Check out this amusing discovery on Stochastic—there’s this new tool on Google, Google Trends, that lets you compare the frequency of various searches. A silly creationist got all thrilled because searches for “Intelligent Design” beat searches for “Darwinism”.
You know where this is going. “Darwinism” is a term used by creationists, not scientists or anyone who knows more than diddly-squat about biology. Run a search for evolution, biology, and science vs. creationism and intelligent design, and the insignificance of the creationists becomes obvious. Once again, the designists are caught fudging the data, and once again, we can see the triviality of their games.
Note that “creationism” and “intelligent design” barely rise above the baseline.
As you might guess, though, throw sex into the mix, and the evolution-creation debate shrinks away. A little perspective is always useful!
I love watching stupidity fail.
It’s fascinating to me that there are so many Islamic Republics (Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc.) in the top ten for “sex” searches. I’d guess if you asked the average person on the street in one of those countries he’d say that the “immoral West” would be looking for sex more often.
Or maybe we just have all our porn bookmarked. Anyway, I thought it was interesting.
I’d like to see that same creationist get as giddy about this foreboding trend:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=pharyngula%2C+discovery+institute&ctab=1&geo=all&date=2006
Kick-ass, PZ.
Here:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=creationism%2C+ufo%2C+bigfoot%2C+loch+ness+monster%2C+flying+spaghetti+monster&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
Taking out UFOs makes the difference between creationism and bigfoot more obvious:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=creationism%2C+bigfoot%2C+loch+ness+monster%2C+flying+spaghetti+monster&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
I had the same idea, but CCC beat me to it:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=intelligent+design%2C+astrology%2C+ghosts%2C+area+51
I wanted to round it out to 5, but this shows that interest in intelligent design only briefly spiked above ghosts and area 51. Astrology, meanwhile, is comfortably ahead of all three.
Ha!
Ok, this is my last one, honest:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=creationism%2C+da+vinci+code&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
Minneapolis has a slight edge in the search for atheism.
http://www.google.com/trends?q=atheism
This is a rather compelling correlation:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=buttholes%2C+dembski&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
BlueIndependent:
Actually, stupidity is wildly successful, as even the smallest amount of contact with the general populace will tell you. It’s lying that’s a failure.
Similar to Dustin’s:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=troglodyte%2C+hovind&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all“
Ok, I lied. Speaking of correlations, look at the spike here:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=creationism%2C+satanism&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
But by this measure, they still have a lot of work to do:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=creationists%2C+satan&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
I’m immature. So? The dude refused to answer my questions!
I’ve been doing something similar (search comparison) using overture’s keyword selection tool. Last time I ran it was in March (for Feb). There are some interesting tidbits. For instance, the Flying Spaghetti Monster beat Bill Orielly, Richard Dawkins beat Pat Robertson, Jon Stewart beat out Shiva, and… wait for it… Darwin beat Allah!! (go Charles!). The breakdown is here: http://botd.freethought.net/archives/63
Minneapolis has a slight edge in the search for atheism.
http://www.google.com/trends?q=atheism
Oh Jeebus, that brings up a lot of stupid articles with it on the sidebar.
Paul wrote:
“”Darwinism” is a term used by creationists, not scientists or anyone who knows more than diddly-squat about biology.”
I can understand why evolutionary biologists don’t want to be called “darwinists”. Darwinism (the notion that the highly organized structures, processes and systems found in living organisms emerged as a result of random mutations and natural selection) has no empirical support. Why would a scientist want to be associated with a theory that has no empirical support and whose power to do what it claims to do has been questioned?
Darwinism (and it’s offspring neo-darwinism) has fallen into disrepute with the emergence of evo-devo and responsible scientists recognize this. It took quite a long time, but it’s a welcome change.
I still want to know what the hell the y-axis is supposed to be. Is the difference between ID and evolution 20 hits? 5000 hits? What? I take mucho points off for students when they don’t give me axis scales.
“Darwinism” is a word that was made up of whole cloth by creationists, and unfairly limits an entire plethora of ideas and evidence back to a single individual at the beginning of the research. Would you like for Christianity to be labeled “Mosesism” instead? Why not? He started it.
