Punk Eek (or is it Emo?) and the UnDarwinism
Troy Tittlemier's (PBE Podcast) recent video combined Darwin, Geology and Punctuated Equilibrium:
Troy brought out how a population of bugs may turn from brown to gray after a forest fire. However, this is no mega-evolution, the bugs are still bugs. And pigs are just pigs ... BTW, does Gordy drive a pig-up truck?
He said, "drastic things happen in a short period of time" with regard to punctuated equilibrium. But this does not mean that a frog gave birth to a prince (and I'm sure Prince ? would agree). Even in the Stephen Jay Gould model you would have many transitional forms that the fossil record is silent on. The fundamental stasis is generally on a higher level than species, but rather characterizes Essential Types of Life (ETL's). Horses/Zebras/Donkeys and people are examples of ETL's.
I am pro-tech, pro-science and pro-energy (oil, gas, coal, solar, wind, nukes, dams ...). YES, Pong was my first video game - Troy's analogy of how sci/tek relate is super duper. Drilling for natural resources includes gold which is formed by deposition from hot fluids flowing in rocks. The process can occur almost instantaneously during earthquakes. High-pressure water suddenly vaporizes during an earthquake and forms a vein of gold. [1] No millions of years needed.
Speaking of Gould, he had this to say on the major discontinuities of life:
As we survey the history of life since the inception of multicellular complexity in Ediacaran times … one feature stands out as most puzzling - the lack of clear order and progress through time among marine invertebrate faunas. We can tell tales of improvement for some groups, but in honest moments we must admit that the history of complex life is more a story of multifarious variation about a set of basic designs [Essential Types of Life, ETL’s] than a saga of accumulating excellence. The eyes of early trilobites, for example, have never been exceeded for complexity or acuity by later arthropods. Why do we not find this expected order [from simple to complex life]? [2]
The key issue is finding the source of innovative genetic info. Alfred Henry Sturtevant (d. 1970), who made the first genetic map of a chromosome, said, "Do new genes in fact arise, or is all genetic variability due to recombination of pre-existing genes? This question was seriously discussed - though the alternative to mutation seems to be an initial divine creation of all existing genes."
https://www.blc.arizona.edu/courses/schaffer/449/Mendel/Callender%20-%20Mendel%20Opponent%20DwM.pdf
The cameo by the young learner gave a charming spark to the video. Kids are naturally essentialist - cats make cats and the great grandkids of elephants are still elephants. [3] Biological essentialism is the natural and logical alternative to molecules-to-man transformation (UnDarwinism).
David B. Kitts (d. 2010) was my History of Science Prof and studied with Dobzhansky and G.G. Simpson. Kitts was a Professor in both the Geology and the History of Science departments at OU. Kitts provided a Philosophy of Geology in his book The Structure of Geology. He admitted that Aristotle's biological essentialism is a legit scientific alternative to Darwin:
Here is my video on the issue:
Some high profile scientists have jumped off the Darwin bandwagon. Günter Bechly, Ph.D. in Geoscience and fmr. Curator at Museum für Naturkunde - Stuttgart, has been published widely, including Cambridge Univ. Press. He directed the Darwin Day exhibit for the Darwin bicentennial celebration at the museum, but after digging into the evidence, he eventually became a Darwin Doubter!
https://freescience.today/story/gunter-bechly/
One wonders if Troy has read my book defending Young Earth Theory Intelligence (YETI) and challenging Darwin from science and history:
https://www.amazon.com/Young-Earth-Possible-Science-Youthful/dp/1088860788
Please check out our newly revamped website:
#TopoChico #UnDarwinism #YETI #YES #Geology #PopScience #PBE #Troy
Notes:
1) Is a Young Earth Possible? by Jay Hall (Institute for Catastrophism and Tectonics - iCAT, Big Spring, TX, 2019), p. 71.
2) quoted in YES - Young Earth Science by Jay Hall (IDEAS, Big Spring, TX, 2014), p. 75.
3) note 1), p. 211.
PBE Podcast, MagmaChem
4 年Question, do you have an elevator pitch for evolution without gradual changes over time and punctuated equilibrium with quick changes? Pretty cool wrote up Jay! Hope you can make the show on the 29th. I can definitely be more careful on these videos, for example, combining punctuated equilibrium and Darwinism as ideas that allow us to uniquely think of time in another context. I'm not one or the other or both, just taking what makes sense to me based on my experience and leveraging it to make some other points. I haven't read your book, we still haven't done a podcast together. Geology needs to be the subject. Time is an essential tool that helps put this whole thing back together and ultimately better understand life on the planet too. Hmmm definitely would like to do a podcast with you. I believe there would be value in that conversation. Appreciate the post, hope all is well.
Former Assistant to Attorneys and Engineers
4 年We can make fossil fuel in a lab in half an hour, and create everything seen in space in electrical plasma labs, and Pong was my first game too, LoL. Have you ever seen Dr. David Berlinski, Stephen Meyer, or David Gelernter?