Darwinian Extremists

Evangelical Realism has kindly reminded me of a fact of life - Darwinists are extremists.

Take, for example the first part of my post that the professor criticized:

And that’s my point. It’s not that the creationist design is inferior because we don’t know what purpose a designer might have had in mind. It’s inferior because anti-Darwinism is defined by the idea that Creation lacks the sophisticated capabilities that make it possible for new and innovative species to evolve. The whole point of the ID argument is that we must infer an “intelligent” designer because the sophisticated mechanisms that evolutionists have come up with are entirely missing from God’s design for life on earth. And since these missing mechanisms are things that make it possible for life on earth to innovate, to adapt to changing conditions and to replace species lost to extinction (changing climates, asteroid strikes, etc), we are left with a creationist version of biology that is less stable, less adaptable, less innovative, less self-repairing, and less viable than the design that evolutionists have come up with. The only way to deny that the creationist design is inferior is to invent a special standard specifically tailored to make creationism look good.

Notice how quickly he went from "anti-Darwinist" to "ID proponent" to "Creationist?" In the Darwinist mind, these are all simply disguised versions of the same thing. If you're not convinced that the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection is "the Truth" you are a Darwin damned Flat Earth Creationist and a Republican to boot. The simple fact is, while I acknowledge that Darwinism is a valid theory, I don't believe it has proven its case. My primary reason is that, while I have seen a great deal of evidence that Darwinism is a sufficient explanation for the current state of the diversity of species we see, I have not seen anything to establish it as a NECESSARY explanation.

Now, the professor has gone on about how innovative and sophisticated Darwinism is, but if it isn't necessary, then it's a moot point. No matter how the hub cap sparkles or how smoothly the axle turns, it's still a fifth wheel.

Along a similar line, Vox Day has made a pretty strong case for a second argument against Darwinian theory. It's an unscientific model because it fails as a predictive model - and in fact is not even that effective as a historical one.

From my admittedly layman's perspective, the Neo-Darwinian Theory of evolution looks remarkably like a historical model, except that it doesn't explain historical events half as well as my stock system did. It's not a reliably predictive model like the Law of Supply and Demand and it doesn't provide what I consider to be convincing answers to simple questions like why one population evolves and another does not when they share the same environment; declaring one to have reached equilibrium while the other is unstable is simply not convincing over the lengths of time that are supposed to be involved.

Based on the information from Talk Origins, it could theoretically take as little as 20 years to forcibly evolve a species of mouse into a species of elephant given the rate of darwins observed in the laboratory and the number required for that level of transformation. And yet, after 150 years of constant refinement, evolution still appears to be more smoke, mirrors and revision of the historical model rather than the foundation of a predictive one. I don't argue that the concept of natural selection modifying behavior and attributes over time can't be useful, even valuable, we've used it in artificial intelligence systems in my games for more than a decade now.

But to place evolution on the same level of confidence as Austrian economic theory, let alone Newtonian physics? Given the imprecision, the margins of error and the level of overt speculation that always seems to be involved, I don't see that it's justified.

This discussion has, from the beginning, been running along two mutually independent tracks the first part - dealing with the Darwinian/anti-Darwinian debate - is discussed above. The second part deals with race and racism.

From the New York Times:

…A striking feature of many of these changes is that they are local. The genes under selective pressure found in one continent-based population or race are mostly different from those that occur in the others. These genes so far make up a small fraction of all human genes. …

So yes, professor, race has a genetic component influenced by natural selection.

And it’s an illusion. Humans are all part of the same gene pool. Granted, local populations can and do manifest some amount of variation, but where evolutionists and racists part company is in the idea that the specific variations equate to a distinct “African race” whose intelligence (whatever that means) is inferior to that of the alleged “European race.” Evolutionists, by and large, recognize that this kind of superficial categorization is scientifically vacuous. The data do not say what the racists want them to say.

Except that, aside from the "intelligence" issue, which I've disputed from the beginning, the genetic components of race are increasingly testible - Wired Magazine has an article that states point blank that it is testible to 99% accuracy:

In early March, 2003, investigators turned to Tony Frudakis, a molecular biologist who said he could determine the killer's race by analyzing his DNA. They were unsure about the science, so, before giving him the go-ahead, the task force sent Frudakis DNA swabs taken from 20 people whose race they knew and asked him to determine their races through blind testing. He nailed every single one.

Still, when they gathered in the Baton Rouge police department for a conference call with Frudakis in mid-March, they were not prepared to hear or accept his conclusions about the killer.

"Your guy has substantial African ancestry," said Frudakis. "He could be Afro-Caribbean or African American but there is no chance that this is a Caucasian. No chance at all."

There was a prolonged, stunned silence, followed by a flurry of questions looking for doubt but Frudakis had none. Would he bet his life on this, they wanted to know? Absolutely. In fact, he was certain that the Baton Rouge serial killer was 85 percent Sub-Saharan African and 15 percent native American.

"This means we're going to turn our investigation in an entirely different direction," Frudakis recalls someone saying. "Are you comfortable with that?"

"Yes. I recommend you do that," he said. And now, rather than later since, in the time it took Frudakis to analyze the sample, the killer had claimed his fifth victim. The task force followed Frudakis' advice and, two months later, the killer was in custody.

...

DNAWitness, the test Frudakis applied in the Baton Rouge case, uses a set of 176 genetic markers selected precisely because they disclose the most information about physical characteristics. Some are found primarily in people of African heritage, while others are found mainly in people of Indo-European, Native American or South Asian heritage.

No one sequence alone can predict ancestral origin. However, by looking collectively at hundreds and analyzing the frequency of the various markers, Frudakis says he could predict genetic ancestry with 99 percent accuracy.

Pretty impressive illusion, huh?

I want to make it clear that I'm NOT calling the professor racist. I'm not even calling Darwinists per se racist. most explicitly, I'm NOT stating that evidence of genetic differences between races even suggests a genetic basis for differences in intelligence between races (I've explicitly argued against a genetic basis for differences in intelligence within races from the start). the professor's shrieking is more an indication of his own discomfort with the marriage of Darwinism and racism than anything else. This is even more apparent when one looks at the professors "Egypt" example. You will note that he is using it to refute a point that I never made and disagreed with explicitly - specifically, that genetic isolation would produce genetic differences related to intelligence. You will also not that, as a counter example, it fails miserably because it never addresses the geographic isolation issue to begin with. You will note that Egypt is NORTH of the Sahara desert and built along the Nile, which pretty much guarantees that geographic isolation is minimal at best.

He moves on rather abruptly, which suggests that he just might know how shaky his foundation is at this point.