Things loved by this blog beat things hated by it. :-)
kent hovind, ken ham, william dembski, squids
Charlie, as usual you miss most of the point, then hopelessly muddle the point you might have gotten.
It makes no difference in searching Google whether biologists and other scientists want to be callled accurately by the professional credentials they’ve earned, or whether polemicists like Charlie Wagner prefer labels. The question PZ raises is, why can’t creationists like Charlie Wagner make honest searches on Google? Who would it hurt?
If you wish to make a case that creationism is more salient than evolution, make the case fairly. Compare “evolution” with the creationism, science equivalent term. But of course, that’s the issue: There is no science equivalent term to evolution, in creationism. Creationists themselves avoid like the plague any science publication where they might spread information about creationism (don’t argue, this was the conclusion of a federal court when creationists were so foolish as to raise the issue before a fair, Christian tribunal). So all creationists can to is fuzz the issues.
A fair comparison would be more like this: Go to your stock broker and ask to purchase stock in any company that is applying creationism/intelligent design commercially, for profit, if the company is deemed a good buy, and also to purchase stock in any company that is applying evolution for profit. Your broker would advise you that there are no companies applying creationism (it’s sterile and dead as science), but a number of generally-well-performing pharmaceutical and agricultural companies applying evolution — which of the many evolution companies would you like to buy?
See, in the real world — the world God created, we Christians would observe — evolution works, and creationism shirks.
That’s why creationists are not fair or honest in their Google searches. In fact, that’s why creationists rely on Google searches at all, instead of relying on results in a laboratory, or in the field, in God’s nature.
The rest of your post is factually in error. The only way creationism even gets a toehold in any debate is to cheat, as you demonstrate.
Why don’t creationists ever come out for accuracy, Charlie? Why can’t creationists make even an honest argument from a Google search, if indeed you have any iota of truth on your side? Go Google it, see what you find.
And, did you see the New York Times yesterday? You should: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/opinion/12Thorpe.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
This is factually incorrect.
Scientists haven’t called what they do “Darwinism” for almost a century, although you may be able to find occasional lapses. It’s simply not the common term, and hasn’t been for a long time. They also don’t call it “neo-Darwinism”, even though we will refer to the neo-Darwinian synthesis…but even there, it is more typical to call it just plain biology.
Evo-devo has not damaged the neo-Darwinian synthesis in any way; it does not challenge population genetics, for instance. Evo-devo complements and extends our understanding of biology. The neo-Darwinian synthesis is not in disrepute.
The thing is, it’s a lot sexier to denounce the orthodoxy as profoundly mistaken than it is to calmly mention the reasons why it is correct.
When dealing with people who draw conclusions with passion instead of thought, the wanna-be theist revolutionaries are a lot more appealing.
I’m worried about this being an example of “chart junk” until the vertical axis is labelled …
though it is kind of nifty anyway …
BTW, if someone wants a linguistics project for some reason, they could investigate my hypothesis that “Darwinism” is partially a British English thing …
I think we want to examine stats on google searches on general-knowledge terms that each “side” likes to use in their self-references. Thus we’d use “evolution” (not Darwinism) and “intelligent design”. That generates an interesting graph
http://www.google.com/trends?q=intelligent+design%2C+evolution&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all
and a couple of conclusions. One is obvious; ID is barely a blip on the google search stats, and most of that activity is confined to the USA (France, apparently, has never heard the term). Second, if these stats are at least useful in detecting trends, ID interest peaked with the Dover decision, and it has been downhill since then. Perhaps their 15 minutes are up…
If evolution is true, then why are people still searching for PYGMIES + DWARFS?!
Hah. Evolution is kicking the tiny little butts of those pygmies and dwarfs.
Google says:
Now they tell me.
Trends is in development. They might heed calls from an international, grassroots campaign for y-axis units:
Ed Darrell wrote:
“Charlie, as usual you miss most of the point, then hopelessly muddle the point you might have gotten.”
Oh, where to begin…
On the other hand, I’ve been over all of this many times before. Have you heard nothing I’ve said?
First of all, I am neither a polemicist or a Creationist. I thought that by now I had made that clear. The whole Google search Trends business is ridiculous and bogus. It tells us nothing. If you Google my name, you get around 5 million hits while Paul’s name only generates about one million. It means nothing.
