Charles Darwin would be Ashamed

-

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." [Darwin 1859, pg. 175].

That would pertain to any and every specific biological structure. It also means that there is a process that can produce any complex organ via numerous, successive, slight modifications. And in the context of his book, that refers to natural selection or any other blind and mindless process.

What is the point? Today's evolutionists seem to want to abandon the idea that the onus is on them to provide those "numerous, successive, slight modifications". They want a default position of any and all structures become easily obtainable via Darwinian processes. And any objections have to prove otherwise.

That is the coward's and anti-science way of doing it. They don't want to have to test any specific claims. They will talk about how mountain range formation wasn't directly observed but that doesn't stop us from making inferences on how processes that act today, could, over long eons of time, produce them.

How desperate do you have to be to compare geology or gravity to what we observe with respect to biology?

But I digress. The complaint now is to say that Darwin has been superseded all the while ignoring the fact the main concepts remain the same. For example, Ernst Mayr was one of the architects of the modern synthesis. In his book "What Evolution Is", he wrote:

The first step in selection, the production of genetic variation, is almost exclusively a chance phenomenon except that the nature of the changes at a given locus is strongly constrained. Chance plays an important role even at the second step, the process of elimination of the less fit individuals. Chance may be particularly important in the haphazard survival during periods of mass extinction.

Go back, reread Darwin and count the number of times "chance" pops up. Genetics was added by the modern synthesis but the overall thesis remained the same- the appearance of design without an intelligent designer. Spontaneous and stochastic- contingent serendipity. Blind, mindless and absent of purpose.

It was always that variation just happened as a matter of course an sometimes via some environmental mutagen. Then nature sorted it out over time with the elimination of the less fit.

So if you are saying that, for example, some bacterial flagellum evolved via those blind and mindless processes, then yes, the onus is on you to demonstrate such a thing is possible.

You do NOT get to act like the evo-cowards over on Peaceful Science: read what happens when they are asked how to test their claims, Charles Darwin would be ashamed.


However, if you are a proponent of the EES- extended evolutionary synthesis-  then it seems that you are OK with telic processes. One of the EES's main points flows right from Dr. Lee Spetner's non-random evolutionary hypothesis with its "built-in responses to environmental cues":

novel, evolutionarily consequential, phenotypic variants will frequently be environmentally induced in multiple individuals

Any scientist who accepts the EES is OK with evolution by means of intelligent design. If not then they have some serious rewording and explaining to do.

But first it would be better if you actually TRIED to understand what Intelligent Design says. Joshua Swamidass does not. Art Hunt does not. Nathan Lents does not. Jerry Coyne is hopeless. Richard Lenski also refuses to listen.