I appreciate your critique of Probability Zero, Mr. McCarthy. I'll link to your post tomorrow morning and give everyone a day to contemplate your points for themselves before responding to it on Tuesday.
I don't think anyone denies that natural selection can occur. The problem arises from examples of selection being used as evidence for new, more complex organs. A very simple example of selection (that can obviously happen) would be a species whose habitat becomes colder, to the extent that 1/3 of the population dies. It has "evolved" to become more resistent to the cold by destroying genomes that were not sufficiently resistent. Nothing is created here though. Clearly, this type of gene editing is not going to turn bacteria into dinosaurs, beause no new ordered information is added. You use the example of dogs, but I don't think that does anything to support your position. It's the same thing, dogs are all still dogs, they can all produce fertile offspring and moreover they can even do so with wolves. Furthermore, all dog breeds are smaller, weaker, less intelligent and with less keen senses than wolves. So even after thousands of years of highly directed breeding, all that has happened is that certain parts of the genome (docility, etc.) were emphasized at the expense of others (domestication syndrome). Similar results have been seen in trying to breed larger fruits: there is always a limit to how large they can become, because no new information or complexity is added. Finches growing different beaks is qualitatively not just quantitatively different than bacteria turning into dinosaurs, because they already had the ability to change the beak's shape and size within certain parameters defined genetically.
Biogeography can be explained by the fact that organisms MUST be similar to survive in the same climate. Even if that were not the case, it's circumstantial evidence that doesn't give any indication of how it came to be.
I don't know the science of biogeography in anything like the depth that Dennis does (and what I have gathered from that field is largely through him), but it seems to me that that field attempts to explain patterns of geographic distributions of species (whether they be fossil or extant), i.e. taxa with shared phenotypic patterns that are akin to the dog-breeding example. (OR, to explain assemblages of such taxa as are found in more than one region.)
Therefore, at least in general, biogeographical explanations don't speak to the origins of major innovations - on which your objection is based. Furthermore, your assumption regarding the kind of biogeographical explanations that are possible seems quite preconception-based - and quite innocent of actual debates among different explanations in given cases.
My response to Dennis's critique is here. Thanks to him and to everyone who has participated in this discussion. I will respond to some of the critical comments that were made here in a later post.
This is very interesting, and like Vox said. The first genuine attempt at a critique, smart. Not the usual "reddit-tier" garbage.
I'll give my short impression on the subject, I'm thinking Evolution is right in the aspect of noticing the patterns. The thing it gets wrong is the mechanism. Evolution by natural selection is wrong, but Evolution by other means? that's a different subject.
Anyhow this has been a good read and I'm definitely bookmarking the back an forth to keep reading in the future. Honestly, this exchange between you guys might merit a book in itself
There is no evolution. There is creation by the one true God, the God of Jesus Christ. But midwits love to be wrong and think they are smart boys, like thinking we came from fish with legs and chimps.
Agreed. Biologists cite a number of different mechanisms to explain how evolution occurs. Are those mechanism able to get you from point A to point B? That is the primary question that Vox is targeting.
The analogy of a man traveling from New York City to Los Angeles is apt. There are several mechanism that can get him there: walking, running, cars, trains, airplanes, or some combination of all of them. Can these mechanisms explain getting there in the allotted timeframe? Maybe, let's look at the timeframe and the speed of each mechanism.
Exactly, and even if Vox has focused on math alone, while, like Mr McCarthy has said, ignoring "biology, geology, biogeography, fossils" etc. That is precisely what Richard Milton focused on in Shattering the Myths of Darwinism back in 1992, Vox is familiar with that book which is why I suspect he didn't feel the need to delve into that, but even ignoring the math, there's just too many holes in the theory, and Milton addressed them long ago
I see that Dennis is treating 450 billion mutations as independent events, like lottery tickets, but mutations are not independent at all. Dennis concocts a simplified, independent-events model to "refute" Vox, but ignores the real-world interdependencies that are discussed in the book.
“And we know why: purveyors of disinformation are often far more energized, more confrontational, and more relentless than those committed to accuracy and reflection.”
I think when you use a word like disinformation in the context of a book review, some might take you to be implying the author is mendacious as opposed to merely mistaken.
In an AND function, all inputs must be TRUE for the output to be TRUE. If even one input is FALSE, then the output will always be FALSE.
