Another IDology challenge -- complete with complaints of harsh treatments ...

The common thread to all IDiot arguments is to tear down evolution using personal incredulity instead of supporting ID using actual science.Then the IDiots complain about how the scientific community ridicules or ignores them.My heart aches with their pain. The skies are darkened by the unconscionable mockery these poor souls must endure at the hands of godless reality.

Gelernter was citing Douglas Axe’s work

quote:

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"on how many 150-long nucleotide chains are capable of stable foldsof reaching the final step in the protein-creation process (the folding) and of holding their shapes long enough to be useful."
--Giving Up Darwin
David Gelernter
May 1, 2019

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Axe put his bogus number machinations at 10⁷⁷.Of course Gelernter not being a strong mathematician and having seen Stephen Meyer’s book Darwin’s Doubt where Axe’s work was quoted just regurgitated Meyer’s treatment of Axe’s work. Gelernter was not aware, apparently, of the errors in Axe’s work, or, more likely, didn’t care any more then Meyer’s did. Axe (2004) and the evolution of enzyme functionGelernter’s article celebrating his conversion to a cdesign proponentsists is a love note for Stephen Meyer’s rejected views. This grand display of creationism bringing an illustrious scientist, who was already predisposed toward religious supernaturalism, to their side is more of a desperate plea for attention than a celebration of an intellectual victory.Shades of James Watson and Fred Hoyle going off the deep end late in their careers. David Gelernter Makes a Fool of Himself AgainEdited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

In lower selective pressure environments populations grow larger with greater genetic diversity within the species.
In higher selective pressure environments populations will grow more slowly but will speciate from the ancestor as they adapt to the selective pressures which, over time, lowers those pressures on the growing population.I question a rate of evolution.Is an increase of genetic diversity within a population a higher rate of evolution? Is the number of speciation events the higher rate?I know we love to say this but I don’t think evolution has a rate.

Understanding that the set point is flexible ...I like the analogy. I'm going to steal it. Thanx.

This is where I have a problem.In both of these treatments evolution is viewed like it is goal oriented. Whatever numbers, in darwins or in haldanes, one achieves are arbitrary and meaningless.It took X million years for this A. whosits to grow a widget from # cm ## cm.
And it took Y million years for the B. thingies to double the size its whatever. A. whosits took 62 darwins from this phenotype to that.
B. thingies took 65 darwins from this phenotype to that.Does this mean *evolution* was faster for the whosits than the thingies and does it really matter?All it means is that more time elapsed from this arbitrarily chosen version of the whosits to that one, than it did for the two arbitrarily chosen versions of the thingies.Neither of these gives a rate to evolution but just a length of time to go from this version to that version. And this is not just semantics since it was not evolution that changed but the inputs to its processes that changed. This changes the inputs to the processes but does not change or speed up those processes. Stress Response Mutations only give the processes more to work with initially than they would without that scheme. They add to the available allele pool they do not make the selection or distribution of alleles any faster.My view. Evolution ran, not at any rate, but just ran day by day, generation by generation, for both lineages, but one took longer than the other for some various reasons dealing with chemistry, allele pool, environment, fecundity, luck, and circumstance.Evolution does not speed up or slow down in comparison between sets of phenotypes. Each phenotype takes however long it takes generation to generation and comparisons between phenotypes are useless since each evolves by its own unique circumstance.Is this just semantics on my part? Is the "evolution" of the fruit fly "faster" than that of the elephant? Or does evolution just plod along dependant on the inputs?Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.