“If you wish to make a case that creationism is more salient than evolution, make the case fairly. Compare “evolution” with the creationism, science equivalent term.”
I’ve written on many occasions that “evolution” and “creationism” are NOT equivalent terms and cannot be compared. Evolution is a PROCESS, which has occurred in which change occurs over time. neo-darwinism and creationism are MECHANISMS of evolution. Evolution has occurred, only a fool would deny that. The question concerns which mechanism, variation and selection or divine intervention is responsible.
Intelligent design, which I generally lean towards is also a mechanism but it is NOT the same as creationism because no supernatural entity is involved. It merely suggests that some intelligence, higher than our own, was involved in the emergence of living systems. This is fully compatible with the scientific method and falls squarely within the realm of science.
“Why don’t creationists ever come out for accuracy, Charlie? Why can’t creationists make even an honest argument from a Google search, if indeed you have any iota of truth on your side? ”
It’s not MY side. Since I am not a religious creationist, I cannot answer for them or defend them. You are painting everyone who questions evolution with the same brush without trying to see the differences in our positions. Apparently the religious creationists have succeeded in hijacking a perfectly valid scientific question and distorting it to advance their own agenda. And they have succeeded. The question of whether God created the universe and all the life in it or whether intelligent input was required are TWO SEPARATE QUESTIONS
I read the Thorpe article and once again, my blood begins to boil. The issue is not Creationism or Evolution and these viewpoints should not be framed as opposing positions in the debate. I can sum it up in two sentences:
1. That evolution has occurred is HIGHLY LIKELY.
2. That variation and selection was the mechanism is HIGHLY UNLIKELY.
Paul wrote:
“Scientists haven’t called what they do “Darwinism” for almost a century, although you may be able to find occasional lapses. It’s simply not the common term, and hasn’t been for a long time. They also don’t call it “neo-Darwinism”, even though we will refer to the neo-Darwinian synthesis…but even there, it is more typical to call it just plain biology.
Evo-devo has not damaged the neo-Darwinian synthesis in any way; it does not challenge population genetics, for instance. Evo-devo complements and extends our understanding of biology. The neo-Darwinian synthesis is not in disrepute.”
Horsepookey.
Charlie, you seem to be missing the point here, which is that virtually nobody but creationists use the term “Darwinism” and there is no reason to expect it to be a popular search term.
You may like the term for whatever reason, and I don’t criticize you for that. But if you want your argument to be taken seriously, you need to cite references for any time period since Darwin published Origins when serious evolutionary researchers ever referred to themselves as Darwinists. Conceivably, there was such a time period, though it does not include the present day. If there was one, you have the burden of providing the evidence.
Paul C wrote:
“virtually nobody but creationists use the term “Darwinism” and there is no reason to expect it to be a popular search term.”
I defined above what I mean by “darwinism”:
The notion that the highly organized structures, processes and systems found in living organisms emerged as a result of random mutations and natural selection.”
If you don’t call it “darwinism” or “neo-darwinism”, exactly what DO you call it?
Webster’s Dictionary
Main Entry: Dar·win·ism
Pronunciation: ‘där-w&-“ni-z&m
Function: noun
: a theory of the origin and perpetuation of new species of animals and plants that offspring of a given organism vary, that natural selection favors the survival of some of these variations over others, that new species have arisen and may continue to arise by these processes, and that widely divergent groups of plants and animals have arisen from the same ancestors; broadly : biological evolutionism
– Dar·win·ist /-w&-nist/ noun or adjective
Encyclopedia Britannica
Darwinism
Theory of the evolutionary mechanism proposed by Charles Darwin as an explanation of organic change.
It denotes Darwin’s specific view of how evolution works. Darwin developed the concept that evolution is brought about by the interplay of three principles: variation (present in all forms of life), heredity (the force that transmits similar organic form from one generation to another), and the struggle for existence (which determines the variations that will be advantageous in a given environment, thus altering the species through selective reproduction). Present knowledge of the genetic basis of inheritance has contributed to scientists’ understanding of the mechanisms behind Darwin’s ideas, in a theory known as neo-Darwinism.
To claim that this is not valid terminology, commonly used in science is nothing less than disingenuous.