There is an AND function for evolution. One of the inputs is that there must be enough time for all those mutations to arise and be fixated. If there isn't enough time, then evolution cannot possibly be the explanation for the variety of species.
> last common ancestor with chimpanzees
You only assume this is true. You don't prove it. You assert it gratuitously without evidence. I gratuitously assert the opposite. It never happened.
> are the odds that a particular group or a pre-specified list of 20 million mutations (or 20 million mutations in a row) would all become fixed
But these are the 20 million mutations that actually occurred, according to the evidence, but also assuming Darwinian speciation (which isn't proved). So this is the correct calculation after all.
----------
Let me give one more input to the AND for evolution to possibly be true. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics must be false. But it is not false. Therefore, Darwinian evolution cannot possibly be a true explanation of history.
The 2nd Law posits that entropy always increases. We see it everywhere. But combine Claude Shannon's Information Theory with Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA as information, and we can see that the 2nd Law clearly forbids evolution producing speciation with higher life forms (humans evolved distantly from bacteria).
There is one possible argument against the 2nd Law argument, but it also fails. The 2nd Law applies to a closed system. But if, inside the closed system, you have a source of energy, and a machine to use the energy, you can decrease entropy locally (even while it must increase globally). An example of this is your fridge; it makes your beer cold, and decreases the entropy in your beer. Now apply this to evolution. I am willing to give the Darwinian evolutionists all the energy they want; it comes from the sun. But they still need to describe the machine that decreases entropy locally, driving speciation forward to ever more complex (less entropic) creatures. There is no such machine, therefore Darwinian evolution cannot possibly be a true explanation of history.
One more thing. There is a principle from philosophy that something cannot come from nothing. Where did the first life-form come from? It can't be nothing. If you can't get the chain started, you can't get to the last link in the chain. Therefore, Darwinian evolution cannot possibly be a true explanation of history.
----------
Embrace the power of AND. For Darwinian evolution to be true, there would need to be enough time. There isn't. For Darwinian evolution to be true, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics would need to be false. It isn't. And finally, for Darwinian evolution to be true, the philosophical principle that something can't come from nothing would need to be false. But it isn't.
This is the worst kind of comment. There are numerous thoughtful replies in this thread that come down on both sides of the question. Yet all this commenter does is counter with Appeal to Authority, encased in snark. It isn’t thoughtful at all, and the world would not be worse off if it was never posted.
I assume the poster is intelligent and qualified. But the comment is the exact thing the internet can use less of.
The internet could use *even less* of people trying to prove evolution isn’t true, Adam, while demonstrating how far on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger curve they are.
Perhaps you’d like to opine on the number of angels that can dance on a pinhead next?
It’s really a shame that Ken’s “analysis” and the glaring faults therein don’t register for you, Adam — and I’m not going to try to educate you via Substack on all the ways it’s not even wrong, but I did give you a bread crumb trail.
Seriously, study:
- Statistical mechanics (entropy)
- life sciences (proton gradients and local entropy reversal)
-philosophy beyond Plato
If you’ve done so, each of Ken’s claims relating to evolution are clearly visible as completely incorrect, driven my a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world actually works.
But hey, why do that when he can spew nonsense and nevertheless get defended by folks you, right?
Nope, still not any good. You remain the only commenter here who has offered nothing but posturing and childish playground fallacy. You are dishonest and smug.
Have you checked out Reddit? You may fit in better there. They aggressively upvote snark, name-calling, and lazy virtue signaling. You’d do well there. Amongst your people.
Here, we all see you, and we all know what you are.
I hesitate to post this as I have no credentials on this matter, but just want to point out an observation. This elaborates on Micro-evolution which are built upon three micro-evolution premises(upon which Creation, Intelligent Design proponents agree as you correctly noted), but it does not address Macro-evolution and which commits the fallacy of proving too much e.g. We have transitional fossils along the evolutionary path from Mesohippus to Equus (the modern horse), therefore horses can eventually become birds (A claim which Creation, Intelligent Design proponents do not agree can occur [and at the risk of creating a strawman example for the sake of highlighting absurdity]).
