This is the full sentence: ...."I am in agreement with Stephen C. Meyer that Neo-Darwinism fails to explain the Cambrian explosion, but his over-all conclusion of intelligent design being the solution to the riddle I also disagree with."
You forgot to include his special exception = disagreement with meyer's solution in the same sentence, how handy this example proving cherry picking propaganda & selective quoting? We know u can't help yourself seems to be the hallmark of insufficiency, why ID proponents are not trusted & their solution always of "its too complex, therefore God did it" rejected.
Thanks, you made the perfect case yourself for lack of honesty & showed zero effort to explore all those great links he provided for where the state of science is now, and it certainly isn't with Meyer's deliberate selective examples, conclusions.
~*~*~*~**~*~*~*~*~*~*
He also talks about the "non-adaptive" theory of evolution of Michael Lynch in great detail but ends up criticising and rejecting it! Meyer seems to reject evolutionary mechanisms even if they are non-Darwinian! Likewise he rejects the "neo-Lamarckian" epigenetic mechanisms proposed by Eva Jablonka in her books Epigenetic Inheritance and Evolution: The Lamarckian Dimension and Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life (Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology). I am currently reading Jablonka's books and as it currently stands I believe Meyer has been too quick in rejecting all of her research into epigenetics.
Meyer surveys the above non-Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms as well as the controversial natural genetic engineering of James Shapiro, and the neo-Lamarckian "epigenetic" inheritance of Eva Jablonka such as DNA methylation processes and RNA-mediated inheritance.
He also talks about how evo-devo (evolutionary developmental biology) scientists have broken classical assumptions of the neo-Darwinism synthesis as some of their research into developmental processes has suggested mechanisms of large-scale change in animal form opposed to strict gradual change. However, Meyer ends up rejecting the work of the evo-devo scientists claiming no mutations can produce viable major changes that are needed for new body plans. He also rejects the theories of Jeffrey Schwartz into Hox genes to explain the sudden appearance of animal forms in the fossil record. He is more sympathetic to the natural genetic engineering of Shapiro but ends up rejecting it.
He also talks about the "non-adaptive" theory of evolution of Michael Lynch in great detail but ends up criticising and rejecting it! Meyer seems to reject evolutionary mechanisms even if they are non-Darwinian! Likewise he rejects the "neo-Lamarckian" epigenetic mechanisms proposed by Eva Jablonka in her books Epigenetic Inheritance and Evolution: The Lamarckian Dimension and Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life (Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology). I am currently reading Jablonka's books and as it currently stands I believe Meyer has been too quick in rejecting all of her research into epigenetics.
So in short Meyer comes to the conclusion that no naturalistic evolutionary mechanism or process (whether it be neo-Darwinian or totally non-Darwinian) can explain the Cambrian explosion. It is unclear if Meyer accepts common descent or not, probably not from some of his comments. He dedicates only a small part of the book to his own hypothesis of intelligent design. I say hypothesis because that it what it is, but it probably would be criticised as a non-testable hypothesis. He talks about signs of design in the cambrian explosion. His design hypothesis is a supposition for a baseline or starting point for further investigation, it certainly is interesting but I find it hard to see how he can test his design hypothesis or how any further research into "design" is going to explain anything as it attempts to explain everything in one go, he actually discusses similar things in a chapter called "Rules of Science" near the end of his book. Because of this many reviewers will probably claim Meyer is indulging in pseudoscience.
The physicist John Davidson in his little known book Natural Creation or Natural Selection?: A Complete New Theory of Evolution also proposed that an intelligent process was behind the Cambrian explosion and also argued for design but the explanation was no different than just saying God did it (i.e. some transcendent metaphysical force or "universal mind" caused the explosion, the criticism of such supernatural explanations is that that they should not be taught in the science room because they are metaphysical not empirical science. Because I accept evolution in my opinion if intelligent design exists then evolution would have brought it about. I am more open-minded to the possibility of theistic evolution I guess. I don't think design should be ruled out altogether (perhaps some form of design and evolution are compatible?), it is not impossible but common descent and evolution are facts. I am certainly not going to deny the evidence for naturalistic evolution. So where are we left? I believe the Cambrian explosion is still a mystery and we only have pieces of the puzzle but science is bringing us closer to solving the riddle, who knows what further research will discover? I am currently looking into the various alternative environmental, developmental, and ecological explanations for the explosion (some are listed on Wikipedia). Andrew Parker wrote a very interesting book found here In The Blink Of An Eye and proposed an entirely naturalistic explanation to explain all of the facts of the Cambrian explosion. Just because neo-Darwinism is false does not mean evolution is not true.
Other interesting books:
The Music of Life: Biology Beyond Genes (Denis Noble explains how all the central assumptions of the Modern Synthesis (often also called Neo-Darwinism) have been disproven, also see his lecture "Physiology and Evolution" at the major international Congress in Suzhou, China on how Neo-Darwinism has been replaced.)
Mutation-Driven Evolution (Nei has developed a new mutation theory of evolution, may be of interest? This is controversial!).
A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance (Meyer did not mention the "heretical" ideas of Rupert Sheldrake in his book, I would be interested in knowing what he thinks about Sheldrake's hypothesis of Morphic Resonance.) |
