stasis. So, was Darwin wrong?

David Berlinski is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, a contributing editor at Inference: International Review of Science, and author of many books. Berlinski discusses his book The Deniable Darwin and lays out how Charles Darwin has failed to explain the origin of species through his theory of evolution.

Recorded on June 3rd, 2019 in Fiesole, Italy

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  1. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    Shawn Buell (Majestyk) (View Comment):

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):
    Actually, there is nothing to reconcile. It is a mystery.

    For 196,000 years nobody ever heard of Jehovah. Why? You don’t find that to be weird?

    It’s a mystery. I get it. People want to believe for a variety of reasons. I just don’t think that allows us to be glib about this under the cloak of “mystery.” Human beings can use their powers of perception and curiosity to uncover any number of truths about the world, but asking this question is verboten?

    How many other things are a “mystery” and best left unanswered?

    Maj, I think that your facts here are questionable.

    You seem to be claiming that modern humans — people who are “like us” in the relevant way — emerged about 200,000 years ago.  Yuval Harari’s recent book Sapiens claims that the actual figure is 70,000, and that the new group that was very different from those who went before, behaviorally, were very similar anatomically.

    I think that it’s true that there were hominids living between 200,000 years ago and the present, who had gross anatomical features that are essentially the same as you or me.  This does not mean that their brain structures were the same.

    Behaviorally, I find your thesis (that humans have been the same for 200,000 years) implausible and Harari’s (70,000 years) only moderately less implausible.

    Accepting your premise, I might turn your question around by asking: For 190,000 years nobody ever farmed.  Why?  Don’t you find that to be weird?

    Harari argues for a “Cognitive Revolution” that occurred about 70,000 years ago.  I find his overall argument on this point persuasive, but I am less convinced about the timing.  Perhaps it occurred as recently as 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.  This would be consistent with the development of agriculture and emergence of early cities.

    Interestingly, this final speculation would match the Biblical account reasonably accurately, at least as a matter of timing.

     

    • #91
  2. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    I had a bit of a “great minds think alike” moment while watching this video.  At around 23:58, Robinson begins a discussion of Nicholas Christakis’s recent book, which praises the way in which “natural selection” is responsible for “priming our capacity for love, friendship, cooperation, learning, and even our ability to recognize the uniqueness of other individuals.”  

    This sounded like naive optimism to me, and I actually stopped the video and said to myself something like: “Cooperation is not automatically good.  The Nazis cooperated to slaughter the Jews.”

    I was tickled when Berlinski responded with exactly the same point.

    • #92
  3. Brian Watt Inactive
    Brian Watt
    @BrianWatt

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    Interesting discussion.

    I think that the overall criticism regarding the lack of evidence of evolution by natural selection is correct. There is some evidence, but a great many gaps, and it is not clear that the mechanism of natural selection is sufficient to have produced the variations in form that we observe.

    The “transitional forms” argument and evidence (presented in Brian’s #80 above) is misleading, in my view. There are forms that appear to be “transitional” because they are intermediate, in the sense that creature B has some features of creature A and some of creature C. The evolutionist conclusion that this makes creature B an evolutionary transitional form, however, is unwarranted, at least in my view.

    If I were to show you the skeletons of a modern human, modern chimp, and modern baboon, the chimp would appear to be a transitional form. But no one believes that baboons evolved into chimps which evolved into humans.

    Similarly, if I were to show you the various “generations” of Ford Mustangs, the middle models would appear to be transitional forms. But we know that the early Mustangs did not evolve into the current model (in a Darwinian sense). Nor were the changes random. In the case of the Mustangs, they were the result of conscious design.

    I haven’t studied evolution in detail since college, in the late 1980s. At the time, the prevailing theory appeared to be “punctuated equilibrium,” popularized by Stephen Jay Gould. The entire purpose of this hypothesis is to explain the gaps in the fossil record, as the observation is that new and significantly different forms emerged very quickly.

    The claim that there are gaps does not appear to be disputed. Wikipedia (here) summarizes Richard Dawkins’s objection to Gould’s theory by stating that: “Richard Dawkins regards the apparent gaps represented in the fossil record to document migratory events rather than evolutionary events. According to Dawkins, evolution certainly occurred but ‘probably gradually’ elsewhere.”

    I haven’t read Dawkins in the original, so this may be an oversimplification. The point is that both Gould and Dawkins appear to agree on the existence of gaps, but disagree about the cause.

    I think that there are two fundamental problems: (1) factually, the fossil record is very sparse, and (2) logically, the fact of change does not demonstrate the mechanism of change.

    Brian’s #13 above illustrates the second point, discussing dog breeds, though he posits that current dog breeds emerged over 18,000 to 30,000 years. According to Wikipedia (here), most modern breeds were developed in the 19th Century. Of course, the mechanism of the creation of dog breeds was conscious choice by humans.

    I find there to be good points made by both sides of the argument.

    Several parts of the Nova documentary that I posted above in Comment #61 address your questions. Comparing skeletal variations to deduce that there is a relationship between different species is typically only a beginning to plot out possible lineage and is not final evidence. Changes or variations in bone shape, structure or eventual usefulness or uselessness is now understood by studying how specific genes in similar species have been turned on or off to inhibit the formation of certain bones or alter their shape and size. (addressed at about 50 minutes into the video). Dog breeding as I’ve pointed out, gives a hint that an underlying mechanism (genetics) was at play that to account for very stark differences within species (also pointed out earlier in the Nova video).