Sorry if I'm missing the joke, but evolutionary theory does believe that dinosaurs eventually became birds, so that doesn't seem like a strawman. That is if anything more far-fetched since horses and birds are at least both warm-blooded. I think it is fair to point out that macro-evolution does have aspects that can appear absurd when viewed from the perspective of "common sense." Not that that intrinsically invalidates it in itself, just that its proponents do not always seem to be aware of the magnitude of what they are actually proposing, i.e. that bacteria turned into dinosaurs which turned into birds. There would seem to be a rather high burden of proof for such a statement, but at times the evolutionary camp seems to push the burden of proof onto the ID camp. Yet prima facie ID seems more plausible, at least to me. A more formalized version of this argument uses information theory, e.g. the work of Hubert P. Yockey, William Dembski and Gérard Battail.
That's at least 4 different areas of discussion which are off topic of my response, of the authors response to Days book.
The authors response was to the MITTENS math, and my response was concerning and addressing the authors response which was utilizing micro-evolution to make his point.
My responses was in regard to "at the risk of creating a strawman example for the sake of highlighting absurdity" in your post, pointing out that not only is it not a strawman example but evolution makes claims that are actually less plausible prima facie. In any case, let's not miss the forest for the trees, the ultimate question here is the viability of evolution. It would be unfair to both sides to confine it to specific arguments which individually may favor one side or the other.
Haven't read the book (the concept alone would put me off) but I had been troubled by my own gut feel that the maths didn't work. Thanks for putting that to rest.
PS: you know that orchid mantis image is AI, don't you?
"How a best-selling anti-evolution book misuses mathematics and spreads disinformation" Respectfully, I've observed that people that use terms like disinformation, misinformation, malinformation, etc. tend, ironically, to be people who enjoy manipulating others with highly questionable arguments and 'facts'. I do not think you are one such; (quite the reverse) your critique does not come across that way at all, so you may, as someone else suggested, wish to reconsider that subhed. ('Dead wrong' would be preferable; rhetoric, but obvious less manipulative rhetoric.)
Thank you for a thoughtful and substantive critique. I come from a position of wanting TENS to be true; it's such a beautifully elegant simple theory... and yet I've always been troubled by the math. Same with abiogenesis. But I'm an engineer, not a biologist, so have never looked at it too closely.
I loved Haldane's comment, when I first encountered it, so nice to see it repeated. The counter from YEC (Young Earth Creationists) that God put the fossil record there to tempt our faith is pretty dreadful; akin to arguments that the planets are carted about the sky by angels, rather than accepting Newton's (almost -- see special relativity) Laws. Starts to fall apart with Occam's razor if nothing else. (I suppose Newton's Superb Approximations in Almost all Practical Cases doesn't really have quite the same ring.)
That said, I didn't find your arguments about the fossil record all that persuasive, though it certainly is a sensible thing to note. If TENS fails on the math, the fossil record is not that relevant. Similarly your argument that micro-evolution exists (the classic for me, as GenX, being moths changing color as atmospheric pollution rapidly increased in NE US) is somewhat orthogonal to TENS existing.
Dog breeds, variances as an example of intelligent design, interesting, not overly persuasive, but interesting. Russian breeding of submissive foxes (only ten generations!) is similarly interesting. Reminds me of the magnificent ID argument about bananas being a perfect example of Intelligent Design. Which of course they are; i.e. bred by humans over several centuries.
I'll have to study your mathematical argument more carefully, and Day's original argument. For me at least, that's the meat of the whole issue.
Again, thank you for a critique entirely unlike your subhed.
Great work, Dennis! There are more things in heaven and earth... Right? This is a balanced, methodical and very accessible approach to a loaded subject. More of this sort of analysis is needed today, particularly in areas of science and what might pass as science.
Were you intending to portray that first picture as reality? Because the caption seems that way. That's AI generated and not accurate to what real orchid mantises look like. Real orchid mantises are basically praying mantis shaped but orchid colored and patterned. They don't have little flowers of chitin growing out of their bodies. Also, if you look closely at the forelegs of the mantis, you see how the AI generated one stumpy walking leg by accident and moved the the front leg back onto one of the walking legs. Also, orchids have six petals not five. So, a mantis that evolved to blend in to orchids wouldn't have evolved five petalled flowers on its body.
Edit needed? “And since Vox Day thinks is the fastest possible rate of mutation fixation, he believes that places a concrete ceiling on the number of fixed mutations we should expect to occur over the 450,000 generations of humans since the chimp/human divide:”
I apologize for explaining this in a wall of text. I'm tired and I need to sleep. Just getting my thoughts out.
