(1) Where did you get the idea that PE doesn't have a mechanism?
(2) Would you also criticize Newton and Galileo for their failure to
have mechanisms?
--- ANSWERS:(1) You are right, my mistake, punctuated equilibrium (PE) apparently does have a mechanism, actually, it has mechanisms. However, in contrast with the Darwinian mechanism it pales in elegance and appeal. I've heared it described as fuzzy, confused, jagged, tentative, incoherent, uncertain, etc., sort of like one would describe "history" without the historians' records. This is not my idea, this is what the fundamentals (Dawkins, Dennet, etc.) are saying.
(2) I would not. Your question, however, makes me think that you think I was criticizing Gould, and I guess I was, but I was also criticizing Dawkins. However, in both cases I was simply repeating what has spilled over to the public eye due to the internal pressure (and I submitted a web-reference). The fact is Gould is more honest than Dawkins in regards to a fair evaluation of the fossil record; Gould's hero is still Darwin but not Darwinism, so he is careful in his critique. Dawkins' heros are Darwinism and Darwin, but it only takes an honest evolutionists (like Gould) to point out that gradualism is not what characterizes the punctuated fossil record. Remember that was Gould who called Dawkins a fundamentalist; with the obvious overtones that that title has in American religious history (faith over reason) it is not surprising to see that the pressure went up.
Things are getting weirder. The morphological derived taxa is not fitting well with the molecular derived taxa. The space inside the cell in crammed with all sort of super-specialized power plants, refineries, waste management mechanisms, etc., etc.. Algorithms to backproject geneological trees are dramatically failing in the simplest of experiments possible by following several generations of uni-cellular organisms and examining their complete genome. And yes, no one has yet provided possible mechanisms for those examples given by Behe in his book.
To me the preacher was right.
Eccl. 3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
We shall as human beings, nevertheless, continue our search, and may our hearts in that search found the one who put in them eternity. ==
EGM "in ipso enim vivimus et movemur et sumus sicut"
_________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com