    Manmade variations in dog breeding shows that variations can occur at a much more rapid pace than what generally occurs in nature through natural selection. Evolutionary biologists and geneticists now know that because genes can become active or inactive, that chromosomes can fuse, in addition to natural selection that favors or eliminates the survival of one species or variations within a species group (climate or death from other life forms) that this helps to bolster Darwin’s thesis of common ancestor lineage not detract from it or undermine it. None of this seems to be addressed in Berlinski’s criticism of Darwin because my sense is that he not that concerned about specifics or details or even debating with, or attacking the findings of, evolutionary biologists or geneticists directly but rather wants to pontificate more about the social, cultural, and philosophical fallout since the theory of ToE was put forth, developed and has been bolstered for the last 150 years. And yes, there is much to discuss on that front. But he clearly shows a lackadaisical attitude about the actual science that supports Darwin’s original ideas and theory (just as others of the Discovery Institute do…who haven’t discovered much of anything except how not to present an argument and evidence in a court of law or how to better edit their own textbooks) and is more focused on attacking the newer and more controversial realms of evolutionary psychology or sociology.

    As the Nova documentary points out, Darwin was unaware of how the genetics worked to produce variations within species, because the DNA molecule and how it was structured and what comprised it and how genes seemed to function, hadn’t been discovered. As the second video points out (and many other works on evolution), there are several different types of evidence and new disciplines that support Darwin’s original idea not just a reliance on fossil evidence.

    • #93
  4. Front Seat Cat Member
    Front Seat Cat
    @FrontSeatCat

    Slow on the uptake (View Comment):

    Front Seat Cat (View Comment):

    The “does God exist or not” argument between believers, non-believers and those with a much smaller empty hole for believing seems to be what most got out of the Berlinski interview – a scientist who gives a maybe…or maybe not example. So, can we examine the ramifications of a world without Judaeo-Christianity, totally secular – devoid of religious boundaries where these two specific faiths cease to exist as we know them (excluding other faiths for now). Dr. Berlinski is rather nonchalant about this – in fact he says it is where we are going if not already there – but let’s go there for sake of a discussion (maybe for another post) what a world would be like morally, economically, socially, politically, physically, mentally, emotionally, and… spiritually, if you think human beings contain a spirit, or not?

    I ask because either evolution contains the seeds for the necessity of God (or inclusion) within it, or without (exclusion)- it can’t be both.

    You mean devoid of any monotheistic religion but none others? Because you did not mention Mohammedanism. And – may I respectfully suggest it sounds to me like you could make a good beginning to an entirely new conversation.

    I should have left that out because I do mean a society without religion – secular only- but I was mainly referring to the Judaeo-Christian world. But you make a good point – because we seem to be talking in post-Christian terms these days, that’s where society is headed here and in Europe, But….no so with Islam – not sure about other faiths.

    • #94
  5. Shawn Buell (Majestyk) Member
    Shawn Buell (Majestyk)
    @Majestyk

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):
    Accepting your premise, I might turn your question around by asking: For 190,000 years nobody ever farmed. Why? Don’t you find that to be weird?

    Not in the slightest.  The explanation of course is that in those days humans weren’t very numerous and the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was sustainable within our ancestral homelands for millennia.

    As the number of humans increased we spread out across different areas of the planet in an effort to maintain that hunter-gatherer plan, but the Malthusian trap would always catch up with people in a particular area, necessitating movement to new areas.

    Agriculture could only arise once several conditions were met: location of species that were profitable to cultivate; sufficient population density to perform farm labor; political structure sufficient to defend such investments.

    Agriculture was actually bad news for people in some sense; life expectancy went down in the first agricultural settlements for the reasons we might expect.  Decreased variation in protein intake, harsh labor conditions and diseases all became problems that didn’t exist in H-G society.

    • #95
  6. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    I think that the overall criticism regarding the lack of evidence of evolution by natural selection is correct. There is some evidence, but a great many gaps, and it is not clear that the mechanism of natural selection is sufficient to have produced the variations in form that we observe.

    The “transitional forms” argument and evidence (presented in Brian’s #80 above) is misleading, in my view. There are forms that appear to be “transitional” because they are intermediate, in the sense that creature B has some features of creature A and some of creature C. The evolutionist conclusion that this makes creature B an evolutionary transitional form, however, is unwarranted, at least in my view.

    If I were to show you the skeletons of a modern human, modern chimp, and modern baboon, the chimp would appear to be a transitional form. But no one believes that baboons evolved into chimps which evolved into humans.

    Similarly, if I were to show you the various “generations” of Ford Mustangs, the middle models would appear to be transitional forms. But we know that the early Mustangs did not evolve into the current model (in a Darwinian sense). Nor were the changes random. In the case of the Mustangs, they were the result of conscious design.

    I haven’t studied evolution in detail since college, in the late 1980s. At the time, the prevailing theory appeared to be “punctuated equilibrium,” popularized by Stephen Jay Gould. The entire purpose of this hypothesis is to explain the gaps in the fossil record, as the observation is that new and significantly different forms emerged very quickly.

    The claim that there are gaps does not appear to be disputed. Wikipedia (here) summarizes Richard Dawkins’s objection to Gould’s theory by stating that: “Richard Dawkins regards the apparent gaps represented in the fossil record to document migratory events rather than evolutionary events. According to Dawkins, evolution certainly occurred but ‘probably gradually’ elsewhere.”

    I haven’t read Dawkins in the original, so this may be an oversimplification. The point is that both Gould and Dawkins appear to agree on the existence of gaps, but disagree about the cause.

    I think that there are two fundamental problems: (1) factually, the fossil record is very sparse, and (2) logically, the fact of change does not demonstrate the mechanism of change.

     

    Well obviously there is alot about evolution and genetics that we don’t know. But if species do change over time I don’t see what it isn’t logical to assume that over a longer period of time speciation can occur. Also, according to evidence done on the breeding of feral foxes in Russia into tame dogs, evolution can happen very fast. 

    • #96
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