I did a comparison of creationism vs. evolution. Creationism barely gets off the ground.
To claim that it is “commonly used” is disingenuous unless you can provide some evidence of a working scientist self-identifying as a “Darwinist.” Encyclopedists and lexicographers are not biologists.
Charlie,
Your problem is not how to begin, but how to stop.
“First of all, I am neither a polemicist or a Creationist.”
You are a polemicist and a troll, since you constantly return, make polemic comments, and don’t try to learn the issues.
You are a creationist, since intelligent design is creationist and makes the implicit claim of creation events.
You are a crackpot, since you deny established facts and theories such as bigbang and evolution besides the fact of common descent.
You seem to us to be religiously, since you have at least twice mentioned that you expect to die before your “reward”.
evolution, spanish inquisition, charlie wagner
Not unless you consider “certainty” to be a subset of “highly likely”. Life has evolved. This has gone far beyond a hypothesis, beyond a theory, and is an established fact. Like the approximate shape of the Earth, it is so certain that it is almost impossible to imagine a preponderance of evidence that would cause us to reject it.
Quite simply, there are no grounds to support this conclusion. There is every reason to believe that variation and selection are the fundamental mechanisms that determined the nature of life on this planet.
That was supposed to be “religiously motivated”.
Paul C wrote:
“To claim that it is “commonly used” is disingenuous unless you can provide some evidence of a working scientist self-identifying as a “Darwinist.” Encyclopedists and lexicographers are not biologists.”
Any working scientist who holds the view that variation and selection are responsible for the emergence of highly organized structures, processes and systems is a “darwinist” whether he chooses to so identify himself or not. And I believe that would include the majority of working scientists.
Besides, this is a straw-man argument. When Paul says “Scientists haven’t called what they do “Darwinism” for almost a century,…” it has the same format that Bush uses when he speaks.
“When the president starts a sentence with “some say” or offers up what “some in Washington” believe, as he is doing more often these days, a rhetorical retort almost assuredly follows.
The device usually is code for Democrats or other White House opponents. In describing what they advocate, Bush often omits an important nuance or substitutes an extreme stance that bears little resemblance to their actual position.”
http://mediamatters.org/items/200603210009
”
Torbjörn wrote:
(I finally figured out how to get the “ö” character! Alt148)
“You seem to us to be religiously (motivated), since you have at least twice mentioned that you expect to die before your “reward”.”
My “reward” is in seeing my ideas vindicated and becoming comnmonly accepted. I understand that this will take some time, and since I am 62 and in fairly poor health, it seems logical that I will not live long enough for this to happen. There is no “religious motivation” involved at all. I fully expect that when I die, that all aspects of my being will cease to exist
Charlie Wagner wrote: “Horsepookey”
Now there’s a scientific argument.
Actually, maybe it really is. Charlie, can you provide a detailed explanation on how the equine digestive system was designed, rather than evolved?
More seriously: Charlie, have you solved the parsimony problem with intelligent design? That is, have you thought of a way that an intelligence so sufficiently advanced that it can design biological changes could have arisen without either evolving on its own or requiring an infinite regress of intelligences designing?
Can you describe some tests to determine what aspects of an organism are designed?
Owlmirror wrote:
“Now there’s a scientific argument.”
It’s more polite than “total crap” ;-)
“have you thought of a way that an intelligence so sufficiently advanced that it can design biological changes could have arisen without either evolving on its own or requiring an infinite regress of intelligences designing?”
No.
That’s just another form of the age old question “why is there anything, rather than nothing. It’s the argument from First Cause. As Bertrand Russell states “the argument that there must be a First Cause is one that cannot have any validity… If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God… There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination.”
“Can you describe some tests to determine what aspects of an organism are designed?”
Yes. If the organism (or machine) contains multiple structures and if each of these structures supports the function of other structures and
if the organism (or system) contains multiple processes and if each of these processes supports the function of other processes and
if the assembled structures support the assembled processes and
the assembled processes support the assembled structures and
if all of the structures and processes are integrated together in such a way that they support the overall function of the system (or organism) then
this is prima facie evidence of intent and intent requires insight and insight requires intelligence.
In addition, no such highly organized system that exists in the world today ever assembled itself without guidance by an intelligent entity.