Aristotle had a piercing insight into the world we live in. Often right, though limited by the technology he had available to him. One of his ideas that is related to this topic is the concept of categories. For example, the image of the Poodles of the Serengeti can be broken down into categories and sub-categories: foreground, background, plants, animals, etc. Any one of these can be broken down further, a poodle has a head, a body, a tail. Each of these can be further categorized, a face has eyes, a mouth, a nose, etc.
But, even though we can use this system of categories to create ever finer distinctions, do those categories exist?
Do the ants in an ant colony know that the colony exists? Does the ant colony really exist at all?
To the point now, humans are pattern seeking creatures. Schizophrenics are especially adept at seeing patterns where they do not exist. Evolution is a pattern that most people are taught to see. But is the pattern real?
Darwin categorized the finches on the Galapagos islands into a dozen or so different species. But the incredible outward diversity of the finches has, with DNA testing, been revealed to be one species of bird genetically.
One of the problems with discussing evolution is that terms change over time as Scientists create ever more precise categories of species and sub species. Through these endless redefinitions, there are a handful of examples of what scientists call "Speciation". One example was in the 1980s when a new "species" of birds arrived on Galapagos islands after migrating from another island and deciding to mate with its closest relatives. DNA testing has revealed that this bird, too, is genetically the same species as all the other birds on the island.
Scientists can provide examples of plants becoming mutant plants, and they'll call it speciation, but it's never as dramatic as the critics of evolution would expect. The same tired redefinitions that have declared that boys can be girls and girls can be boys tell us genetically identical birds can be a dozen different species.
Evolution is not true. It's a pattern you've been taught to see, and has no more truth to it than Astrology, Phrenology, or String Theory.
Edit: I once had the pleasure of listening to an Autistic Atheist tell me about his obsession with dragons. This young man had spent years of his life creating an evolutionary tree of every image of dragons online. When I asked him if he enjoyed using AI to create new dragons he confessed that he refused to use it because AI has the habit of creating new dragons that violate his assigned evolutionary plan. He's had to exclude a great number of new images that don't fit his models, and would require him to endlessly re-interpret the data to keep his evolutionary tree intact.
There are three fundamental problems this anecdote reveals. First, we know dragons don't exist and yet evolution can be applied to create a family tree of dragons. Karl Popper wrote a paper years ago that explained the philosophical weakness of evolution: it explains too much. Second, it really doesn't matter what new image an AI creates, evolution is flexible enough to explain anything with enough grunt work. Which is why every new fossil discovery sends biologists into a flurry reassessing the fossil record and coming up with new announcements about the age of different species. Third, just as my Autistic friend throws out new data he doesn't like when fossils are discovered that completely refute evolution, such as men and dinosaurs existing on the same geological strata, the fossils are always explained away as "frauds". Dozens and dozens of frauds. What a happy coincidence that every fossil that refutes evolution is declared a fraud or endlessly reinterpreted into new "discoveries".
I've read this article twice now, and here is what stands out to me:
1.) The basic math is not in dispute--McCarthy accedes to VD's formulation. Outside observer, this signifies intellectual honesty: simply grant the premise and work from there. Heuristically, is that old Aristotle bit about "the mark of an educated man is the ability to entertain an idea without accepting it."
2.) So, accepting the math, the main thrust of McCarthy's rebuttal here is that the assumptions which feed into VD's equation are incorrect. Fair enough.
Why then, does the strong argument need to be prefaced with an overview of evolution, such as it is presented in this article? Starting out with the axiomatic overview of evolution and then (correctly)characterizing VD's case as an "end-around", merely stands to erect a mott of tautology with which to retreat to, if/when the bailey of mathematical plausibility is breached. Why? It seems incongruous with the "balls and strikes" thrust of the rebuttal.
I appreciate your critique of Probability Zero, Mr. McCarthy. I'll link to your post tomorrow morning and give everyone a day to contemplate your points for themselves before responding to it on Tuesday.
That's classy, Vox Day. Thanks.
