Why Evolutionary Theory Is Fundamentally Flawed

Creationism, Evolution, and other science issues

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Don McIntosh
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Why Evolutionary Theory Is Fundamentally Flawed

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Post by Don McIntosh »

The explanatory logic of evolution, at least as it's commonly stated, fails because it assumes (wrongly) that what is true of the parts of a complex system may be validly inferred to hold for the whole as well. Thus my argument:

1. Evolution posits that the function of any complex biological system can be adequately explained as the accumulation of countless minor functional adaptations of its individual components.
2. To say that a characteristic of the whole system can be adequately explained in terms of a characteristic of its individual components is to say that a whole is equal to the sum of its parts.
3. To say that a whole is equal to the sum of its parts is to commit the fallacy of composition.
4. Evolution is a fallacy.

Note that I am not suggesting that all inferences from parts to whole fail to hold, but that the line of reasoning is fallacious on its face because in fact many such inferences do fail to hold. Given that specifiably complex biological systems are structurally heterogenous, there is no prima facie reason to think that what is true of the parts will be true of the whole. Evolution theorists therefore bear the burden of proof, namely, to explain why anyone should expect such an inference to hold in the case of specifiably complex systems.

Read the entire paper here:
https://www.academia.edu/38735629/Black ... lly_Flawed

Questions for debate: Is evolutionary theory a fallacy? If so, does that make it false?
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Re: "failed-theory Darwinians"

Post #81

Post by Don McIntosh »

mgb wrote: The question is, how do different body parts all evolve together if the must all evolve by chance events? If part A and part B evolve together and get all the required mutations to integrate with each other the chances are multiplied together.
If there 1 chance in 1000 for A getting a good mutation and 1 chance in 1000 for B then there is only 1 chance in 1,000,000 for them getting what they need simultaneously.

If you are talking about A, B, C, and D the chances are 1 in 1000^4 = 1 in 1,000,000,000,000

That is the problem. Everything is happening at the same time and the chances of this simultaneity are enormously small.
Yes. This is precisely what Robert Koons is getting at when he says,

"These pathways must be possible, not only in the sense of involving no violation of physical or chemical laws, but also in the sense that every step in the path can be assigned an estimated probability that is sufficiently high for the joint probability of the entire pathway to be consistent with a reasonable belief that such a thing might actually have happened."

With each component required to have evolved by natural selection for the specifiably complex system to function, the joint probability of the whole system evolving by natural selection diminishes exponentially.
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Re: "failed-theory Darwinians"

Post #82

Post by Don McIntosh »

mgb wrote: The question is, how do different body parts all evolve together if the must all evolve by chance events? If part A and part B evolve together and get all the required mutations to integrate with each other the chances are multiplied together.
If there 1 chance in 1000 for A getting a good mutation and 1 chance in 1000 for B then there is only 1 chance in 1,000,000 for them getting what they need simultaneously.

If you are talking about A, B, C, and D the chances are 1 in 1000^4 = 1 in 1,000,000,000,000

That is the problem. Everything is happening at the same time and the chances of this simultaneity are enormously small.
Yes. This is precisely what Robert Koons is getting at when he says,

"These pathways must be possible, not only in the sense of involving no violation of physical or chemical laws, but also in the sense that every step in the path can be assigned an estimated probability that is sufficiently high for the joint probability of the entire pathway to be consistent with a reasonable belief that such a thing might actually have happened."

