"Bringing to bear the work of many dozen scientists over many decades, Meyer, who after a stint as a geophysicist in Dallas earned a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge and now directs the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture"
I'd sooner trust anyone with a bachelor's in Biology over a physicist and especially a philosopher as those folks tend to believe thruth can be constructed through arguments.
"Meyer doesn’t only demolish Darwin; he defends a replacement theory, intelligent design (I.D.)"
The point wasn't ever to put Natural Selection to the test. The point was God. The point is God and the point was going to be God all along.
"Meyer and other proponents of I.D. are the dispassionate intellectuals making orderly scientific arguments"
They are mostly reputable scientists from other fields who just happen to be devout christians, as well. They use their reputations to make the argument for religion. That doesn't make them bad scientists, just unqualified to speak on this topic. I'd recommend Meester's probability textbook interested in probability theory even though he is pro-id.
as for the whole cambrian thing, i defer to someone qualified but let's be clear that the author is stating at least one untruth here: the first animals appeared not during the cambrian but during the preceding period. To quote wikipedia: "The fossil record from the Ediacaran Period is sparse, as more easily fossilized hard-shelled animals had yet to evolve. The Ediacaran biota include the oldest definite multicellular organisms (with specialized tissues), the most common types of which resemble segmented worms, fronds, disks, or immobile bags".
I do agree that Gerlernter's argument is weak, at least as presented in this essay. Still, there is something to be said for the fact that the "statistical" nature of mutations over the timeframe don't quite add up. It could, of course, be something like survivor's bias.
But when a bright mind like Gerlernter raises the question, it's worth taking a look; many Darwinists won't.
Coyne, a Darwinist, discusses the Cambrian explosion as not being quite what creationists claim: it would be improbable for such fecundity of life to have occurred in the timeframe observed. This argument is refuted by Prothero [1]. Furthermore, the statistical incongruity seems like a red herring, and has been answered repeatedly [2]. Even if it still does not add up, I would argue that it’s not necessary to thump scriptures as a credible biological reference.
The evidence is not what you would make it seem, nor are counter-arguments based on theology. See the the rebuttal to Coyne I posted above if you have an open mind.
Can you quote the exact paragraph that looks interesting?
For example the numbers in the sections "Mutations" and "Building a Better Protein" don't make sense. More details in my commenting a previous submission https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20570102
Thanks for the link. It has a link to the article where the 10^-77 comes from. I'm not convinced, but I'll left a detailed reply for another day. [They use as a model a very big protein with approximately 300 amino acids and a very complex folding. It's not a good idea to use this number in the other article about the first proteins, that were probably much shorter and with a straightforward structure.]
I'd sooner trust anyone with a bachelor's in Biology over a physicist and especially a philosopher as those folks tend to believe thruth can be constructed through arguments.
"Meyer doesn’t only demolish Darwin; he defends a replacement theory, intelligent design (I.D.)"
The point wasn't ever to put Natural Selection to the test. The point was God. The point is God and the point was going to be God all along.
"Meyer and other proponents of I.D. are the dispassionate intellectuals making orderly scientific arguments"
They are mostly reputable scientists from other fields who just happen to be devout christians, as well. They use their reputations to make the argument for religion. That doesn't make them bad scientists, just unqualified to speak on this topic. I'd recommend Meester's probability textbook interested in probability theory even though he is pro-id.
as for the whole cambrian thing, i defer to someone qualified but let's be clear that the author is stating at least one untruth here: the first animals appeared not during the cambrian but during the preceding period. To quote wikipedia: "The fossil record from the Ediacaran Period is sparse, as more easily fossilized hard-shelled animals had yet to evolve. The Ediacaran biota include the oldest definite multicellular organisms (with specialized tissues), the most common types of which resemble segmented worms, fronds, disks, or immobile bags".