I don't think anyone denies that natural selection can occur. The problem arises from examples of selection being used as evidence for new, more complex organs. A very simple example of selection (that can obviously happen) would be a species whose habitat becomes colder, to the extent that 1/3 of the population dies. It has "evolved" to become more resistent to the cold by destroying genomes that were not sufficiently resistent. Nothing is created here though. Clearly, this type of gene editing is not going to turn bacteria into dinosaurs, beause no new ordered information is added. You use the example of dogs, but I don't think that does anything to support your position. It's the same thing, dogs are all still dogs, they can all produce fertile offspring and moreover they can even do so with wolves. Furthermore, all dog breeds are smaller, weaker, less intelligent and with less keen senses than wolves. So even after thousands of years of highly directed breeding, all that has happened is that certain parts of the genome (docility, etc.) were emphasized at the expense of others (domestication syndrome). Similar results have been seen in trying to breed larger fruits: there is always a limit to how large they can become, because no new information or complexity is added. Finches growing different beaks is qualitatively not just quantitatively different than bacteria turning into dinosaurs, because they already had the ability to change the beak's shape and size within certain parameters defined genetically.
Biogeography can be explained by the fact that organisms MUST be similar to survive in the same climate. Even if that were not the case, it's circumstantial evidence that doesn't give any indication of how it came to be.
Thanks for the comment. I’ll be writing a post soon responding to many of the comments— and will try to address many of your points.
I don't know the science of biogeography in anything like the depth that Dennis does (and what I have gathered from that field is largely through him), but it seems to me that that field attempts to explain patterns of geographic distributions of species (whether they be fossil or extant), i.e. taxa with shared phenotypic patterns that are akin to the dog-breeding example. (OR, to explain assemblages of such taxa as are found in more than one region.)
Therefore, at least in general, biogeographical explanations don't speak to the origins of major innovations - on which your objection is based. Furthermore, your assumption regarding the kind of biogeographical explanations that are possible seems quite preconception-based - and quite innocent of actual debates among different explanations in given cases.
Life adapts is all.
My response to Dennis's critique is here. Thanks to him and to everyone who has participated in this discussion. I will respond to some of the critical comments that were made here in a later post.
https://voxday.net/2026/01/27/an-inspiring-critique/
This is very interesting, and like Vox said. The first genuine attempt at a critique, smart. Not the usual "reddit-tier" garbage.
I'll give my short impression on the subject, I'm thinking Evolution is right in the aspect of noticing the patterns. The thing it gets wrong is the mechanism. Evolution by natural selection is wrong, but Evolution by other means? that's a different subject.
Anyhow this has been a good read and I'm definitely bookmarking the back an forth to keep reading in the future. Honestly, this exchange between you guys might merit a book in itself
There is no evolution. There is creation by the one true God, the God of Jesus Christ. But midwits love to be wrong and think they are smart boys, like thinking we came from fish with legs and chimps.
"The thing it gets wrong is the mechanism".
Agreed. Biologists cite a number of different mechanisms to explain how evolution occurs. Are those mechanism able to get you from point A to point B? That is the primary question that Vox is targeting.
The analogy of a man traveling from New York City to Los Angeles is apt. There are several mechanism that can get him there: walking, running, cars, trains, airplanes, or some combination of all of them. Can these mechanisms explain getting there in the allotted timeframe? Maybe, let's look at the timeframe and the speed of each mechanism.
Exactly, and even if Vox has focused on math alone, while, like Mr McCarthy has said, ignoring "biology, geology, biogeography, fossils" etc. That is precisely what Richard Milton focused on in Shattering the Myths of Darwinism back in 1992, Vox is familiar with that book which is why I suspect he didn't feel the need to delve into that, but even ignoring the math, there's just too many holes in the theory, and Milton addressed them long ago
I see that Dennis is treating 450 billion mutations as independent events, like lottery tickets, but mutations are not independent at all. Dennis concocts a simplified, independent-events model to "refute" Vox, but ignores the real-world interdependencies that are discussed in the book.
“And we know why: purveyors of disinformation are often far more energized, more confrontational, and more relentless than those committed to accuracy and reflection.”
I think when you use a word like disinformation in the context of a book review, some might take you to be implying the author is mendacious as opposed to merely mistaken.
I will change
Embrace the power of AND.
In an AND function, all inputs must be TRUE for the output to be TRUE. If even one input is FALSE, then the output will always be FALSE.
There is an AND function for evolution. One of the inputs is that there must be enough time for all those mutations to arise and be fixated. If there isn't enough time, then evolution cannot possibly be the explanation for the variety of species.