With each component required to have evolved by natural selection for the specifiably complex system to function, the joint probability of the whole system evolving by natural selection diminishes exponentially.
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Re: "failed-theory Darwinians"

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Post by Bust Nak »

mgb wrote: It has everything to do with it. Say 1 in 1 billion changes are good for survival. Then, on average, it would take 500 million changes to get a beneficial one. There has only been 550 million years since the Cambrian Explosion. That's about 55 million generations. That does not seem like enough to get all modern complex life forms because they all date from that time.
Why not? Are you under the impression changes cannot happen cocurrently?
The question is, how do different body parts all evolve together if the must all evolve by chance events?
The same way any other biologucal feature evolve. I don't get why this is any more incrediable then plain old a longer neck to reach the top of a tree evolving.
If part A and part B evolve together and get all the required mutations to integrate with each other the chances are multiplied together.
If there 1 chance in 1000 for A getting a good mutation and 1 chance in 1000 for B then there is only 1 chance in 1,000,000 for them getting what they need simultaneously.
What's wrong with getting that 1/1000 A mutation and have that improve the odds of getting B? Or far more likely, getting A then leading to J which in turn lead to B, and then losing J after B is in place. Leaving A and B interdependent on each other.

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Re: "failed-theory Darwinians"

Post #84

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to post 78 by mgb]
It has everything to do with it. Say 1 in 1 billion changes are good for survival. Then, on average, it would take 500 million changes to get a beneficial one. There has only been 550 million years since the Cambrian Explosion. That's about 55 million generations. That does not seem like enough to get all modern complex life forms because they all date from that time.


Where did the 1 in a billion number come from? But as Bust Nak pointed out mutations can occur concurrently to reduce the total time required, possibly drastically. You're assuming statistics based on mutations occurring only in sequence, one at a time, with an even time spacing between them. It is well known that strong selective pressure can increase mutation rates (for example, by damaging the DNA repair mechanism in the organism so that mutations are not "fixed" as they normally would be ... eg. this happens in exposure to carcinogens).

And it is not the case that all of the complex organs in a modern animal evolved together, simultaneously. For example, some members of Chordata have a rudimentary brain but no heart. Flatworms also have a rudimentary brain but no heart or blood circulation system. So brains evolved independently from hearts as just one example.
That is the problem. Everything is happening at the same time and the chances of this simultaneity are enormously small.


Again, you are assuming mutations happen only one at a time, sequentially, and that all organs are evolving together, at the same time, in one population. That is not how it works.
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Re: "failed-theory Darwinians"

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Post by mgb »

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Re: "failed-theory Darwinians"

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Post by mgb »

[quote="Bust Nak"]The same way any other biologucal feature evolve. I don't get why this is any more incrediable then plain old a longer neck to reach the top of a tree evolving.

It has to do with the laws of chance. All the systems are evolving together. How is that?

What are the chances of getting a 6 on the roll of a dice? 1 in 6.

What are the chances of getting two sixes together with 2 dice? 1 in 6x6


With 4 dice? 1 in 6x6x6x6. That is the problem with the chances that all the body parts will evolve simultaneously. The more body parts the less likely each part is going to get what it needs along with all the others at the same time.

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Re: "failed-theory Darwinians"

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Post by Bust Nak »

mgb wrote: It has to do with the laws of chance. All the systems are evolving together. How is that?

What are the chances of getting a 6 on the roll of a dice? 1 in 6.

What are the chances of getting two sixes together with 2 dice? 1 in 6x6

With 4 dice? 1 in 6x6x6x6. That is the problem with the chances that all the body parts will evolve simultaneously. The more body parts the less likely each part is going to get what it needs along with all the others at the same time.
The mutations doesn't have to be simultaneous to have biological features to evolve together. Evolve a slicker tail, then evolve a larger lung volume in the next generation; then evolve a even slicker tail, then evolve a even large lung volume. Boom, slick tails and huge lungs evolving together, without any particular pair of mutations having to sync up in a single organism.

Roll a 6? No, reroll that dice; yes, roll the next dice. It's very easy to get 4 sixes. (Granted that's overly simplified as evolution doesn't get to lock in any dice.)

There isn't any in-depth biological knowledge required to understand the above, which is why I still don't quite get why it seemed to be such a sticking point.