He-he-he… a very nice closing; I like it.
Taking it more seriously than you intended it, though, it’s interesting in another way: it shows that most people are terrible at constructing useful searches. Without actually trying it (I’d hate to skew the statistics, you see), I suspect that the word “sex” appears so frequently and so randomly as to be an entirely useless search term. It appears, for instance, several times on this page, and yet this page has nothing to do with sex (and certainly isn’t one that anyone searching on that keyword would be looking for).
I often hear people say that they have such a hard time finding what they’re looking for on the web, and that Google fails to get them there more often than it succeeds. On further discussion I always conclude that they’re bad at picking search terms, and, in particular, they don’t know how to use quotation marks or boolean expressions.
ny working scientist who holds the view that variation and selection are responsible for the emergence of highly organized structures, processes and systems is a “darwinist” whether he chooses to so identify himself or not.
This is like arguing that people working on room temperature super conductors or capturing lighting using plasma reactions and lasers are teslanians or Franklinians, because they obviously based everything they do on electricity. In other words, it makes for a useful label for some moron that thinks Franklin should have been electrocuted by the kite or that Tesla ruined the budding electronic industry. And while I haven’t heard the former, some variation on how, “that other guys theories where better”, **has** been given for Tesla’s work. Its still bullshit and no different than if some moron insisted that all Americans are actually British, based on common language, the fact that we didn’t completely stop drinking tea and millions of people every year visit Cinderella’s Castle in Disney Land/World (thus proving our continued belief in monarchies).
If you Google my name, you get around 5 million hits while Paul’s name only generates about one million. It means nothing.
Look! A verifiable factual claim!
Googling for “Charlie Wagner” (you *do* know that you need the quotes to avoid getting everything else named Charlie *and* everything else named Wagner, right?) returns about 24,800 hits, which appear to be mostly about the Red Sox player named Charlie Wagner. Since according to his Wikipedia article, he was born in 1912 and is therefore 93, I’m assuming you’re not him. A smaller number are about a tattoo artist named Charlie Wagner who died in 2001. Therefore you aren’t him either. Perhaps as many as a third of the results, mostly comments on various blogs, might be about you (although only one on the first page).
Googling for “P.Z. Myers” (I assume that’s who you meant by “Paul”?) returns about 308,000 hits (including several saying PZ Myers, I guess Google is smart enough to know that those are probably the same thing). The first few pages of hits appear to all be about *this* PZ Myers. I guess there aren’t that many people with similar names.
…Actually, it looks like Charlie just doesn’t know how to use Google. Rerunning the searches without quotes gives the hit counts Charlie reported. Google is smart enough to put the pages that have both words in them first, so it’s not immediately obvious what you’re doing wrong, but as you can see, the total hit counts make it clear that a lot of Charlie’s Angels, Richard Wagner, etc. pages are being included in Charlie Wagner (without quotes) and excluded from “Charlie Wagner”.
Charlie quotes Bertrand Russell:
I don’t get it. If you replace “God” and “First Cause” with “Designer” in the quote, you get something very much like what I was trying to say, something like this:
(more of the wording needed to change because he was talking about cosmology, and I was referring specifically to biology)
Are you saying that my question is wrong because it echoes Bertrand Russell? Do you have a refutation of Russell’s argument that somehow supports your ideas about design?
I wrote: “Can you describe some tests to determine what aspects of an organism are designed?”
Charlie wrote:
Whoof. I’ll have to think about this one. Although I note that it does seem to be reducible to: “Life is complex; only intelligence can design complexity.” Does that seem like a fair summary to you?
Charlie wrote:
Leaving biology aside for a moment, how about the global weather system? There’s solar and geothermal energy input; global wind and ocean currents affected by continental edges and regions such as mountain ranges; complex interaction between evaporating water, clouds, and precipitation falling onto mountains, forming glaciers and rivers; and so on. I would consider this to be a highly organized thermodynamic system which is manifestly self-assembled.
“My “reward” is in seeing my ideas vindicated and becoming comnmonly accepted. I understand that this will take some time, and since I am 62 and in fairly poor health, it seems logical that I will not live long enough for this to happen. There is no “religious motivation” involved at all.”