> last common ancestor with chimpanzees
You only assume this is true. You don't prove it. You assert it gratuitously without evidence. I gratuitously assert the opposite. It never happened.
> are the odds that a particular group or a pre-specified list of 20 million mutations (or 20 million mutations in a row) would all become fixed
But these are the 20 million mutations that actually occurred, according to the evidence, but also assuming Darwinian speciation (which isn't proved). So this is the correct calculation after all.
----------
Let me give one more input to the AND for evolution to possibly be true. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics must be false. But it is not false. Therefore, Darwinian evolution cannot possibly be a true explanation of history.
The 2nd Law posits that entropy always increases. We see it everywhere. But combine Claude Shannon's Information Theory with Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA as information, and we can see that the 2nd Law clearly forbids evolution producing speciation with higher life forms (humans evolved distantly from bacteria).
There is one possible argument against the 2nd Law argument, but it also fails. The 2nd Law applies to a closed system. But if, inside the closed system, you have a source of energy, and a machine to use the energy, you can decrease entropy locally (even while it must increase globally). An example of this is your fridge; it makes your beer cold, and decreases the entropy in your beer. Now apply this to evolution. I am willing to give the Darwinian evolutionists all the energy they want; it comes from the sun. But they still need to describe the machine that decreases entropy locally, driving speciation forward to ever more complex (less entropic) creatures. There is no such machine, therefore Darwinian evolution cannot possibly be a true explanation of history.
One more thing. There is a principle from philosophy that something cannot come from nothing. Where did the first life-form come from? It can't be nothing. If you can't get the chain started, you can't get to the last link in the chain. Therefore, Darwinian evolution cannot possibly be a true explanation of history.
----------
Embrace the power of AND. For Darwinian evolution to be true, there would need to be enough time. There isn't. For Darwinian evolution to be true, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics would need to be false. It isn't. And finally, for Darwinian evolution to be true, the philosophical principle that something can't come from nothing would need to be false. But it isn't.
Also not even wrong, Ken.
Learn some thermodynamics. And some life sciences. And some philosophy beyond Plato 🤦♂️
This is the worst kind of comment. There are numerous thoughtful replies in this thread that come down on both sides of the question. Yet all this commenter does is counter with Appeal to Authority, encased in snark. It isn’t thoughtful at all, and the world would not be worse off if it was never posted.
I assume the poster is intelligent and qualified. But the comment is the exact thing the internet can use less of.
The internet could use *even less* of people trying to prove evolution isn’t true, Adam, while demonstrating how far on the wrong side of the Dunning-Kruger curve they are.
Perhaps you’d like to opine on the number of angels that can dance on a pinhead next?
And yet you contributed nothing to the discussion. So it must not be as important as you say, or you would have come with substance, not snark.
It’s really a shame that Ken’s “analysis” and the glaring faults therein don’t register for you, Adam — and I’m not going to try to educate you via Substack on all the ways it’s not even wrong, but I did give you a bread crumb trail.
Seriously, study:
- Statistical mechanics (entropy)
- life sciences (proton gradients and local entropy reversal)
-philosophy beyond Plato
If you’ve done so, each of Ken’s claims relating to evolution are clearly visible as completely incorrect, driven my a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world actually works.
But hey, why do that when he can spew nonsense and nevertheless get defended by folks you, right?
Nope, still not any good. You remain the only commenter here who has offered nothing but posturing and childish playground fallacy. You are dishonest and smug.
Have you checked out Reddit? You may fit in better there. They aggressively upvote snark, name-calling, and lazy virtue signaling. You’d do well there. Amongst your people.
Here, we all see you, and we all know what you are.
I hesitate to post this as I have no credentials on this matter, but just want to point out an observation. This elaborates on Micro-evolution which are built upon three micro-evolution premises(upon which Creation, Intelligent Design proponents agree as you correctly noted), but it does not address Macro-evolution and which commits the fallacy of proving too much e.g. We have transitional fossils along the evolutionary path from Mesohippus to Equus (the modern horse), therefore horses can eventually become birds (A claim which Creation, Intelligent Design proponents do not agree can occur [and at the risk of creating a strawman example for the sake of highlighting absurdity]).
Thanks for the comment. I’ll be writing a post soon responding to many the comments, including this one.
