You have managed, as usual, to totally misconstrue what I have clearly written. Mypoint was never to “note that there is no theory of abiogenesis in the scientific literature”. My point was to refute MTGMan’s contention that there were theories of abiogenesis in the scientific literature.
See the difference?
Wow.
In the stellar furnaces of the mightiest stars, hydrogen was forced by the unyielding gravity to combine, creating the light of the galaxies, then forced to combine again and again before releasing the end products of this cosmic maelstrom upon a cold and empty void, where such matter could coalesce into the iron, nickel, silicon, and oxygen to form a dense planet, on which the cauldron of life would boil and simmer and struggle and eventually form an open chain of evolution culminating thus far in, among others, two life-forms named Mtgman and Blake, who would snipe at each other on a message board.
Heavy.
Or alternately, all life was invented by a guy named Fred, last Tuesday.
I certainly see that for all your pent up frustration that posters are not reading what you have “clearly written” you are attributing to Mtgman a statement that he did not make. At the point where you decided to take umbrage, he had made reference to an “abiogenesis-related theory” which he used as an example of how an actual theory of abiogenesis might be treated. Since he made no claim that there was a theory of abiogenesis in the literature, your angst seems misplaced.
As an analogy: Had Mendel’s 1865 paper gotten widespread attention when it was published while Darwin’s and Wallace’s (and Lamarck’s and fellows) papers had languished until 1893 or later, we would have had an example in Mendel’s work of an “evolution-related theory” even though we did not have a theory of evolution in the scientific literature.
Yeah, Blake What he said…with one of these 
A nice (perhaps unintendend) touch of irony, beyond the obvious facetiousness.
You present a story about abiogenesis *and * evolution, and you start the story with gravity and atomic fusion, both of which have been formulated scientifically, studied experimentally, and have been verified and could be potentially falsfied. But after the heavier elements are created and the Earth is formed (btw, you didn’t mention carbon or the creation of organic molecules, but, yeah, how much detail do you really need in a cute story), you then have an unspecified cauldron “struggle and eventually form” something. *Struggling and eventually forming * is not exactly a scientific theory, although, obviously, you were being deliberately simplistic. But it seems that we don’t yet have theories of abiogenesis and evolution that are as “scientific” as that of gravity and atomic fusion.
Which, in a convoluted and confused way, is kind of the point of the OP.
But proponents of Intelligent Design are merely pointing out what’s wrong with current theories of evolution, rather than making positive, testable claims of their own.
Actually, we do have a very well formulated (and, as yet, never successfully refuted) theory of evolution which has withstood 146 years of assault and challenge. The ID people are simply uncomfortable with the ramifications of that successful theory and are attempting to interpose an unnecessary agent into areas where we have not yet discovered the complete train of events. Yet, as we continue to examine biochemical development, we have already, for example, closed several of the “gaps” into which Behe claimed that there was no possible bridge.
ID does not challenge evolutionary theory; it demonstrates a lack of imagination on the part of people who are frightened by the Theory of Natural Selection.
Fine, as long as they don’t destroy the one named Kirk.
Well, this time I’m not making an argument but laying out a number of striking distinctions that are relevent to the ID debate but which I don’t think are being made. I could easily left out the refernce to Gould’s theory of puctuated equilibrium. But if we must, PE implys that whole series of constructive mutations take place in rapid succession among small populations of species, while none at all are occuring among the broader populations. This creates an opening for suggesting that some kind of special circumstances are play when evolution is occuring. Or not.
Except that PE does not imply any such thing. Constructive (and destructive) mutations occur across the entire population of a species at a steady rate. It is simply that they tend to be subsumed by larger populations while, mathematically, they have a better chance to express themselves and take hold in limited populations. No special design element is requred for that to happen.
Reflecting on our exchange, I would note that this seems to me to be the whole problem with the ID movement: they appear to have to create situations into which they can wedge their explorations rather than simply trying to discover what is actually in the record.
Just as simple math makes PE work without calls on special agents (and your source of ID informations seems to have made the erroneous (mendacious?) claim that mutations are happening at special rates in smaller populations), so, too, with examples such as Behe who found gaps in the developments of flagella and bombardier beetles and leaped to insert a designer when just a couple more years’ worth of investigation turned up explanations very consitent with Natural Selection that did not require a Designer.
No. First of all, mutation occurs at a more or less constant rate; that is to say, radiation or mutagentic substances can affect rates of mutation, and different parts of the genome are more or less subsceptible to mutation, but punctuated equilibrium doesn’t require a change in the rate of mutations, or that they be limited to small populations.
Second, thinking of mutations in terms of “constructive” vs. “destructive” is a gross simplification and a false diachotomy; mutations are beneficial or not to their host based upon their phenotypical effects. A mutation that gives an ungulate herbivore the ability to much leaves on higher branches than his contemporaries offers an advantage, which is likely to allow the animal in question to better prospher in times when leaves are scarce, and therefore more likely to reproduce and pass on its genes, including the one that allows for the higher reach. However, the same gene, and even the same phenotype, may have negative effects; the higher reach may be accompanied by stretched musculature and skeletal elements that are more likely to strain or break, or it may require more energy to maintain, or whatnot. Mutations are “good” or “bad”, and are often both simultaneously (as with sickle cell anemia) based upon their effect upon the carrier and species, but only as seen in hindsight. In other words, genes (and their carriers) don’t survive because they’re good; therey’re good because they survive.
