Thursday, May 08, 2014

Replacing "God" with "science"


If you say evolution occurs by natural selection, it looks scientific compared with saying God created everything. Now they say natural selection created everything, but they don’t explain how. If it’s science, you have to explain every step. That’s why I was unhappy. Just a replacement of God with natural selection doesn’t change very much. You have to explain how. 
http://discovermagazine.com/2014/march/12-mutation-not-natural-selection-drives-evolution

Masatoshi Nei is Evan Pugh Professor of Biology and Director of the Institute of Molecular Evolutionary Genetics at Penn State. 

5 comments:

  1. What do you mean "they don't explain how"? I guess you weren't paying attention. Go back and actually learn about evolution, and then we can talk.

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    1. @John Moore

      "What do you mean 'they don't explain how'? I guess you weren't paying attention. Go back and actually learn about evolution, and then we can talk."

      1. I'd wager Masatoshi Nei knows a fair bit more about evolution than you do. If you want to talk, you should have a little chat with Nei and see how you fare.

      2. Given your comment elsewhere, let's ask, why would you ever contradict an expert? Do you have a preconceived notion that Nei threatens? Are you just trying to protect your cherished notions? Huffing and puffing for a while and then stomping off into your safe corner? Alternatively, you can provide evidence supporting your dissenting view, and this can lead to a productive discussion. Or so one would hope.

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  2. After that quote in the original article, it says "OK, so, explain how." And then Nei starts explaining. Thus, it's clear that Nei actually knows something, and there certainly is an explanation. The problem is not with Nei but with you - the way you quoted him in an attempt to suggest that there's no explanation for how natural selection works.

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    1. 1. I'm not the one who posted this or wrote this. You need to learn how to follow the basic flow of a conversation for a start.

      2. You're moving the goalposts, for this wasn't your original objection. Your original objection included your little riposte that he'd have to "Go back and actually learn about evolution, and then we can talk."

      3. What's quoted by Nei can itself be considered a self-contained criticism of certain evolutionists. Not about evolution qua scientific theory, per se, but about how some evolutionists undertake their scientific theorizing.

      4. In any case, Nei himself dissents from a key aspect of the modern evolutionary synthesis. Or aren't you aware of this in light of his interview?

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    2. John Moore

      "After that quote in the original article, it says 'OK, so, explain how.' And then Nei starts explaining. Thus, it's clear that Nei actually knows something, and there certainly is an explanation. The problem is not with Nei but with you - the way you quoted him in an attempt to suggest that there's no explanation for how natural selection works."

      i) You're a study in paranoia. I simply quoted Nei verbatim, with no commentary on my part. Hence, there was no "attempt to suggest" anything.

      ii) Even if you think the quote was deceptive, according to evolutionary psychology, your sense of right and wrong is just an illusion which natural selection fobbed off on you because it confers a survival advantage, and not because some things are actually right while other things are actually wrong.

      iii) The quote simply makes the (important) point that saying "natural selection created everything" isn't inherently more scientific than saying "God made everything." It *looks* more scientific, but absent a stepwise explanation, that's just a bonus appearance of science.

      iv) Nei's statement is more significant because it comes from the lips of a distinguished evolutionary biologist. If Bill Dembski or Kurt Wise said it, that would be quickly discounted. But it's a striking admission from an evolutionary biologist.

      v) In fact, Nei is chiding his colleagues for imagining that they were explaining more than they actually explained.

      vi) By Nei's yardstick, most evolutionary theorizing isn't scientific. Rather, most evolutionary theorizing is natural history. In most cases, evolutionary biologists do not and cannot explain every step. Take paleontology. That's natural history. About the distant past.

      Most evolutionary biologists don't even know what most of the steps are, so they can't very well explain them. The ancient habitats are long gone. Most transitional species left no fossil remains. So it's impossible to explain every step, given the sparsity of the record. At most, evolutionary biology is only scientific where it can observe evolution in the wild or reproduce evolution in the lab (which isn't the same thing as macroevolution or universal common descent). Even if we grant the truth of evolution for the sake of argument, it can't explain every step. So it's not scientific. Darwinians like Dawkins resort to computer simulations in the absence of hard evidence.

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