That seems reasonable, though originally unluckily worded. I’m glad that misunderstanding was cleared.
“Any working scientist who holds the view that variation and selection are responsible for the emergence of highly organized structures, processes and systems is a “darwinist” whether he chooses to so identify himself or not.”
As has been explained ad nauseam, similar ludicrous reasoning would make any gravitational expert physicist a ‘newtonist’ instead of a gravitational expert. Evolution is more than RM+NS, but RM+NS are accepted and an important part of evolution.
“”have you thought of a way that an intelligence so sufficiently advanced that it can design biological changes could have arisen without either evolving on its own or requiring an infinite regress of intelligences designing?”
That’s just another form of the age old question “why is there anything, rather than nothing. It’s the argument from First Cause.”
Only for a crackpot who (probably merely to be able to claim this) doesn’t accept bigbang. Bigbang mean that you can’t infinitely regress natural creators backwards. Sooner (ID’s designer) or later (bigbang) you have to invoke evolution, whereupon your theory implodes, or a supernatural designer, whereupon your theory implodes. Of course, since we have no evidence for any designer, but 150 years of science facts on evolution, your idea has already imploded with the contact to reality.
“If the organism (or machine) contains multiple structures and”
This is Payles argument. It died 150 years ago on the rise of the same science that you try to argue against. Hurry up, you have 150 years of real research to study! Oh, and according to Chris, you should catch up on Google too.
evolution, spanish inquisition, charlie wagner
kahgehi wrote:
“This is like arguing that people working on room temperature super conductors or capturing lighting using plasma reactions and lasers are teslanians or Franklinians, because they obviously based everything they do on electricity.”
Certain schools of thought are based on the teachings of a specific individual. In psychology, there are schools of thought that are represented by such persons as Freud, Jung, etc. There is nothing wrong with calling someone a “Freudian psychologist” or a “Jungian psychologist”. The same is true in economics. There are those who follow Keynes, and are called Keynsian economists and those who follow Marx are called Marxists. This is common usage throughout the soft and the hard sciences. So there is absolutely nothing wrong with describing someone who advocates vartiation and selection as the most important mechanism of evolution as a “darwinist” or darwinian evolutionist.
Denying that you are a darwinist is tantamount to admitting that you are open to other possibilities and that’s a good thing, so I applaud anyone who refuses to be identified as a darwinist.
Owlmirror wrote:
“Charlie quotes Bertrand Russell:”
I had the pleasure of meeting Lord Russell in the early 60’s. I said to him “Good morning Lord Russell, how are you today?”
He looked me straight in the eye and replied “In relation to what?” WoW!!! Heavy trip!!!
“I don’t get it.”
Don’t feel bad, neither do I. Or anyone else for that matter. It’s as big a mystery as anyone can imagine. If you want answers from me, you’re out of luck. Philosophers have been grappling with these questions since the beginning of time. We don’t have an answer to the infinite regress dilemma except the notion (which I subscribe to) that the universe and the life in it have always existed.
“Life is complex; only intelligence can design complexity.” Does that seem like a fair summary to you?
No, because complexity is not the issue. Complex systems can arise from random, non-directed events. Organized systems cannot. See my website for a further clarification.
Charlie Wagner wrote:
Now, wait a minute. It’s your contention that
(emphasis added)
Is there any empirical support for the infinite regress of life?
I’m trying to understand the essence of your idea, and you’re telling me that “it’s a big mystery”. Well, fine. So how is that different from responding to your implied question of “How can random mutations and natural selection result in the highly organized structures, processes and systems found in living organisms?” with “Hey, it works, but it’s a big mystery as to how.”?
“The evolution of life through reproductive variation and natural selection over several billion years on a constantly changing planet is the mechanism by which life’s organized systems arose from simpler origins” is a lot simpler than an unexplained and inexplicable infinite regress of intelligent complex life designing each iteration of complex life. This is especially true when, as far as we can tell, our universe had a specific beginning, and life on our planet has gone from simple beginnings to more complex (“organized systems”), with no empirical evidence of an infinite regression or design by any pre-existing intelligences.