Sorry if I'm missing the joke, but evolutionary theory does believe that dinosaurs eventually became birds, so that doesn't seem like a strawman. That is if anything more far-fetched since horses and birds are at least both warm-blooded. I think it is fair to point out that macro-evolution does have aspects that can appear absurd when viewed from the perspective of "common sense." Not that that intrinsically invalidates it in itself, just that its proponents do not always seem to be aware of the magnitude of what they are actually proposing, i.e. that bacteria turned into dinosaurs which turned into birds. There would seem to be a rather high burden of proof for such a statement, but at times the evolutionary camp seems to push the burden of proof onto the ID camp. Yet prima facie ID seems more plausible, at least to me. A more formalized version of this argument uses information theory, e.g. the work of Hubert P. Yockey, William Dembski and Gérard Battail.
That's at least 4 different areas of discussion which are off topic of my response, of the authors response to Days book.
The authors response was to the MITTENS math, and my response was concerning and addressing the authors response which was utilizing micro-evolution to make his point.
Your response(s?) is a non sequitur.
My responses was in regard to "at the risk of creating a strawman example for the sake of highlighting absurdity" in your post, pointing out that not only is it not a strawman example but evolution makes claims that are actually less plausible prima facie. In any case, let's not miss the forest for the trees, the ultimate question here is the viability of evolution. It would be unfair to both sides to confine it to specific arguments which individually may favor one side or the other.
Haven't read the book (the concept alone would put me off) but I had been troubled by my own gut feel that the maths didn't work. Thanks for putting that to rest.
PS: you know that orchid mantis image is AI, don't you?
That’s what it feels like, being in a cult. Everything promised is to alleviate the anxiety.
Thanks for the clear explanation!
"How a best-selling anti-evolution book misuses mathematics and spreads disinformation" Respectfully, I've observed that people that use terms like disinformation, misinformation, malinformation, etc. tend, ironically, to be people who enjoy manipulating others with highly questionable arguments and 'facts'. I do not think you are one such; (quite the reverse) your critique does not come across that way at all, so you may, as someone else suggested, wish to reconsider that subhed. ('Dead wrong' would be preferable; rhetoric, but obvious less manipulative rhetoric.)
Thank you for a thoughtful and substantive critique. I come from a position of wanting TENS to be true; it's such a beautifully elegant simple theory... and yet I've always been troubled by the math. Same with abiogenesis. But I'm an engineer, not a biologist, so have never looked at it too closely.
I loved Haldane's comment, when I first encountered it, so nice to see it repeated. The counter from YEC (Young Earth Creationists) that God put the fossil record there to tempt our faith is pretty dreadful; akin to arguments that the planets are carted about the sky by angels, rather than accepting Newton's (almost -- see special relativity) Laws. Starts to fall apart with Occam's razor if nothing else. (I suppose Newton's Superb Approximations in Almost all Practical Cases doesn't really have quite the same ring.)
That said, I didn't find your arguments about the fossil record all that persuasive, though it certainly is a sensible thing to note. If TENS fails on the math, the fossil record is not that relevant. Similarly your argument that micro-evolution exists (the classic for me, as GenX, being moths changing color as atmospheric pollution rapidly increased in NE US) is somewhat orthogonal to TENS existing.
Dog breeds, variances as an example of intelligent design, interesting, not overly persuasive, but interesting. Russian breeding of submissive foxes (only ten generations!) is similarly interesting. Reminds me of the magnificent ID argument about bananas being a perfect example of Intelligent Design. Which of course they are; i.e. bred by humans over several centuries.
I'll have to study your mathematical argument more carefully, and Day's original argument. For me at least, that's the meat of the whole issue.
Again, thank you for a critique entirely unlike your subhed.
Great work, Dennis! There are more things in heaven and earth... Right? This is a balanced, methodical and very accessible approach to a loaded subject. More of this sort of analysis is needed today, particularly in areas of science and what might pass as science.
Were you intending to portray that first picture as reality? Because the caption seems that way. That's AI generated and not accurate to what real orchid mantises look like. Real orchid mantises are basically praying mantis shaped but orchid colored and patterned. They don't have little flowers of chitin growing out of their bodies. Also, if you look closely at the forelegs of the mantis, you see how the AI generated one stumpy walking leg by accident and moved the the front leg back onto one of the walking legs. Also, orchids have six petals not five. So, a mantis that evolved to blend in to orchids wouldn't have evolved five petalled flowers on its body.