This brings us to punctuated equilibria; this happens when some kind of rapid environmental or life cycle change occurs which alters the “economy” upon which phenotypes are measured. If, for instance, a rash of volcanos goes off, spewing ash into the air for several years and causing a regional or global alteration in available sunlight and average temperature, this will have an effect on vegetation and photosynthetic organisms which depend on certain cycles and temperatures Now, the less efficient members of those classes, those say, that made less use of sunlight, are suddenly in a better position. Whereas the previously grew slower and made less use of resources, they now grow at just the right speed, while their more energetic brethern will continue to spin their wheels trying to use materials but lacking enough energy to put them together. Suddenly, populations that were small because they weren’t able to compete effectively or only survived in a tiny niche now have the capabilities to expand and compete effectively, while populations that were large and topheavy in the old regime now can’t forage or make use of tthe new environment and so are reduced in number. Consider General Motors–once, the worlds largest and most respected automaker-- and, say, Toyota, with their little undesireable econoboxes and tiny engines; when the “environment” (i.e. the price of gas) changed, the econoboxes became superior to the gas-guzzling bohemeaths cranked out in Flint.
The effects if this run up the food chain, of course, through herbivores and various predators, and back around to the scavengers, parasites, and bacteria that feed on them, and laterally between different species that exist in some kind of sympathetic or synergetic relationship. Normally, species can survive and adapt to normal environmental shifts without dramatic reorganizations, but once in a while, a massive change in environment, or just the right set of conditions (such as a key species which is verging toward extinction) is enough to create a large instability in the economics of ecology.
In other words, PE occurs because something that was less valuable yesterday–say, the Euro versus the American Dollar–is now more valuable today. There’s no inherent change in the structure of the unit in question (Jackson’s face is still on the $20) but what it can by or be traded for is different, and if that change is radical enough it may cause massive shifts in trading and economic dominance. There’s no mysticism or supernatural agents behind PE; just the simple game theory models that drive all exchange processes. Although it is chaotic and unpredictable, the principles are simple and the changes are clear in hindsight.
Intelligent Design is an argumentum ad ignoratum, an appeal to the notion that because we are ignorant of a connection or causation, that therefore must be some kind of inexplicable cause; a God-of-the-Gaps to fill in what we don’t know. The truth is that, simply, we don’t know but strive to find out; that’s the scientific approach; hypthesize, test, falsify, refine, repeat. ID strives to offer up the quick answer (“Goddidit!”) while insisting that we pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. There is nothing scientific about it, even when promoted by PhD’s in biochemistry.
Stranger
Indeed!
And you can add more, such as:
really!!! Why that little scamp. You just wait till I see that rapscallion. There’ll be hell to pay. 
Others have taken you to task about this, and I have my own nits to pick with it, as well as with some of the previous explanations. First and foremost, Punctuated Equilibria is a theory about the nature of the fossil record – not of speciation, not of mutations, not of evolution in general. It states, most simply, that the fossil record appears as it does – long periods of stasis (or equilibria), in which species change little, followed (punctuated, if you will…) by periods of rapid change, resulting in species “suddenly” appearing in the fossil record, and just as suddenly disappearing – precisely because of how speciation occurs.
Previously, this had all been chalked up to the woefully-incomplete record itself. If changes were gradual, then at least hypothetically, all these minute gradations could be captured within the record. However, the actual act of speciation typically involves “peripheral isolates” – smaller populations cut off, by whatever means, from the parent population. These smaller populations will tend to change more rapidly than a larger one (as noted previously). Fossilization, being the crap-shoot that it is, will be less likely to occur within these small, localized, rapidly changing populations than it will for a large, wide-spread one. Thus, the species as a whole may be completely absent from the fossil record until such time as the species becomes stabilized and established. When a species does finally show up in the record, it is usually more or less “mature” at that point.
So, repeat after me: PE is a theory about the appearance of the fossil record, not a new or alternate mechanism for evolution itself. Mutations and natural selection and speciation and all that still operate exactly as they have always been theorized to act. The “new” part of PE is that the appearance of the fossil record is exactly what we should expect it to be, given the nature of speciation and the process of fossilization. Were we to dig up every fossil in existence, so called “gaps” would necessarily remain.
And, as a final nitpick, the name of the theory is “punctuated equilibria”, not “punctuated equilibrium”. The idea being that it is all those periods of equilibria taken together which add up to produce the fossil record we have today.
Eldredge, N., & Gould, S. J. 1972. Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism. In: Models In Paleobiology (Ed. by T. J. M. Schopf).
Gould, S. J., & Eldredge, N. 1977. Punctuated equilibria: the tempo and mode of evolution reconsidered. Paleobiology, 3, 115-151.
Would you mind expanding on this a bit, or pointing to a resource where I can get (credible, accurate) details? I’ve never really seen much about PE before, and from the posts in this thread it seems apparent that misconceptions abound.
This TalkOrigins article spells out everything you’d probably ever want to know about the topic.
Or you could go to the source:
And:
Red herring. If the designer is not natural, then nothing compels it to have been designed.