Evolution - The power of a prediction or Just so stories
Just so you know, I am not trying to pick on Michael Sprague, but ecause I don't get many readers, his comments are all I have to work off. Such is life.

Michael challenges that my previous examples are not just-so stories,

I don't see how any of your examples are examples of this. After all, you haven't discussed the evidence at all in any of your examples.

so I guess I will just have to quote an expert evolutionist, Bruce R. Levin of Emory University, who says
"It is easy to concoct just-so stories to explain the evolution of a mechanism that, like the SOS response, produces quiescent cells that are refractory to lethal agents. Yet it seems unlikely that ampicillin was the original selective force [sic] responsible for the evolution [sic] of the induction mechanism observed by Miller and colleagues. A bigger challenge to those in the evolution business is to account for the generation of lower fitness cell types when they do not provide an advantage to the collective, like the persisters of Balaban et al. in the absence of antibiotics. Then again, just like people, bacteria do some seemingly perverse things that are not easy to account for by simple stories of adaptive evolution."
(Bruce R. Levin, “Microbiology: Noninherited Resistance to Antibiotics,” Science, Vol 305, Issue 5690, 1578-1579, 10 September 2004)

It seems evolutionists think just-so stories are still being used, certainly within the last few decades....

Notice also how Michael shifts the burden of proof in these discussions. Somehow, ID is a just-so story, without him addressing the issues of Irreducible complexity or specified complexity and the creation of information. Yet, if I do not discuss the evidence in the cases put forward, he will not accept that they are just-so stories. Clearly, his presuppositional bias is guiding his results.

Michael also made a couple of comments that echo comments I hear time and time again. In Michael's own words

For one thing, evolution can be and has been tested. Now, it can't be tested in the naive way you creationists like to focus on; that is, we can't predict that a horse will evolve into a unicorn and then go see if it does. But we can make predictions of the form, "if evolution has happened, we should find X when we look at Y." Make enough of these and it starts to add up to a pretty damn good body of evidence.

Ignoring the ad Hominem, he makes the claim that evolutionists can make predictions that if evolution as happened we should 'find X when we look at Y' and that when enough of these predictions are made and fulfilled, then it is considered a good body of evidence.

I would agree completely, if every prediction they made was shown to be accurate. The problem is, they look more like Nostradamus than Isaiah. That is, their predictions are vague and generalistic, rather than precise and tight. Whats more, if their predictions are not fulfilled should this not count against evolution? Instead what happens is that other ad hoc explanations are thrown into the mix to explain the failed prediction. Doesn't fit the phylogenic tree? Must be convergent evolution. Still can't find all those finely graded transitions in the fossils? Must be puntuated equilibria. Can't find any fossil evidence of a species for the last 70 million years, but it turns up alive today? Must be the imperfect fossil record. Vestigial structures and Junk DNA turn out to have a purpose? That's okay, only recently lost abilities would be vestigial and it would be inefficient to conserve DNA and features that did nothing, so they would be selected against. Ultra-conserved DNA appears to be not necessary for survival? Well, that just something we haven't worked out yet.

When anyone tells you evolutionary predictions support evolution, ask them why they should support evolution when all the failed predictions do not count against it? That sounds more like pseudo-science to me.

Michael also pulls out another great fallacy

A second reason for accepting evolution is its power of conscilience; its ability to unify so many observations under one theory. The theory of evolution explains myriad phenomena in such previously-independent fields as phylogeny, geology, biogeography, anatomy and paleontology, as well as later discoveries in genetics and molecular biology. The fact that so many otherwise-unexplained facts can be explained by a single theory is strong evidence for the theory's truth - at least if the "hard" sciences are any model.

Here we go again. Its an appeal to authority, much like when Dobzhansky says, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” Evolution does not unify much at all. Currently the geneticists (classifying by genetic structure) and the cladists (classifying by shape) are having a battle to see whose 'evidence' counts. Paleontology is essentially hostile to gradual evolution. Biogeography is dubious when species can be absent for 70million years and suddenly appear alive, and platypus teeth appear in south america (The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 January 1993 (p. 5)) and then we have pouched mammal fossils from the late cretacious exclusively being in north america and eurasia (Cifelli, R.L. and Davis, B.M., Marsupial origins, Science 302:1899–2, 2003). Geology is about rocks, not life, so it cannot even be unified with biology (They do share the same assumption of billions of years though). This huge generalization by Michael is nothing but an attempt to shut up opposition with a grand sweeping authorative sounding statement. If you take time to look at the statement, you will find that Emperor Charlie has no clothes on.
- posted by Alan Grey @ Tuesday, April 26, 2005