By Huxley, these cdesign proponentsists — who after decades still aren’t even wrong — just keep coming back.
Edit needed? “And since Vox Day thinks is the fastest possible rate of mutation fixation, he believes that places a concrete ceiling on the number of fixed mutations we should expect to occur over the 450,000 generations of humans since the chimp/human divide:”
I apologize for explaining this in a wall of text. I'm tired and I need to sleep. Just getting my thoughts out.
Aristotle had a piercing insight into the world we live in. Often right, though limited by the technology he had available to him. One of his ideas that is related to this topic is the concept of categories. For example, the image of the Poodles of the Serengeti can be broken down into categories and sub-categories: foreground, background, plants, animals, etc. Any one of these can be broken down further, a poodle has a head, a body, a tail. Each of these can be further categorized, a face has eyes, a mouth, a nose, etc.
But, even though we can use this system of categories to create ever finer distinctions, do those categories exist?
Do the ants in an ant colony know that the colony exists? Does the ant colony really exist at all?
To the point now, humans are pattern seeking creatures. Schizophrenics are especially adept at seeing patterns where they do not exist. Evolution is a pattern that most people are taught to see. But is the pattern real?
Darwin categorized the finches on the Galapagos islands into a dozen or so different species. But the incredible outward diversity of the finches has, with DNA testing, been revealed to be one species of bird genetically.
One of the problems with discussing evolution is that terms change over time as Scientists create ever more precise categories of species and sub species. Through these endless redefinitions, there are a handful of examples of what scientists call "Speciation". One example was in the 1980s when a new "species" of birds arrived on Galapagos islands after migrating from another island and deciding to mate with its closest relatives. DNA testing has revealed that this bird, too, is genetically the same species as all the other birds on the island.
Scientists can provide examples of plants becoming mutant plants, and they'll call it speciation, but it's never as dramatic as the critics of evolution would expect. The same tired redefinitions that have declared that boys can be girls and girls can be boys tell us genetically identical birds can be a dozen different species.
Evolution is not true. It's a pattern you've been taught to see, and has no more truth to it than Astrology, Phrenology, or String Theory.
Edit: I once had the pleasure of listening to an Autistic Atheist tell me about his obsession with dragons. This young man had spent years of his life creating an evolutionary tree of every image of dragons online. When I asked him if he enjoyed using AI to create new dragons he confessed that he refused to use it because AI has the habit of creating new dragons that violate his assigned evolutionary plan. He's had to exclude a great number of new images that don't fit his models, and would require him to endlessly re-interpret the data to keep his evolutionary tree intact.
There are three fundamental problems this anecdote reveals. First, we know dragons don't exist and yet evolution can be applied to create a family tree of dragons. Karl Popper wrote a paper years ago that explained the philosophical weakness of evolution: it explains too much. Second, it really doesn't matter what new image an AI creates, evolution is flexible enough to explain anything with enough grunt work. Which is why every new fossil discovery sends biologists into a flurry reassessing the fossil record and coming up with new announcements about the age of different species. Third, just as my Autistic friend throws out new data he doesn't like when fossils are discovered that completely refute evolution, such as men and dinosaurs existing on the same geological strata, the fossils are always explained away as "frauds". Dozens and dozens of frauds. What a happy coincidence that every fossil that refutes evolution is declared a fraud or endlessly reinterpreted into new "discoveries".
I've read this article twice now, and here is what stands out to me:
1.) The basic math is not in dispute--McCarthy accedes to VD's formulation. Outside observer, this signifies intellectual honesty: simply grant the premise and work from there. Heuristically, is that old Aristotle bit about "the mark of an educated man is the ability to entertain an idea without accepting it."
2.) So, accepting the math, the main thrust of McCarthy's rebuttal here is that the assumptions which feed into VD's equation are incorrect. Fair enough.
Why then, does the strong argument need to be prefaced with an overview of evolution, such as it is presented in this article? Starting out with the axiomatic overview of evolution and then (correctly)characterizing VD's case as an "end-around", merely stands to erect a mott of tautology with which to retreat to, if/when the bailey of mathematical plausibility is breached. Why? It seems incongruous with the "balls and strikes" thrust of the rebuttal.