CRSQ Paper: The Origin of Trees

[Jefferson]

CRSQ Paper: The Origin of Trees

This is the show from Friday July 22nd, 2011.

SUMMARY:



* Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Trees: While Fred's away, Real Science Friday co-host Bob Enyart discusses the current Creation Research Society Quarterly paper (pun intended), The Origin of Trees, by Tom Hennigan and Jerry Bergman. And these two RSF flashbacks:

* Bristlecone Pine Tree Rings: do NOT provide evidence as claimed by evolutionists of an age for the Earth greater than the Bible's record. The refereed scientific Journal of Creation presents the overwhelming evidence that these trees growing in the arid White Mountains of California, one of the driest places on earth, grow multiple rings per year. Thus once again scientifically careful research, this time in dendrochronology, is consistent with biblical chronology! RSF 20070302

* Plant Cells Make Statoliths that Sink: How does the root know which way is down, and the stem know which way is up? Plant cells make statoliths that are dense and heavy (lith is a Greek root, pun intended, for stone) and when the statoliths sink, like a stone, the plant knows which was is up and which way is down. Isn't God cool? RSF 20110513

Today’s Resource: Getting the BEL Science Pack, learn and have a great time, support Bob Enyart Live, and save a lot of money, all at the same time! You can consider our BEL Science Pack and enjoy:

- Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez’ Privileged Planet (clip)
- Illustra Media’s Unlocking the Mystery of Life (clip)
- Walt Brown’s In the Beginning
- Bob Enyart’s Age of the Earth Debate between him and a geo-physicist, and
- Bob's Genesis: Creation verse-by-verse Bible Study!
And have you browsed through the entire Science Department in our KGOV Store? Check out especially Bob’s interviews with a great scientist in Walt Brown Week! You’ll also love Bob's debate about Junk DNA with famous evolutionist Dr. Eugenie Scott, and the superb kids' radio programming, Jonathan Park: The Adventure Begins! And Bob strongly recommends that you subscribe to CMI’s tremendous Creation magazine and Ken Ham's Answers magazine! Or to order any of our BEL and 3rd-party resources, just call us at 1-800-8Enyart.

Post-show Update: Bob Called In Today to 850 KOA radio opposing suicide in a discussion with Mike Rosen and former Governor Dick Lamb.

Lamm: “I’m in favor of physician assisted suicide. I belong to the Hemlock Society…”

Rosen: “Let’s take a phone call” [turns out it's from a Colorado RTL spokesman, Bob Enyart].

Bob: “Hi guys. Because suicide is wrong it has so many destructive consequences. I’d like to give a couple. It’s destabilizing. The worst suffering in the world is a 15-year-old boy whose girlfriend has left him. So in 2007 suicide was the 3rd leading cause of death for young people in America. And it has become epidemic because there’s no longer a moral stigma against it. If suicide is in your bag of tools for how to deal with suffering, then it affects the world in ways that are not immediately obvious. For example, Jihadist suicide bombers. And we have an epidemic of murder suicide. So when we disobey God’s command, Do not kill the innocent, we undermine the foundation of human civilization.”

Lamm: “Well, it’s an important point. What is a greater horror than a juvenile suicide? However, it begs the question. If we don’t do something, we’re really going to put a huge [tax] burden on the next generation…”

Rosen: “Bob, when you offer a religious argument which is what you are doing, I regard myself as a very moral person. I’ve got a conscience and I conduct myself ethically and morally. I’ve analyzed this topic that we’re talking about now, Bob and if you’re telling me that you’re going to brand me as immoral if I chose to commit suicide under the conditions I’ve talked about I would tell you that you don’t dictate my morality based on your religious beliefs.”

Bob: “Well I sure don’t but God who made you does.”

Rosen: “There’s a premise there that I don’t accept. You said God who made me. I don’t know if I was made by God… And I’m not an atheist by the way. I just don’t know the answer to these questions.”

Bob: “Mike, right and wrong flow from our Creator. That’s why it’s wrong to rape and murder.

Rosen: “That’s your assertion. No that’s not why it’s wrong to rape… but all we can do is agree to disagree on this.”

Bob: “No I don’t agree to disagree Mike. I care about you too much to agree to disagree.”

Rosen: “I’m moved by that and I appreciate it but I’m approaching this rationally and you’re approaching it from a faith based argument that I respect but I don’t share.”

Bob: “Well Issac Newton would disagree with your description of a belief in God as the Creator as irrational. He wrote more about the Creator God than he did about physics.”