Heh,
My 9th edition, 1892, Britannica has no article on ‘Islam’ but a lengthy article on ‘Mohammedanism’. Google Trends has too few hits on ‘Mohammedanism’ to establish any trend, but a Google comparision shows 174,000 hits for ‘Mohammedanism’ and 82,700,000 hits for ‘Christianity’. This clearly shows that Chistianity is 475 times as dominant!
Or maybe, just maybe, using antiquated and prejudicial terminology skews the results?
Nah, couldn’t be.
Cheers,
-Flex
Owlmirror wrote:
“Is there any empirical support for the infinite regress of life?
I’m trying to understand the essence of your idea, and you’re telling me that “it’s a big mystery”. Well, fine. So how is that different from responding to your implied question of “How can random mutations and natural selection result in the highly organized structures, processes and systems found in living organisms?” with “Hey, it works, but it’s a big mystery as to how.”?
Well, there’s some evidence to suggest that life did not begin on earth, but came to earth from elsewhere. More than a billion years went by from the formation of the earth until the beginning of the cambrian, about 600 million or so years ago and during that time there was no evolutionary movement towards multicellularity. Then in a relatively short period of time, possibly only a few millions of years, all of the major multicellular body plans emerge. One can only suspect that multicellular life came to the earth from elsewhere.
Again, you’re not differentiating the process of evolution and the mechanism of evolution. There is a lot of good evidence that evolution has occurred. The organisms that are living in the present are different in many ways from those that lived in the past. Species appear suddenly with no apparent precursors and then continue on essentially unchanged or they go extinct. Trilobites are an excellent example. Where are their precursors?
The important point is that we don’t know that random mutations and natural selection had anything at all to do with the emergence of highly organized structures, processes and systems. We know that they did emerge because at one point in time they did not exist and at a latter point in time they do exist. But we don’t have a clue as to the mechanism that caused this to happen.
I happen to believe that evolution is no different from development. It is the unfolding of a program that was already present in the DNA when it first arrived on earth. We know that all life comes from pre-existing life, it doesn’t bootstrap itself into existence from nothing. It seems logical to me that life has been around a lot longer than the earth, possible, like matter itself, it has always existed.
Charlie Wagner:
[Cambrian explosion]
That isn’t evidence that life came to earth from elsewhere. The sudden appearance of multicellular life only allows you to conclude that life appeared suddenly. The mechanism is unknown until more evidence is found.
The only way to have actual empirical evidence of what appears to be your idea of panspermia is for a biologically sterile space probe to find life inside of comets. Currently, no such thing has been found.
We know nothing of the sort. We don’t know that it does bootstrap itself, but there is no disproof that forces us to conclude that it doesn’t.
The simplest explanation is that complex organic chemical reactions, occurring over a long period of time, can lead to self-reproducing collections of nucleotides, and that many generations of RNA can lead to DNA life, and many generations of DNA life can lead to cellular life, and that eventually, many generations of cellular life can lead to multicellular life, and so on. It’s not the only explanation, but it is the simplest one – and until it’s positively disproven, I think it’s a reasonable hypothesis.
But matter has not always existed – and the chemicals for organic life have definitely not always existed. Or at least, that’s the current understanding of how matter works.
Now your theory is not just positing panspermia, but is declaring that the past century of scientific advances in astrophysics is also completely wrong – and again, all without empirical evidence.
Just out of curiosity, have you read a modern work on evolution?
And besides your arguments on the internet, have you done any actual work in biology or astrophysics or organic chemistry? Have you done any real research into the sciences you are so casually insisting are 100% wrong?
Whether or not Charlie has worked in these areas, as we have already concluded he makes an amasing and complicated mishmash of crackpot ideas to replace the simple scientific facts and theories we have.
evolution, spanish inquisition, charlie wagner
Darwinist/Darwinism are perfectly acceptable terms when looking at the history of science.
No modern scientist would use the term “Darwinist” about themselves. Such labels are useful to distinguish between the various types of evolutionary theories popular in the years after Darwin’s death, and before the “New Synthesis” of the 1930s. Many of these models rejected Natural Selection as the driving force behind evolution and gave much more important roles to Neo-Lamarckism, internal trajectories of growth and development (“Orthogenesis”), and mutation.
Darwinism probebly features quite often as a keyword in Isis. I can’t see it ever appearing in TREE.