Some food for skeptics (i.e. Ray Martinez)

[Rolf Aalberg]

Hi Ray, some input on the perennial problem of Natural Selection,
something not seen in nature. Which of course is 100% correct. There
ain't no such thing, it doesn't exist.


http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/?p=1845

[Stephanus]

from the article:
5.) How does natural selection select? If something is not in the
search space how does it find stuff that is not there? Or has
everything always been there?

................... Well “natural selection” is a figure of speech.
It is a metaphor .

...........“Artificial selection” is selection of traits by artifice –
by human breeders who desire particular traits in their livestock or
plants. .........

Inversion of logic, it is humans who select that are natural and
nature's metaphorical competitive "selections" or preservations of the
winning creature out-competing the loosing creature which is
'artificial' because nature has no intent. The state of intentionality
and purpose is 'natural' , the inverse of 'artificial' the state of
having no purpose. Our natural state of purpose , as being made in
the image of God allows us to describe nature, nature can't describe
itself.

Humans constructing a house is a 'natural(dissimilar term for intent)'
outflow of their their design abilities, a tornado striking a mountain
and somehow the rocks assembling into a house is 'artificial' meaning
against nature's natural state of unintentionality.

"Artificial's" dictionary definition is a condition or occurrence that
is against the natural state of something. For Adaptationists the
natural state of something is acquisition of attributes while YEC it
is the expression of apriori attributes.

Human's 'natural' state is that of design - the generation of patterns
that represent something other than itself. Anything else is
'artificial' .

Darwin lifted AS from Erasmus Darwin's Zoonomia where he described the
cultivation of plants as "artificial selection". His premise was that
the present attributes of plants were not there in the distant past,
with the conclusion that they acquired it via some mechanism. He
considered the 'natural' state of affairs the acquisition of
attributes as nature runs its course and the "artificial" or
"contrived" state of affairs humans generating patterns with a
purpose, such as the exploitation of plant attributes.

The Erasmus Darwin mechanism was Patrick matthews 'natural means of
competitive preservation, cultivation or selection(no intent) ' in the
Malthusian struggle for life which Darwin got while reading Matthews'
book on the Beagle. He contracted it to the oxymoron 'natural
selection' to avoid giving credit to Matthew and was outed as
dishonest by Samuel Butler. Butler viewed Matthew's as summarizing
the ideas of Erasmus, Lamarck and Buffon.

Samuel Butler, Charles Hodge and Fleeming Jenkin's concluded with
their keen sense of perception that Darwin's mode of reasoning is to
derive conclusions in such a way that it can neither be refuted nor
verified. Popper defined this type or reasoning as
untestable(unfalsifiability). Note the arguments Darwin used to
derive his conclusion from his premise were unfalsifiable claims of
logic that cannot be tested . Because any conclusion that derives from
a tautology is a non-sequitur, the testability status of the
conclusion as a standalone proposition must be derived elsewhere.

........So in “artificial” selection, the traits that promote
successful reproduction are those that please the breeder, who then
breeds from those individuals. In nature the traits that promote
successful reproduction are simply those that facilitate breeding in
the natural environment, hence Darwin’s use of the analogous term
natural selection ......


Both YEC and Adaptationism uses "artificial" as synonym for contrived,
or against the natural state of affairs , but their perceptions of
what constitutes a natural state or uncontrived state differs. The
Erasmus Darwin natural state of affairs is that all perception of
design is an illusion and hence "artificial" or contrived. YEC is that
all human design is a reflection God the Lord Jesus Christ's innate
design and is thus "natural" and any seeming design in nature without
an obvious mind is "artificial" or contrived.


......I think the “search space” metaphor has to be used with
caution. There is no Mother Nature who is “searching” for an ideal
organism..........

Adaptationists in denying God who is our natural designer cannot
invent their own reality and thus their language is an exercise in
semiotic necromancy and metaphorical infinitism. All of language
functions as metaphor, God himself prevents infinite regress of
metaphor but because the materialist does not believe in God or
anything that has no explanation itself, his ideas
spirals into infinity

..... Rather, traits that best fit an organism to reproduce in a
specific environment are the ones that become most prevalent in a
persisting population. This is so obviously true that some people
think it is tautologous. It is not, but it is syllogistic.......

It is a tautology as shown at
http://tautology.wikia.com/wiki/Stanford_tautologies
and is an argument that attempts to glue and underlying premise to a
conclusion. The Adaptationist major premise is that all attributes in
the present were not there in the past. This premise extends back to
Aristotle , Democritus, Empedocles Ox faced man and is as old as
mankind itself. What Adaptationism lacked was a mechanism to bind the
conclusion - that the present attributes were acquired either Punk-eek
or gradually - to the premise in such a way that the premise isn't
merely restated.

The natural means of competitive preservation(selection) turned out to
be the apparent mechanism or argument. But the competition Malthus
argument turned out to be a claim of logic, which by the precepts of
falsificationism means any conclusion is a non-sequitur.

A non-sequitur means does not derive logically.

[Frank J]

Ray, like all evolution-deniers, is not a skeptic of anything. He's
*incredulous* (or pretends to be) of a *subset* of claims that
"evolutionists" make. He is also incredulous of many claims made by
other evolution-deniers. Like all deniers who are in on the scam, he
downplays that incredulity, but he throws other deniers under the bus
more than most.