Rosen: “Bring him in here and I’ll give him an apple.” - July 22, 2011 at 10:35 a.m.

 

[The Barbarian]

From the CRS article:

For the purposes of this paper, neo-Darwinian evolution is defined as the random and undirected natural process in which mutation and natural selection are thought to have produced trees from non-tree photosynthetic precursors over billions of years.
(highlighting mine)

So the paper simply redefines evolution so as to exclude:

"natural selection, mutation, genetic drift, speciation, and changing allelic frequencies"

In other words, the authors have conjured up a straw devil, a demon of their own making, with no connection to evolutionary theory as it is.

It is unlike Bob to even by association, endorse such a falsehood. I assume it was an oversight on his part.

 

[Bob Enyart]

Barbarian, hi!

Hey, for starters, could you read the six words in the excerpt that you posted that follow the text that you highlighted, and then take a second shot at your objection.

Thanks!

-Bob

From Barbarian's post:

From the CRS article:

For the purposes of this paper, neo-Darwinian evolution is defined as the random and undirected natural process in which mutation and natural selection are thought to have produced trees from non-tree photosynthetic precursors over billions of years.
(highlighting mine)

So the paper simply redefines evolution so as to exclude:

"natural selection, mutation, genetic drift, speciation, and changing allelic frequencies"​

 

[The Barbarian]

"Neo-Darwinian" evolution (more properly called "the Modern Synthesis") does not say that evolution is a random process. By definition, any process that is directed, is not a random process.

And "natural selection, mutation, genetic drift, speciation, and changing allelic frequencies" are all essential parts of it.

Indeed, the key difference between Darwin's theory and the Modern Synthesis is mutation.

 

[Bob Enyart]

If you think you're being reasonable Barbarian with your criticism of the excerpt you've posted, even against a request to reconsider and recast your criticism, perhaps narrowing it, then I'm done here.

And if anything, I think over time even the credit given to Natural Selection will diminish, as argued at CRI:

“Selection” is Given Credit for the Organism’s Capabilities
(just search for "imposter")

-Bob

 

[Granite]

So, Barbarian points out what he got wrong, and Enyart bails.

And people wonder why some of us don't bother to call that show.

 

[The Barbarian]

If you think you're being reasonable Barbarian with your criticism of the excerpt you've posted, even against a request to reconsider and recast your criticism, perhaps narrowing it, then I'm done here.

I don't wish to be unreasonable. And I don't wish to blame you. But all those things are part of evolutionary theory, which is the antithesis of randomness. Darwin's point was that random change was acted on by a directed process, which meant it wasn't random at all.

And if anything, I think over time even the credit given to Natural Selection will diminish,

Mutation, for example, was added in the early 1900s. And the neutralist ideas of Motoo Kimura are valid modifications of the theory, as is the "founder effect" and other things discovered after Darwin. All of these introduced factors other than natural selection.

Nevertheless, the four main points of Darwinian theory are as solidly verified as ever.

I'll look at the article and edit my comments in.

Edit:
I don't know of any person in evolutionary science today, who does not recognize that the evolutionary process is an interaction between the population and the forces acting on it. There have been a number of essays by people like Stephen Gould and Richard Lewontin recognizing this fact. Who do you think disputes it?

In "Organism and Environment" in Scientia, and in more popular form in the last chapter of Biology as Ideology, Lewontin argued that while traditional Darwinism has portrayed the organism as passive recipient of environmental influences, a correct understanding should emphasize the organism as an active constructor of its own environment. Niches are not pre-formed, empty receptacles into which organisms are inserted, but are defined and created by organisms. The organism-environment relationship is reciprocal and dialectical. M.W. Feldman, K.N. Laland, and F.J. Odling-Smee among others have developed Lewontin's conception in more detailed models.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lewontin

And:

While Ayala sees the importance of evolutionary learning as an effect of the environment on the phenotype of the organism, Barbour highlights the active response of the organism on environmental pressures.

In five articles Fransisco Ayala fluently defends the current paradigm of evolutionary biology. He is uneasy with the label “neo-Darwinism”, but argues that even though evolutionary biology has room for both extensions and exceptions, it is neither in need of theoretical supplementation nor of fundamental revision.
http://www.issrlibrary.org/introduc...win: A Richer Account of Evolution&ref=essays

As you see, the issue is not whether or not such an effect exists; it has long been known to exist. The Baldwin Effect was first examined in the late 1800s. The discussion now concerns to what degree organisms modify their environments, and thus affect their own evolution.