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Re: "failed-theory Darwinians"

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Post by John Human »

Bust Nak wrote:
mgb wrote: But they do need to synchrinise. The whole organism evolved because all its parts evolve simultaneously.
Again, the whole point of evolution is that simultaneous evolved features happen spontainosuly without having to synchronise. That's what makes it a great explanation. Pointing out that things happens simultaneously doesn't address my point.
It is mind-boggling to think that all the different organs – limbs, ears, nose – had to change all at the same time, and one wonders how the genome changes needed to enable the morphological changes accumulated.

With such a complete fossil record, a rich diversity of modern whales and their embryos, and the powerful new molecular techniques, it may be possible to approach that question. Could it be that some changes in the genome affected several disparate organ systems simultaneously, in fact creating an evolutionary shortcut that created novel morphologies at a high rate?
Right, and science will answer that question, if not with said new molecular techniques, then some other advances. This is still a new field in science.
No, it's not a new field in science, it's a fig leaf for the Emperor's Clothes.

Once again, because of the problem of inbreeding leading to sterility, whatever speciation event that resulted in the emergence of modern humans required a stable gene pool at the very beginning, and that is far outside "failed-theory Darwinian" thought, unless failed-theory Darwinians go for an Orwellian re-build of the word "species."
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Re: "failed-theory Darwinians"

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Post by mgb »

Bust Nak wrote:The mutations doesn't have to be simultaneous to have biological features to evolve together. Evolve a slicker tail, then evolve a larger lung volume in the next generation; then evolve a even slicker tail, then evolve a even large lung volume. Boom, slick tails and huge lungs evolving together, without any particular pair of mutations having to sync up in a single organism.

Roll a 6? No, reroll that dice; yes, roll the next dice. It's very easy to get 4 sixes. (Granted that's overly simplified as evolution doesn't get to lock in any dice.)

There isn't any in-depth biological knowledge required to understand the above, which is why I still don't quite get why it seemed to be such a sticking point.

The argument is that all the body parts are evolving 'more or less' together. There is still too much happening in a short time period of time to be explained by chance.

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Re: "failed-theory Darwinians"

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Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to post 87 by mgb]
The argument is that all the body parts are evolving 'more or less' together.


Why do you keep insisting that this is the case when the fossil record clearly shows otherwise? Brains developed through ever more concentration of nerve bundles into ganglia into eventually the centralized control system we call a brain (very simple in worms, far more complicated in humans some 500 million years later). And a lot of this early development happened without a heart or circulatory system, a skeleton, etc. The internal organs of modern animals did not all evolve "more or less together."

The die example you gave has the same error as an analogy as a monkey typing a Shakespeare play by accident. You can't just take one die and ask for the probability of getting a 6 on one roll (1/6) then look at the probability of getting four 6's in a row (1/6)^4, and equate that to how mutations work to create a new feature or function in a population. You have to take a very large population of die, say 1 million, consider that each one of them can produce a 6 (a mutation) on any given roll with 1/6 probability, then ask what the probability is of getting that mutation in the population. The probability that at least 1 die will land on a six if you roll 1 million die, is for all practical purposes equal to 1 ... it is guaranteed to happen (the actual probability is 1 - (5/6)^N with N = 1 million, which is 0.9999 ... with a very long string of 9's ... for just 100 die the probability is 0.999999988). If that mutation is beneficial then it will quickly spread through the population (via natural selection), and you now have a large population mostly with this new mutation. Now repeat this for mutation #2, etc. This is a better analogy for how ToE actually works.

You're making the mistake of using statistics on just a population of 1, and claiming that there isn't enough time to accumulate enough mutations to create the diversity we see in nature. And you'd be right if things started with a population of 1 (how that would reproduce with itself is another issue, but for the sake of an example...). But ToE doesn't start with a population of 1, it starts with populations of millions and billions in the case of bacteria, for example, and in multicellular organism at least thousands or millions. That changes the statistics completely, and in the favor of ToE.
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